Kyudai News No27 page 13/28

Description:
Kyudai News No27

12pursuit of my second area of research: studying Americanliterature from the cross-disciplinary perspectives of theAmerican economy and philosophy of finance. Inparticular, it would be fair to say that the insurance systemis an idiosyncratic motif that has been featured in the worldof American literature down through the ages, fromHerman Melville’s novel Moby-Dick (1851) to ArthurMiller’s play Death of a Salesman (1949) and right throughto Auster’s novel The Brooklyn Follies (2005). Whereassome works depict it as a symbol of moral corruption thattrades in the unhappiness of others, others portray theinsurance money paid to a bereaved family as a linkbinding the deceased to the loved ones they have leftbehind. I believe that analyzing these diverse ways ofdepicting insurance serves as an analysis of the processesthrough which America’s diverse work ethics andphilosophies of finance have been formed and transformed,thereby helping us to understand America’s people andsociety, and the nation as a whole.Insurance is a system predicated on the possibility of lossor damage. It had occurred to me that if I were to use theword “risk” instead, I might be able to conduct jointresearch with people in other areas, such as mathematiciansdeveloping risk management models. Amid this situation, Idiscovered that the university was inviting submissions ofprojects to promote interdisciplinary research, so I formeda team with colleagues in the fields of mathematics(Professor Setsuo Taniguchi,Associate Professor Shingo Saito), political science(Assistant Professor Tomoaki Watanabe), and linguistics(Associate Professor Satoru Uchida) and embarked upon anew joint research project. Risk and risk management havebeen shaped and passed down through the generations inBritish and American society, changing with the times.With risk management as its theme, this joint researchproject aims to conduct a close analysis of British andAmerican literature from the multidisciplinary perspectivesof literature, mathematics, political science, and linguistics,in order to clarify the concepts of risk and risk managementin a multifaceted manner. This is the first time that I haveundertaken a joint research project of this nature, so while Ifeel a certain amount of pressure to produce decentresearch output, that feeling is outweighed by a sense ofexcitement about the broadening of my research horizonsthrough this study.the Prism of Loss:plinary StudyProject meeting with researchers from different fieldsWith Mr. C.G. Frink from The Rotary Foundation at the campus of Universityat Albany, State University of New YorkAn autographed book byPaul Auster she ownsKeiko ShimojoAssociate Professor,Department ofMulticultural Society,Faculty of Languages andCultures