Internationalisation

• The Studies in  Regional Cultures programme at the University of Klagenfurt (Austria)
• The Department of English, University of Regensburg (Germany)
• The Department of English, University of La Corunna (Galicia, Spain)
• Centre for Welsh Studies at the University of Tübingen (Germany)
• The Longfellow Institute, Harvard University (USA)
• The Centre for Translation and Textual Studies, Dublin City University (Ireland)
• The Institute of Irish Studies, University of Liverpool (England)
• STAR (Scotland’s Transatlantic Relations), Edinburgh University (Scotland).
• The W. E. B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Studies, Harvard University (USA).

• Ugo Rivetti, University of Sao Paolo, Brazil (MA 2015) (PhD 2018-19)
• Shintaro Kono, Hitotsubashi University, Tokyo, Japan (2015-16)
• Takashi Onuki, Kwansei Gakuin University, Osaka, Japan (2015 - 16)
• Tomoki Takayama, University of Kitakyushu, Japan (2016-17)
• Mingying Zhou, Lignan University, Hong Kong (2016)
• Carla Baute, Universidade Estadual de Camoinas (UNICAMP), Sao Paulo, Brazil. (MA 2017).

• Department of Education, UNICAMP, Campinas, Brazil. (Alexandro Henrique Paixão and Anderson Ricardo Trevisan).
• Celtic Studies, Adam Mickiewicz University, Poznań, Poland (Karolina Rosiak).
• Raymond Williams Kenkyu-kai, Japan. (Shintaro Kono, Takashi Onuki and others across a network of Japanese Universities).
• Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas at Austin (Jim Kuhn, Andrea Gustavson, Rick Watson).

Prof. Shintaro Kono (Left) and Prof. Takashi Onuki (Right) with Prof. Daniel Williams (Centre) at Swansea University, 2016

Shintaro Kono

My year as a Richard Burton Centre Fellow at Swansea University turned out to be very productive thanks to the Richard Burton Archive and the untiring support from its staff, and to the staff and students of CREW. My two main aims in Swansea have been to make research the Raymond Williams archive, which is a part of the Richard Burton Archive, and more generally to develop my knowledge of Welsh writing in English. Specifically, what I tried to do was to look in detail into the formation of Raymond Williams's famous book Culture and Society (1958). I was also interested in fictional works by Raymond Williams, and the archive turned out to hold a vast collection of unpublished or unfinished fictional works. I feel that a year was far from enough to exhaust such vast materials, and although I made many discoveries and my research progressed at the archive, it still gives me a good reason to come back to Swansea again.

I was also very happy to be part of the research community of Swansea University. The attendance at an MA course in Welsh writing in English broadened my view on the subject, and my project on Lewis Jones (about whom I finished a book chapter during my stay in Swansea, to be published next year, I hope) was greatly inspired by it. Also, the Raymond Williams Reading Group, which was organised by Professor Daniel G. Williams, gave me a great opportunity not only to learn how Raymond Williams can be read in various productive ways now in Wales, but to get to know such inspiring Raymond Williams scholars who gave papers at the meetings.

Apart from, or along with, these scholarly achievements, to get the firsthand experience of the culture and life of Wales was an invaluable gain for me. Socially and politically, we have to admit that the year I spent in Wales was a year in turmoil, as, for instance, the troubles with the Tata steelworks in Port Talbot, the results of the Welsh Assembly election and, above all, of the EU referendum will show. But these experiences helped me understand in what context Welsh writers were and are writing. After all, as a scholar of literary studies, getting down to 'experience' (however remote it may seem) is vital. In addition, I really appreciated the welcoming spirit which we -- I and my family -- encountered in Swansea. This was the first experience for me and my family to settle in a foreign place, but not only those at the university, but my neighbours and the teachers and school friends of my children were always ready to help us, and we were able to enjoy our stay fully thanks to that. Lastly, my gratitude goes to the staff and the students at Swansea University. It would have been an honour to get to know them even briefly, but the honour was doubled by the fact that I was able to feel that I was really the part of this learning community. I hope our academic exchanges will last. Our friendship certainly will.

I stayed as a visiting fellow at Swansea University from September 2015 to August 2016. The main purpose of my visit was to explore the Raymond Williams Papers, especially materials relating to his novels. By being in close contact with the people of Swansea University and of Wales, I hoped to learn various concepts that would be necessary to interpret Williams’s works. Above all, I wanted to understand the intention and motivations informing the writing of Raymond Williams’s last novel People of the Black Mountains (1989-90). I supposed that ‘placeable bonding’, a phrase found in his controversial essay ‘The Culture of Nations’ (1983), would be one of the keys to deciphering this posthumous novel; however, without the perspective of Welsh Writing in English, it was very difficult to describe Williams’s ‘place’ in relation to other writers in Wales and in England. And without that perspective, I also thought, my discussion on Williams would be too abstract. Looking back, I found it a remarkably fruitful year in which I did research at the Richard Burton Archives, read two papers at international conferences, and above all published a monograph in Japanese which had a strong emphasis on Wales and Welsh culture.

I am not exaggerating at all when I say that without auditing the MA course by Professor Daniel G. Williams, attending the Raymond Williams Discussion Group held every other week - always followed by a lively discussion with the various people gathered there - I wouldn’t have has such a productive year. My book written in Japanese titled Towards “My Socialism”: Raymond Williams and a Twentieth-Century Culture in Britain (Tokyo: Kenkyusha, 2016) features an analysis on Raymond Williams’s last novel People of the Black Mountains, probably the first substantial attempt in Japan. In analysing this work by Raymond Williams - a cultural critic and novelist famous even in Japan - what played an indispensable role was the term ‘Welsh Europeanism’, a concept which we discussed on that MA course. Although I had understood the basic meaning of ‘Welsh Europeanism’ before going to Wales, it was the way in which the course dealt widely with Welsh Writing in English in the 20th century that helped me to grasp the significance of the phrase in its historical context, and its strong tension with other ideas and frames of identity. Something local and something universal are emphasised at the same time: this idea lying at the core of Williams’s ‘Welsh Europeanism’ turned into a lived experience, not an abstract concept, during my stay in Wales. It follows that ‘placeable bonding’ in Williams was not just ‘local’ but something to be held in common. Furthermore, a lecture by Dai Smith, Raymond Williams Professor at Swansea University, at the Discussion Group gave me another insight into this phrase which derived from the identity of the border. Dai Smith referred to a ‘deviousness’ in Williams, a necessary quality perhaps for the resilient people of the border country between Wales and England having to deal with conflicting cultures and loyalties.  This gave further insight into the phrase ‘placeable bonding’ and the novel People of the Black Mountains.

Lastly, I would like to express my deep gratitude for everything that my family and I have experienced in Swansea and in Wales, but can’t find a brief expression for that. Instead please let me introduce my wife’s words. She said: ‘I actually had no knowledge about Wales before coming here, but I found myself in deep love with Wales at some point during my stay!’ I think she felt ‘placeable bonding’ with this place, and please let me say the same thing and hope our friendship and academic collaboration will last for a long time.

During my MA year at CREW I had the opportunity to study courses in Welsh Writing in English, African-American Literature, and Northern Irish Literature. I developed a strong interest in Raymond Williams and James Baldwin, respected Welsh and African-American writers, who helped me appreciate the similarities between my African-American and Celtic background. I also had the unique experience of developing strong bonds with the local community, especially my congregation, international students, and others who I regularly visit to this very day. Robert Jones (centre), with the Rt. Hon Peter Hain (left) and Dr Daniel Williams (right) at the Transatlantic Exchange Conference, March 2007. 

I still use the study and social skills I was able to enhance with my experience attending Swansea University as a Senior Technical Writer for a Fortune 1000 Company in America. One of the highlights and benefits of my studies at CREW was this past spring when I had the opportunity to attend the ‘Transatlantic Exchange: African Americans and the Celtic Nations Conference’. Attending a program with CREW is priceless and well worth the effort.

Staying in foreign countries is always something special to anyone. And in my case, this six-months stay in Swansea turned out to be a tremendous life-changing experience.

I stayed in Swansea from the end of September 2016 to the end of March 2017 and was doing my research as a visiting fellow at CREW in Swansea University. The main aim of my research was to explore the Welsh dimension of Raymond Williams. Though I had written a book on Raymond Williams which concerned Williams’s lifelong project as a socialist intellectual, I did not mention anything about Williams’s Welsh identity or his understanding of Welsh experience in that book. I had recognized the necessity to fill this gap in my knowledge and doing research in Swansea seemed to be a perfect opportunity.

No sooner had I started my research I realized that my task was far from simple. Not only was the Welsh context which I had to grasp in order to understand Williams’s writings on Wales extremely complicated, it became also clear that his Welshness and his thought on Wales formed a greater part of his whole work than I had expected. I had thought that I could do research as an extension of my previous work before I arrived at Swansea. However it appeared that I had to reconsider my whole perspective.

My research ground to a halt as I realized how much I did not know, and to make matters worse, Swansea City AFC, which I had been supporting even before coming to Wales, were playing really badly! It felt as though the reasons for my stay were slipping through my hands.

I have to add quickly that while I was in trouble with my project, CREW members were always supportive. Professor Daniel G. Williams has been endlessly helpful and considerate. He gave me a lot of useful advice. I sat in on the MA course on Welsh Identities which offered me a chance to read and discuss the central issues regarding Wales and Welshness. The insightful lecture given by Professor M. Wynn Thomas was so stimulating. Wynn also gave me a lot of useful information about modern Welsh history. The chat with Professor Dai Smith gave me an encouragement. Some of the PhD students, who shared the CREW room with me were kind and considerate as well. Actually a paper on Marxism and Williams’s Welshness written by Daniel Robert Gerke, who kindly gave me that copy, was crucial for me to get out of my impasse.

Thanks to all this help, I finally found the key concept which was “History”. Though there are few writings by Williams where he engages with the concept of history itself, his interest in historical change throughout his career is so obvious, and the period when he began to write about Wales and Welshness is the same period when he was writing a lot about working class history. I also found that he had actually become aware of his Welshness through the reading of Welsh history in 1950s It is quite possible that he had been influenced by contemporary Welsh historians throughout all those years. Thus it was that I came across a new project – Williams and (Welsh) History.

I was given an opportunity to talk about this new project at a CREW meeting at the end of my stay. Of course this project is still going on. It is quite likely that I will visit Swansea again to accomplish my project and I am looking forward to coming back. I am really grateful to everyone in Swansea who made me feel like this.