Dr Thomas McAuley
BA, PhD
School of Languages, Arts and Societies
Senior Lecturer in Japanese Studies
Director of Learning and Teaching
Full contact details
School of Languages, Arts and Societies
Jessop West
1 Upper Hanover Street
Sheffield
S3 7RA
- Research interests
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I am currently engaged in two research projects: first, studying the judgements in classical poetry competitions with a view to analysing how they functioned as criticism, how they illuminate the attitudes of poet-critics to the use of different types of lexical and cultural material in the composition of waka poetry, and finally, their role in the construction of mediaeval Japanese poetics.
The long-term aim of this is to produce a book on the development of the poetry competition between the eighth and thirteenth centuries in Japan. The first output, however, the complete translation of, and commentary on, Roppyakuban uta’awase (‘The Poetry Contest in Six Hundred Rounds’; 1193), the largest extant poetry competition judged by a single judge, Fujiwara no Shunzei.
Second, I am working on a project studying botanical gardens in Japan which display the plants mentioned the poetry of the eighth century poetry anthology, the Man’yōshū, to determine how they function as both botanical and literary tourism facilities.
- Publications
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Books
- Sanekata-shū: The Personal Poetry Collection of Fujiwara no Sanekata. Sheffield: www.wakapoetry.net.
- The Poetry Contest in Six Hundred Rounds: A Translation and Commentary. Leiden: Brill.
- Two Hundred Poem Sequences: The Entō Onhyakushu and Keiun Hyakushu. UK: www.wakapoetry.net.
- An Anthology of Classical Japanese Poetry: From Man'yōshū to Shinkokinshū. UK: www.wakapoetry.net.
- Sanekata-shū: The Personal Poetry Collection of Fujiwara no Sanekata. UK: www.wakapoetry.net.
- Introduction.
Edited books
- Language Change in East Asia. Richmond: Curzon Press.
Journal articles
- The power of translation : issues in the translation of premodern Japanese waka. Waseda RILAS Journal, 8, 427-446. View this article in WRRO
- A fine thing for the way : evidence, counter-evidence and argument in the Poetry Contest in Six Hundred Rounds. Japan Forum, 33(4), 704-730. View this article in WRRO
- イギリスの日本学会について (Concerning British Japanese Studies Associations). 文学語学 (Bungaku gogaku), 224, 77-79. View this article in WRRO
- Institutional responses to the Great East Japan earthquake, tsunami and Fukushima nuclear crisis: the University of Sheffield. Japan Forum, 28(3), 364-371. View this article in WRRO
- Viewing a Myriad Leaves: Man’yō Botanical Gardens in Japan. International Journal of Contents Tourism, 1(2), 1-16. View this article in WRRO
- Audience Attitude and Translation Reception: The case of Genji Monogatari. Babel: International Journal of Translation, 61(2), 219-241.
- Switch-reference and semantic discontinuity in Late Old Japanese. Journal of Japanese Linguistics, 18, 29-58.
- Idealism, Protest, and The Tale of Genji (Review). Japan Forum, 13(1), 118-119.
- Cultural obstacles to Japanese language learning for native English speakers. Teanga Bliainiris na Teangeolaíochta Feidhmí in Éirinn, 17, 55-67.
- Viewing a Myriad Leaves: Man’yō Botanical Gardens in Japan. International Journal of Contents Tourism, 1, 1-16.
Book chapters
- 源氏物語英訳における各種アプローチの比較的考察―異国文化のドメスティケーション In 京都大学大学院文学研究課 (Ed.), 世界の中の『源氏物語』―その普遍性と現代性 (pp. 101-126). 京都: 臨川書店.
- The Changing Use of Honorifics in Japanese Literary Texts In McAuley T (Ed.), Language Change in East Asia (pp. 47-69).
- Introduction In McAuley TE (Ed.), Language Change in East Asia (pp. 1-3). Curzon Press
- Waka and Poetry Competitions In Laffin C, Persiani GP & Heldt G (Ed.), Waka Culture Culture and Japan: Beginnings to Modern Times Leiden: Brill.
Book reviews
- How to Read a Japanese Poem. MONUMENTA NIPPONICA, 75(1), 123-126.
- Book Reviews. East Asian Journal of Popular Culture, 5(1), 79-92.
- The Book of the Dead. Japanese Studies, 39(1), 137-139.
- Shinkokinshū: New Collection of Poems Ancient and Modern trans. by Laurel Rasplica Rodd. The Journal of Japanese Studies, 43(2), 399-403.
- Ambiguous Bodies: Reading the Grotesque in Japanese Setsuwa Tales (Review). Marvels & Tales: Journal of Fairy Tale Studies, 27(2), 330-333.
- A Historical Study of Referent Honorifics in Japanese (Review). Japan Forum, 21(2), 296-298.
- A Waka Anthology Volume Two: Grasses of Remembrance (Review), 18(3), 439-442.
- A review of: “Edwin A. Cranston, A Waka Anthology, Vol. 2, Grasses of Remembrance”. Japan Forum, 18(3), 439-450.
- Language Change and Language Planning in Japan (Review). Journal of European Area Studies, 10(1), 138-138.
- Light Verse from the Floating World: An Anthology of Japanese Senryū (Review). Japan Forum, 13(1), 119-120.
Theses
- The Genji Monogatari: A Loose Sequence of Vague Phrases?.
- Sanekata-shū: The Personal Poetry Collection of Fujiwara no Sanekata. Sheffield: www.wakapoetry.net.
- Research group
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Research Supervision
I welcome the opportunity to supervise promising PhD students in a broad range of areas related to Japanese to English translation, linguistics and literature.
I have recently supervised to successful completion a thesis on ideological and propaganda content of children’s songs in the pre-war Japanese school curriculum, and am currently co-supervising a thesis on the integration of instruction on Intercultural Communicative Competence in to the Japanese university English language curriculum.
- Teaching interests
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If I had to sum up my teaching philosophy in a single phrase, it’s that I want to motivate students to learn for themselves.
To that end, in my language classes, I don’t provide a single ‘right’ answer – there aren’t any when translating advanced level texts – but seek to provide skills students can apply to any situation, so that when they encounter words, phrases, texts and situations which are unfamiliar, they can feel confident in how to approach them, and discover the challenge and the joy of studying a foreign language and culture.
In my studies classes, the focus is on encouraging students to use the materials, whether it be my lectures, or Japanese poetry and literature, as a starting point for their own deeper analysis of intricacies of Japanese society, culture and language, and thereby enable them to develop their own understanding.
- Teaching activities
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Dr McAuley currently teaches on the following undergraduate modules:
- EAS1000 Exploring East Asia
- EAS21003 Experiencing Japan through Literary Texts
- EAS232 Evolution of the Japanese Language
- EAS3035 Japanese Language 5
- EAS3036 Japanese Language 6