Sadahisa Watanabe
As a first-year Ph.D. student, I have registered for nine courses for two semesters in comparative literature and successfully received grades A for all the courses so far. In addition to my Ph.D. in Japanese & Comparative Literature, I am also pursuing the Graduate Certificate in Data Science in Humanities to conduct research in text analysis with computational analysis. Thanks to the precious scholarship from your organization, which covered my initial living cost, I managed to afford some online courses on programming and computer science; I learned the programming language Python and received certificates for the online courses “Python for Everybody,” “Python Data Structure,” and “Using Python to Access Web Data” from Michigan University (through the online course website “Coursera”). From the second year, I am planning to take courses in Data Science and Computer Science at Washington University in St. Louis to develop my skill in computational text analysis.
My paper in comparative literature on the topics of gender and race, “Ambivalent Modernity and Exoticism: Japanese Doll-Like Women in Pierre Loti’s Madame Chrysanthème and Tanizaki Jun’ichirō’s Tade kū mushi” was accepted in Japanese Language and Literature, one of the top journals in the U.S. My paper is supposed to be published pending some revisions.
One of the reasons why I decided to study Comparative Literature in the U.S. is because I would like to conduct research combining computational text analysis (text mining, natural language processing, and machine learning) with study in humanities. I am working very hard every day and enjoy my research life here at Washington University in St. Louis. I hereby certify that I am doing my best to develop my skill in research as a scholarship holder. I am grateful for your precious financial support.
