Ran Wei, Japanese Language and Literature PhD , receives a Center for the Humanities Divided City Grant for her proposal, “Constructing a Connected Flow—Literary Representation of Neighborhood
Network in the Divided Osaka (1920s-1930s).”
Echoing the Divided City initiative, Ran Wei's project explores people’s lived experience of segregation in Osaka during the pinnacle of modernization in the 1920s and 1930s. In particular, she draws on and develops the concept of neighborhood network from sociology. By closely reading two literary works, one by a mid-20th century mainstream Japanese writer and native resident of Osaka, Takeda Rintarō (1904-1946), the other by a late-20th-century ethnic Korean writer and immigrant to Osaka, Yang Seok-il (1936-), she traces the origins and outcomes of the urban division. Her project reconsiders the connotation and impact of segregation within the Japanese context and highlights the role of literature in understanding the lived experience of people on the socioeconomic margins in the divided city.
