Andy Astakhova is a PhD candidate in the Doctoral Studies Program “History and Cultural Studies” (HCS) since October 2024, specializing in modern Japanese history. Their research at Freie Universität emphasizes an intersectional analysis of queer and nationalist discourses in imperial Japan and beyond. Andy’s broader research interests include queer and decolonial theory, historical memory, epistemic politics, and temporality, as well as literature, visual culture, and sexology in modern East Asia. Before joining HCS, they earned an MA in Global History from the University of Bayreuth with a dissertation on memory and homoerotic desire in the writings of Ozaki Shirō (1898-1964). 

In the current dissertation project, Andy Astakhova is researching affirmative discourses of male homoeroticism in the Japanese Empire under the provisional working title “(Homo)national Pasts: Memory, Masculinity, and Empire in Transwar Japan, 1920s–1950s.” The project examines the remembering and forgetting of premodern Japanese male homoerotic cultures (nanshoku) in Japan in a transwar perspective, addressing a key gap in the studies of sexuality in modern Japan. Combining historical and queer theoretical approaches, it explores how, and to what ends, knowledge about nanshoku was constructed, represented, and interpreted in Japan between the 1920s and 1950s. The project argues that the cultural memory of nanshoku assumed diverse forms and performed various functions during this period. In some instances, the association of premodern nanshoku with martial ethics and aesthetic refinement facilitated the alignment of certain forms of male homoerotic desire, intimacy, and sensibility with imperial and nationalist objectives. More broadly, the project aims to contribute both to the queering of modern Japanese history and to developing a more nuanced understanding of queer subjectivities and affects within non-Western (and) historical contexts.

The dissertation project is supervised by Prof. Dr. Martin Lücke and Prof. Dr. Urs Matthias Zachmann and is beeing awarded with the Elsa Neumann Scholarship for doctoral candidates since April 2025. 

“(Homo-)National Pasts? Male Queer Desire and/as Tradition in Imperial Japan,” 31^st Gender Workshop in conjunction with the Annual Conference of the Association for Social Science Research on Japan, University of Vienna, November 7, 2025 (forthcoming).

“Beautiful Fighting Youth: Homoerotic Temporalities in the Works of Ozaki Shirō, 1921–1959,” 10. Forum für literaturwissenschaftliche Japanforschung, University of Trier, June 20, 2025.