 | FUJII SoGeneral Education Division Associate Professor | ||
Last Updated :2024/04/23
Researcher Information
Degree
- Ph. D.（2016/09 Nagoya University）
- M.A.（2012/06 Oregon State University）
- M.A.（2007/03 Tsuru University）
J-Global ID
Research Areas
Academic & Professional Experience
- 2022/04 - Today Kindai UniversityFaculty of Business Administration General Education DivisionAssociate Professor
- 2018/04 - 2021/03 Kindai UniversityFaculty of Business Administration General Education DivisionLecturer
- 2016/04 - 2018/03 Kindai University経営学部 教養・基礎教育部門特任講師
Education
- 2008/03 - 2016/09 Nagoya University The Graduate School of Language and Culture Department of Multicultural Studies Gender Studies
- 2010/09 - 2012/06 Oregon State University Graduate School Department of English
Association Memberships
Published Papers
- Min Jin Lee's Pachinko as a Success Story藤井爽AALA Journal (27) 11 - 19 2021/12
- Feelings as Money in Yiyun Li's "Kindness"FUJII SoAALA Journal (26) 60 - 72 2020/12 [Refereed]
Yiyun Li’s short story “Kindness” examines the relation between money and feelings in a capitalist society in China. The paper argues that economic theories can reveal the nature of human relations in the capitalist society of China. Li's works might be criticized for reducing political injustice into personal choice, but, as the protagonist, Moyan sings a song that the establishment would hate, it also declares her personal choice — her choice to remain alone. This can be read as both personal and political defiance because while individuals try to own others, a totalitarian state requires one to be part of its larger body with complete subservience. Thus far she has lived up to the age of forty-one, still alone, so her choice can be justified. Not only that, but by leaving the marketplace, she gives another, non-economic value to loneliness, and this serves as still another factor behind why the story does not end in tragedy. Her loneliness is substantial and filled with the worlds of many literary masterpieces as well as the kindness of others, which lives on forever. By accepting the framework of material human relations, but not following its rules, she demonstrates that there is another value to loneliness. - So FujiiChugoku Kankei Ronsetsu Shiryo 59 (2-1) 338 - 346 2018/12
- So FujiiAALA Journal (23) 67 - 79 1340-8496 2017/12 [Refereed]
- So Fujii近畿大学教養・外国語教育センター紀要(外国語編) 近畿大学全学共通教育機構教養・外国語教育センター 7 (2) 1 - 17 2432-454x 2016/11 [Refereed]
Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club （1989） is one of the best-selling Asian American novels, but it has been criticized for its portrayal of Chinese and Chinese American women and commodification of Chinese culture while enjoying praise from feminist reading for its positive representation of mother-daughter relationships. This academic,specifically Asian American studies' tendency to belittle the novel's handling of Chinese American identity has left a scholarly misconception about authentic Chinese American identity. This paper focuses on one daughter heroine and argues how she remembers and reconfi gures images of her Chinese mother and her relationship with her mother in order to reveal her subtle shift away from the idea of authentic Chinese identity. Using a feminist idea of matrophobia, I will demonstrate how she changes self-hatred against her Chinese mother and how this change helps her heal traumatic memories of racism and reconfigures the idea of being a Chinese American woman. Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club（1989） has elicited many arguments, both positive and negative, both from Chinese or other ethnic Americans and white Americans,concerning representation of Chinese immigrants, Chinese Americans' identity and their culture. The monologue narratives of three Chinese mothers and four American daughters are triggered by one mother, Suyuan's death, and they tell their stories two times in turn, just like playing mah-jong games, which are a main event of the Joy Luck Club, a gathering formed by the four mothers. Although a literary critic claims that the novel has nothing to do with racial or feminist concerns as if Tan lightly treated them （Grice 44）, it tries to redefine what it means to be a Chinese American. "Becoming Chinese," which one of the daughters, Jing-mei, mentions as she enters China, is a quite provocative phrase that challenges the notion of authentic Chinese（American） subject. Despite common readings that the novel follows and reinforces traditional Chinese American images, it actually tries to shift its definitive representation and turns Chinese American experience as something you cannot define as the one. Jing-mei's optimistic and idealistic solution to the question may not satisfy all Asian Americans, but it still is a way to survive in America, in which she once had to deny her ethnic heritage before coming to terms with it. This paper will discuss how Jing-mei comes to terms with her Chinese American identity while reconfiguring it. I will follow mainly Jing-mei's story to analyze her quest to Chinese American identity in terms of her relationship with her mother as a Chinese cultural reference in order to illuminate elusiveness of ethnic categories. I chose Jing-mei's narrative as my main interest because it functions as an organizer of all the sixteen stories with two of her stories placed at the beginning and ending of the novel and the other two in the three mothers' sections. Also, Jing-mei is the only daughter who actually visits China, where she mentions this interesting idea of "becoming Chinese." It also must be noted that this reading is not to generalize the other three daughters' narrative. The three daughters' stories actually prove that there is no authentic narrative of Chinese American, which is my basic stance and the point that is going to be proved in this paper. First, I will see how the daughters deal with Chineseness, which is represented not only as those Chinese heritages from their mothers, but also their ethnicity perceived by the mainstream culture, and then I will analyze how she revises her notion of her Chinese American identity through memories.著者専攻: アメリカ文学 - Where You Are Is Who You Are: Reconfiguration of Chinatown in Fae Myenne Ng's BoneSo FujiiChubu American Litearture (19) 1 - 16 2016/03 [Refereed]
- So FujiiAALA Journal アジア系アメリカ文学研究会 (20) 97 - 109 1340-8496 2014/12 [Refereed]
- So Fujii2012/06This thesis argues for significant correlations in the politics of representation of Chinatown and mother-daughter relationships in two literary texts by Maxine Hong Kingston and Fae Myenne Ng. The two novels do not follow traditional representations of Chinatown and provide critical representations of Chinatown and mother-daughter relationships. First, Kingston's The Woman Warrior reveals how the heroine demystifies a powerful image of her mother and a mystic image of Chinatown in a process of establishing her autonomy. Second, Ng's Bone describes how the heroine tries to free her mother from a dismal image of Chinatown to live her own life outside Chinatown. The analyses of representation of Chinatown and mother-daughter relationships rely on close readings of the textual motifs through a psychoanalytic framework and cultural theories.
- 藤井 爽多元文化 名古屋大学国際言語文化研究科国際多元文化専攻 (9) 125 - 140 1346-3462 2009/03 [Refereed]
- Mothers who Speak with 'Two Voices': The Joy Luck Club and Other Mother-Daughter StoriesSo FujiiTsuru studies in English linguistics and literature (35) 114 - 116 2007/03
Conference Activities & Talks
- 愛を買う女：イーユン・リーの「市場の約束」について [Not invited]藤井爽日本アメリカ文学会中部支部11月例会 2023/11
- 成功物語としてのMin Jin Lee, Pachinko藤井爽AALA Forum 2021（第29回）「アジア系アメリカ文学の新世紀――21世紀初頭のピューリッツア賞・全米図書賞受賞作／ファイナリストを中心に」 2021/09
- Feelings as Currency: Representation of feelings in Yiyun Li's short stories [Not invited]So FujiiThe Chubu American Literature Society of Japan 2018/11
- On Ta-Nehisi Coates' Between the World and Me [Not invited]So FujiiThe Chubu American Literature Society of Japan, December Reading Club (Workshop) 2016/12
- From Queens to Manhattan: Food and Sexuality in Mei Ng’s Eating Chinese Food Naked [Not invited]So Fujii"Mobility" and North American Literature/Culture 2016/03
- The Dilemma of a Chinese American Ghostbuster: Kingston’s The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood among Ghosts [Not invited]So FujiiRace and Ethnicity in American Literature and Culture: A Reconsideration 2013/03
- The Woman Warrior: Reconciliation with Chinatown [Not invited]So FujiiThe Chubu American Literature Society of Japan 2013/02
- The Joy Luck Clubにおけるthe (M)other Tongue [Not invited]藤井 爽第48回日本アメリカ文学会全国大会 2009/10
- Two woman figures in My Antonia [Not invited]藤井 爽Thinking Gender in Culture and Society: Viewing Bodies, Reading Desire, Conceptualizing Families 2008/12
- 『ジョイ・ラック・クラブ』におけるインインの主体構築について [Not invited]藤井 爽日本アメリカ文学会中部支部 2008/11
- The Double Voice in The Joy Luck Club [Not invited]So FujiiNASSS 2008/07
MISC
- Yiyun Li, The Book of Goose藤井爽 AALA Journal (29) 101 -105 2023/12
- Book Review for Hideo Yanagisawa's アーネスト・ヘミングウェイ 日本との出逢い、中国への接近藤井爽 Chubu American Literature (25) 6 -9 2022/03
- (Poster presentation) Two Women Figures in My Antonia: Failure in Cather's PlotSo Fujii Proceedings of the International Conference: Thinking Gender in Culture and Society 110 -110 2009