Yukiko Toda: B.A. Kobe College(1995), M.A. Kwansei Gakuin University (1997), M.A. Lancaster University, UK(1999), Ph.D. Kwansei Gakuin University(2002). She is Professor of English literature at Sugiyama Jogakuen University, Nagoya, Japan.
Her research interests include contemporary women’s fiction, 19th and 20th century American literary and cultural history, African American literature, contemporary Canadian literature, and children’s literature. Her specialized field of study so far has focused mainly on post-1970s African American women’s writings.
Her recent research examines the politics of motherhood in Toni Morrison’s fiction. It probes how the concept, discourse, and ideology of motherhood are used in her novels from a historical perspective, taking into particular consideration various discourses on motherhood produced during 19th century United States such as the concept of “Republican motherhood,” and also to how black women have related historically to such mainstream motherhood ideology.
Yukiko also works on literary translation. She has recently finished translating Jessie Redmon Fauset’s Plum Bun (Sairyu Press, 2013) and Gerry Shikatani’s Lake and Other Stories (Osaka Kyoiku Press, 2010). She is part of a team of scholars from the Canadian Literary Society of Japan who have translated The Cambridge History of Canadian Literature, ed. Coral Ann Howells and Eva-Marie Kroller (Cambridge UP 2009; pb 2013) into Japanese. Currently she is working on the translation of Hiromi Goto’s Half World.
