This paper reconsiders William Carlos Williams as a precursor and formative influence on the poetics of the Beat Generation by foregrounding a lesser-known dimension of his work: his commitment to improvisation. Central to this investigation is the Beat writers’ aesthetics of spontaneity—particularly in the works of Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, and Michael McClure—and its grounding in a physiological conception of the body rooted in 19th-century science. Rather than viewing spontaneity as a purely romantic or as merely an extension of the Beats’ engagement with jazz and its improvisational ethos, I argue that Beat writers inherited a model of the body as an automatic, expressive system shaped by developments in neurology and reflex physiology. Williams, as both a physician and poet, serves as a key figure who bridges the temporal and cultural gap between 19th-century medical discourse and mid-20th-century poetics. His interest in the involuntary rhythms of the body—formed through medical training and exposure to physiological texts—provided an alternative epistemology of composition: one where writing emerges not from will or psyche, but from somatic impulse. Kerouac’s “spontaneous prose” and Ginsberg’s breath-based lineation, when read from this parspective, participate in a broader scientific imaginary in which the nervous system becomes a model for artistic production. In this anachronistic yet illuminating framing, Williams emerges as an “Other Beat”—one who shared with the Beats a fascination with the body as the site where intersubjective and environmental forces converge in the act of writing. Finally, the paper contrasts this American tradition of embodied improvisation with European Surrealist automatism. Whereas Surrealism emphasized psychic depth and the unconscious mind, American artists like Williams and the Beats foregrounded the body’s responsiveness to its actual, local environment. Their poetics of spontaneity thus reflect a distinctly American engagement with improvisation—rooted not in transcendence through the unconscious, as in Surrealism, but in heightened corporeal connection to the material and social world.

本発表では、2024 年公開の映画『ツイスターズ』（リー・アイザック・チョン監督）を中⼼に、アメリカ的ヒーロー像としての「カウボーイ」が現代においていかに再解釈され、多様性やケアの価値と結びつく新たな象徴へと変容しているかを考察する。カウボーイや⻄部劇は、⻑らく⽩⼈男性中⼼の個⼈主義や開拓精神の神話と結びつき、アメリカ的主体の理想を体現してきた。しかし近年では、ビヨンセ、リル・ナズ・X、チャペル・ローンといったミュージシャンや、ジョーダン・ピール監督『Nope』のような作品を通じて、マイノリティによるこの神話の再領有と批判的再解釈が進んでいる。⼀⽅、⽩⼈キャラクターを主役に据えた『ツイスターズ』でも、従来の⾃⼰責任型ヒーローに代わって、共感や協働を重視し、他者や共同体をケアする新しいカウボーイ・ヒーロー像が描かれている。こうした視点から本発表では、現代アメリカにおける分断の克服を⽬指す⽂化的想像⼒の⼀端として、カウボーイ表象の近年の変容を読み解くことを試みる。

Even though the Harlem Renaissance flourished during the "Jazz Age," the world of jazz was nearly a silenced note in the historiography of the movement. As Ted Gioia notes, Harlem's cultural and literary elite often showed contempt or ignorance toward the music emerging not only in cabarets or luxurious clubs, but also among locals at rent parties. “Jazz was very much a part of this second Harlem—more at home here than in the ‘other’ Harlem of high culture and higher aspirations.” This paper seeks to address this gap by exploring how the "other" Harlem can be understood through the lens of scholarly discussions on the former. On this note, it is noteworthy that Duke Ellington later acknowledged the contribution of Caribbean musicians, deeply rooted in “the West Indian legacy of the Marcus Garvey movement,” to the development of jazz. Garvey, whose views frequently conflicted with those of W. E. B. Du Bois, introduced a framework of economic self-sufficiency and Black nationalist commercialism into the discourse, offering a counterpoint to the Harlem Renaissance's aspirations for art and literature. This Caribbean connection, linking Garvey and West Indian musicians, also resonates with another key Harlem Renaissance figure, Claude McKay. A leading poet of the movement, McKay shifted to prose in the late 1920s and produced one of its most successful novels, Home to Harlem, which depicted the district where thousands of West Indians migrated, and tens of thousands of their children were born. By reading McKay’s novels and examining the intersections of Garveyism and Caribbean musical culture in Harlem, I will tune into the sounds that the literary Harlem Renaissance often failed to hear.

2021年度は次の2点において研究を進展させることができた。
（1）文化多元主義（cultural pluralism）を中心とする20世紀前半の人種・民族アイデンティティおよび国民・国家アイデンティティをめぐる言説を、即興という観点から分析した。Wiliam James や John Dewey らプラグマティズムの思想家が提示した「未だ形成途上にあるもの」（still in the making）としてのアメリカという即興的な国家観が、彼らの哲学に色濃く影響を受けたAlain Locke や Zora Neale Hurston といった黒人作家らによる黒人の集団的アイデンティティの表象において受け継がれ、模倣や行為遂行性といった黒人文化を肯定する思想的背景となっていることを詳しく論じた。
（２）Zora Neale Hurston について、代表的エッセイ "Characteristics of Negro Expression" などに示された即興の美学への理解を分析するとともに、民族誌学者（Ethnographer）としての彼女の活動について、即興概念がその記述の「真正さ」を担保する役割を担っている点を分析した。James Clifford以後、文化人類学などの分野において文化の、そしてそれを記述する学者自身の立場の即興性が指摘されてきたことを踏まえ、Hurstonがそうしたポストモダン的な認識を既に保持していた点、Hurstonは単に同時代のフォークカルチャーへの熱狂を共有していたのではなく、そうした熱狂が示すノスタルジックな理想化を脱構築するような視点をもっていたことを明らかにすることができた。