Akiko Tsuchiya

Akiko Tsuchiya

Professor of Spanish and Affiliate in Women, Gender & Sexuality Studies and the Center for the Study of Race, Ethnicity & Equity
PhD, Cornell University
research interests:
  • Nineteenth-century Iberian literatures and cultures 
  • Spanish realism and naturalism 
  • Women, gender & sexuality studies 
  • Spanish women’s transnational literary and cultural networks 
  • Slavery and antislavery in the Hispanic world 
  • Postcolonial studies 
  • Racist/colonial monuments and public memory 

contact info:

mailing address:

  • Washington University
    MSC 1077-146-310
    One Brookings Drive
    St. Louis, MO 63130-4899

​Professor Tsuchiya’s areas of specialization include nineteenth- and twentieth-century Spanish literature and culture, and gender studies.

She is the author of a book on the nineteenth-century Spanish novelist Benito Pérez Galdós and has published extensively on nineteenth-and twentieth-century Iberian literatures and cultures. Her research and teaching interests include the realist novel, women’s and gender studies, nineteenth-century women’s transnational literary and cultural networks, race and colonialism, slavery and antislavery, in the Hispanic world. Most recently, she has become engaged in public debates generated around monuments related to colonialism and slavery in the Iberian world. 

Tsuchiya’s recent books include, Marginal Subjects: Gender and Deviance in Fin-de-siècle Spain (University of Toronto P, 2011) and two co-edited volumes: Empire’s End: Transnational Connections in the Hispanic World (Vanderbilt UP, 2016) and Unsettling Colonialism: Gender and Race in the Nineteenth-Century Global Hispanic World (SUNY Press, 2019).

Her research has been supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Program for Cultural Cooperation Between Spain’s Ministry of Culture and United States Universities, Washington University’s Center for the Humanities Faculty Fellowship (Spring 2007 & Fall 2019), and Washington University’s Summer Faculty Research Grants. Most recently, she was awarded the NEH Summer Stipend to conduct research on her new book: Spanish Women of Letters in the Nineteenth-Century Antislavery Movement: Transnational Networks and Exchanges. She is also co-Principal Investigator of a research project, “Cultural Legacies of Slavery in Modern Spain (19th-21st century),” involving the collaboration of US and international scholars across various disciplines, and has an advance contract with SUNY Press for a book under this title.

She has delivered over 50 conference papers and invited lectures in the US and abroad, as well as collaborating in research groups with scholars at the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC, Madrid) and the University of Barcelona. During the summer of 2019 she was a visiting scholar at ADHUC: Research Center for Theory, Gender, Sexuality at the University of Barcelona. Twice she received recognition from the Graduate Student Senate for her contributions to graduate education with the Outstanding Faculty Mentor Award (2017) and the Certificate of Special Recognition for Excellence in Mentoring (2007).

Tsuchiya was co-editor of the Revista de Estudios Hispánicos for 12 years, and serves on the editorial board of several other peer-reviewed journals and scholarly monograph series. Most recently, she was President of the International Association of Galdós Scholars (2015-17). She is currently a member of the Publication Committee and the Delegate Assembly Organizing Committee of the Modern Language Association.

Empire's End: Transnational Connections in the Hispanic World

Empire's End: Transnational Connections in the Hispanic World