Ran Wei, PhD candidate in Japanese literature, has been awarded the JSPS (Japan Society for the Promotion of Science) Pre/Post-doctoral fellowship and Japan Foundation Japanese Studies Fellowship to conduct dissertation research in Japan for AY 2022-2023.
Wei's dissertation explores the representation of home in Osaka literature from 1923 to 1970 through novels and essays by writers who are both natives of and migrants to Osaka. She argues that home is often represented as a site of uncertainty and dislocation, insofar as the tension between Osaka’s traditions and Japan’s modernization is displaced into the internal domain of family conflict. Osaka writings about “tough women” and “irresponsible men” subvert embedded gender roles within the typical Japanese household and in effect render the Osaka household a contested unit of the nation-state.
