作为研究日本文学和文化的学者， Vyjayanthi其密封 may not be the first person you would associate with medieval studies. But a new fellowship underlines her important role in expanding a subject traditionally associated with Europe.
塞林格是2024年诺贝尔文学奖的获得者 邦妮·惠勒奖学金， a fund established in 2011 to support the research of women medievalists with tenure with the aim of helping them on the road to full professorship.
“我很高兴我的工作得到这样的认可,塞林格评论道。, 谁, 除了25美元,000年奖学金, will also receive the support of a mentor as she completes the research for her second book, 文学中的法律: The Legal Imagination of Medieval Japanese Literature and Drama. 她也很高兴接到惠勒教授本人的电话. “除了是一位著名的文学学者, she has mentored a 谁le generation of academics 谁 have developed new approaches and new ways of thinking about the subject of medievalism.”
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Selinger said she was also excited by the mission of the fellowship. 虽然很多奖项都是为了表彰一项成就, 例如某一本书或研究, this is more about encouraging future academic leadership potential, finding scholars 谁 are doing interesting work and helping them become thought leaders and future mentors.”
与奖学金对新方法的承诺保持一致, Selinger is the first recipient to come from a non-Europeanist background. Her Asian focus is part of a broader effort among scholars to expand the scope of medieval studies and promote a more global perspective.
塞林格说:“对于中世纪学者来说，这是一个激动人心的时代. “越来越多的学者在思考全球中世纪, 买球平台人的流动, 对象, 以及跨越国界的思想. 《买球平台》,她补充道。, 承认全球视角丰富了这些问题, 就像我, 印度出生的日本学者, share insights born of reading and listening in multiple languages.” The more stories we know, explained Selinger, the wider our angle of knowledge and insight becomes. “I am looking forward to sharing medieval Japanese stories with Europe-focused colleagues, but also learning from them which medieval European dram就像我 can assign in my own classes.”
塞林格的最新作品(文学中的法律) will be the 第一本书 to look at the relationship between medieval Japanese law and drama (especially the dramatic form known as “Noh”), 为当时的乡村生活提供了新的线索.
“Many scholars in Japan are surprised to hear about my project because they are not aware of any legal or carcerel play from that era,”她说。. “That’s because some of these plays—written in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries and dealing with subjects like imprisonment, 正义, 和冲突, 在所有法庭剧中都很常见的是什么. By the seventeenth century Japanese theater had become much more ceremonial in character, 这些早期的戏剧不再上演了. They fell out of the repertoire of medieval Japanese drama that scholars know about today.”
那么塞林格是如何发现这些鲜为人知的戏剧瑰宝的呢? It was, she explained, through a combination of intuition and “stumbling.”她的 第一本书 looked at how literature dealt with the war that gave birth to government by Shoguns, 中世纪统治日本的军事领袖. 一旦掌权, the Shoguns realized they had to regulate violence through legal means; otherwise, 他们会被推翻. So, they set up a legal system to move conflict off the battlefield and into more ordered setting—and succeeded for three hundred years.”
如果这就是幕府将军所追求的, 推断其密封, 那么它一定会反映在当时的文学作品中. “This new way of managing conflict seeped into the literary idiom one way or another, 但不是以最明显的方式. It doesn't scream at you, which is why scholars haven't noticed it.” She found these plays buried away in collections without any scholarly commentary. Sometimes the plays were only referred to, the original script having disappeared.
“对于中世纪学者来说，这是一个激动人心的时代. 越来越多的学者开始思考全球中世纪, 买球平台人的流动, 对象, 以及跨越国界的思想."
Selinger has uncovered six of these dramatic works and plans to publish translations of them in her upcoming book. “The plays use legal and penal motifs to grapple with societal changes. One of them concerns a blind man being sued by his brother over their late parents’ estate, another resembles the King Solomon parable about two women arguing before a judge about a child, while a further play explores the agonies of a man stuck in legal limbo, 不知道他要等多久才能得到正义.”
The appointment of a distinguished mentor to guide her with the book project is an aspect of the fellowship that has Selinger particularly excited. “This mentorship should help me expand the work toward broader audiences and see it to a successful conclusion. So many studies have shown that mentorship is crucial to female advancement, 因为导师提供职业规划支持,”她说。. “A mentor 谁 can appreciate the structural challenges women face in academia and help me navigate these challenges will also help me become the mentor and academic leader I would like to become.”
