Marija Tomic

Marija Tomic is a doctoral candidate at the University of Vienna, Austria, specialising in Japanese women’s literature. She wrote her master‘s thesis on the depiction of rape trauma in novels by contemporary Japanese female authors. In her dissertation, she examines the representation of rape in contemporary Japanese women’s literature since the 1980s. Her other interests include modern Japanese literature (kindai bungaku), cross-border literature (ekkyō bungaku), Japanese women’s history, gender relations and their representation in literature and film.

During her stay in Japan, she wants to find as many literary works by Japanese women authors as possible centering around rape. Since her master’s thesis has shown that critics tend to obviate the topic of rape within their discussions of the respective novels, she will further examine the novels’ reviews to evaluate how the Japanese literary circle (bundan) discusses them. Finally, Marija will use her research stay to network with other researchers working on Japanese literature, and especially her main areas of research.