Rate My Professor Rebecca Suter

Rebecca Suter served as Professor of Japanese Studies and Comparative Literature at the University of Sydney from 2008 to 2022, within the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, School of Languages and Cultures. She earned an M.A. in Comparative Studies (Japanese and English) in 1999 and a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature (Japanese and American) in 2004 from the Università degli Studi di Napoli "L'Orientale". Her earlier career included a lectureship in Japanese Studies at the Italian Institute for Africa and the Orient during and after her Ph.D., a postdoctoral fellowship followed by a lectureship in Japanese literature at Harvard University from 2005 to 2007, and a visiting assistant professorship at Brown University in 2007. At Sydney, she chaired the Japanese Studies department and contributed significantly to research and teaching in modern Japanese literature.

Suter's research focuses on Japan's creative appropriation of Euro-American culture in literature, including comparative studies on authors like Murakami Haruki and Kazuo Ishiguro, depictions of Christianity (Kirishitan) in modern Japanese fiction, manga, and anime, and themes of globalization, multiculturalism, and transnationalism. Key publications include The Japanization of Modernity: Murakami Haruki between Japan and the United States (BRILL, 2020), Holy Ghosts: The Christian Century in Modern Japanese Fiction (University of Hawaii Press, 2017), Two-World Literature: Kazuo Ishiguro’s Early Novels (University of Hawaii Press, 2020), "Gender Bending and Exoticism in Japanese Girls’ Comics" (Asian Studies Review, 2013), and "Orientalism, Self-Orientalism, and Occidentalism in the Visual-Verbal Medium of Japanese Girls’ Comics" (Literature & Aesthetics, 2012). In 2014, she received the University of Sydney's Inoue Yasushi Award for Outstanding Research in Japanese Literature, Culture, and Art for her article "Grand Demons and Little Devils: Akutagawa’s Kirishitan mono as a Mirror of Modernity" (The Journal of Japanese Studies, 2013). Suter is also an active translator of contemporary Japanese literature and manga, with works by authors such as Nao-cola Yamazaki, Nanae Aoyama, Inio Asano, and Moyoco Anno.