Takahiro Watanabe is a PhD candidate at the Graduate School of Humanities and Sociology at the University of Tokyo, where he also received his master's degree. His master's thesis, The Concept of "Play" in Thomas Mann's Novel "Confessions of Felix Krull", marked the beginning of his ongoing research on Thomas Mann's aesthetics. His doctoral research explores the evolution of Mann's artistic thought by examining the aesthetic duality of "appearance and reality (Schein und Wirklichkeit)" and parallels to the tension between "art and society (Kunst und Gesellschaft)." During this fellowship, he will focus on Joseph and His Brothers, reconsidering Mann's concept of the modern mythic novel in the 1920s and 1930s within the broader framework of political, social, and economic conditions.

From April 2023 to March 2025, he has served as the chief editor of Dichtung/Sprache, the journal of German literary studies at the University of Tokyo.

Research Project at EXC Temporal Communities:

The Mythic Novel as Literary Currency: A Study of Thomas Mann’s Joseph and His Brothers