Dr. Christopher Rieger, director of the Center for Faulkner Studies at Southeast Missouri State University, will deliver a series of lectures on William Faulkner at six universities across Japan this summer.

Rieger will lecture on a variety of topics, including comparative studies of Faulkner, Japanese writer Yukio Mishima and Chinese writer Mo Yan.

The lectures will begin on May 31 at the University of Tokyo, the top university in Japan, often ranked among the top 25 universities in the world. Rieger also will lecture at Chukyo University in Nagoya, Seinan Gakuin University in Fukuoka, Hijiyama University in Hiroshima, Kansai University in Osaka and Ryukoku University in Kyoto.

This trip is supported bya grant from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science in support of the project A Study of Transpacific/Planetary Imagination on Nature and Culture, organized by professor Shinya Matsuoka of Ryukoko University. A book of essays that will result from the project will include one of Riegers lectures.

Professor Matsuoka visited Southeast Missouri State University as the 2016 BioKyowa Visiting Japanese Scholar.

This lecture series in Japan is possible because of the program sponsored by BioKyowa, said Rieger. As a result of hosting many Faulkner scholars from Japan here in Cape Girardeau, I am being invited to lecture at the home universities of many of our previous scholars.

The Center for Faulkner Studies was established in 1989 after the acquisition of the L.D. Brodsky Collection by Southeast. The Center hosts scholars from around the world who use the collection for research and hosts a semiannual conference that brings scholars to the Southeast campus to present their research on Faulkner and other writers.