Matthew Cooper

Profile

I joined the School of Languages, Cultures and Societies as a PhD student in 2024, funded by the Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation. Previously, I completed my MA in Japanese Studies at SOAS, where I wrote my Masters dissertation on subversions of motherhood in the writing of Kōno Taeko and Takahashi Takako.

My doctoral research examines the novels and short stories of Enchi Fumiko, Takahashi Takako and Mexican author Amparo Dávila through a Globalgothic lens, centring inflections of the supernatural, the uncanny and the monstrous in each author’s work. My research interrogates the extent to which texts from Japan may benefit from a gothic reading, despite their perceived distance from a Euro-American Gothic ‘canon’, as well as the suitability of a Globalgothic framework for the transcultural comparative reading of Japanese texts.

Research interests

My research interests include:

• Modern and contemporary Japanese literature
• J-horror, digital horror and transnational horror cinema
• Globalgothic and horror theory
• Gender, queerness and embodiment
• Modern Mexican and Argentine literature
• Comparative and transcultural literary frameworks

Qualifications

• MA Japanese Studies, SOAS University of London (2021)
• PGCE Modern Languages, University College London (2020)
• BA Japanese and Spanish, University of Leeds (2018)