{"id":3685,"date":"2013-10-09T18:52:29","date_gmt":"2013-10-09T22:52:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/wll\/?post_type=profile&p=3685"},"modified":"2026-05-24T18:42:10","modified_gmt":"2026-05-24T22:42:10","slug":"j-keith-vincent","status":"publish","type":"profile","link":"https:\/\/www.bu.edu\/wll\/profile\/j-keith-vincent\/","title":{"rendered":"J. Keith Vincent"},"content":{"rendered":"

Spring 2026 Office Hours: Tuesdays 3:00-4:20 and Wednesdays 11:30-12:50 or by appointment.<\/strong>\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

Book an appointment here<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n

J. Keith Vincent is interested in literary friendships: how writers translate their relationships with other writers into aesthetic forms. In his research and teaching, he explores how genders inform genres, how sexuality shapes storytelling, and how great novels and poems emerge. He has a longstanding interest in the way the aesthetics of haiku has informed the modern Japanese novel via the literary friendship between the haiku poet Masaoka Shiki and the novelist Natsume S\u014dseki.<\/p>\n

Professor Vincent co-founded, and currently directs BU’s Program in Literary Translation.<\/a><\/p>\n

He also created and directs a collaborative digital project on translations of the poetry in the tale of Genji at genjipoems.org.<\/a><\/p>\n

He is the author of Two-Timing Modernity: Homosocial Narrative in Modern Japanese Fiction <\/i><\/a>(Harvard Asia Center, 2012) and co-editor of two volumes on the Japanese novelist Natsume S\u014dseki:\u00a0 Reading S\u014dseki Now, <\/em><\/a>a special issue of the Review of Japanese Culture and Society, <\/em>and S\u014dseki no ibasho<\/a>, <\/em>an edited volume in Japanese.<\/p>\n

Recent articles include\u00a0 “Genji’s Ghosts,” in The Literary Imagination<\/em> (2026). “Tragic Fates and the Balm of Beauty: Reading the Tale of Genji <\/em>in Boston” (in Japanese) Shis\u014d<\/a><\/em>, 2024:3; “Purple and White: S\u014dseki and Shiki\u2019s Homosocial Genji\u201d in the Norton Critical Edition <\/em>of Dennis Washburn’s translation of The Tale of Genji<\/em> <\/a>(2021); \u201cTakemura Kazuko: On Friendship and The Queering of American and Japanese Studies\u201d in\u00a0<\/span>Rethinking Japanese Feminisms<\/em><\/a>\u00a0<\/em>(2017); <\/span>and\u00a0\u00a0\u201cQueer Reading and Japanese Literature,\u201d in the\u00a0<\/span>Routledge Handbook of Modern Japanese Literature<\/em>\u00a0<\/a>(2016, revised in 2025).<\/span><\/p>\n

He is currently completing a book manuscript titled “I, Who Go”: The Young Shiki and the Invention of Haiku.<\/em><\/p>\n

His translation of Okamoto Kanoko\u2019s A Riot of Goldfish <\/em><\/a>(Hesperus Press,\u00a0 2010) won the 2011 U.S.-Japan Friendship Commission Prize for the\u00a0 Translation of Japanese Literature, and his translation of Tanizaki Jun\u2019ichir\u014d\u2019s novella Devils in Daylight<\/i> <\/i><\/a>was shortlisted for the Lucien Stryk Asian Translation Prize in 2018. His translations of Tanizaki’s “From the Life of Shunkin” and “A Record of Cruelty”<\/a> are forthcoming in Fall, 2026. His abridged translation of Sei Sh\u014dnagon’s The Pillow Book (<\/em>2021) is available as an audiobook on Alexander<\/a> and appeared in The Literary Imagination <\/em>in 2026.\u00a0 He recently wrote the introduction to a new edition<\/a> of Edwin McClellan’s classic translation of S\u014dseki’s\u00a0Kokoro.<\/em><\/p>\n

He is currently at work on a new translation of S\u014dseki’s sole autobiographical novel, Michikusa, <\/em>which tells the story of the years leading up to his debut as a novelist.<\/p>\n

Watch a lecture here <\/a>by Professor Vincent on Masaoka Shiki and Marcel Proust delivered at the University of Chicago in the spring of 2023.<\/p>\n

Here<\/a> is a lecture delivered in Japanese at Otsuma Women’s University in Tokyo in the fall of 2023, on the impact on Shiki of the suicide of his younger cousin, the poet and playwright Fujino Kohaku.<\/p>\n

Personal website: jkeithvincent.com<\/a><\/p>\n

Vincent CV 2-27-26<\/a><\/a><\/p>\n

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