Kleeman, Faye Yuan

PERSONAL:

Education: University of California, Berkeley, Ph.D.

ADDRESSES:

Office—Regents of the University of Colorado, 240 Eaton Humanities, 279 UCB, Boulder, CO 80309-0279. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

During early career, taught at City College of New York, University of California at Riverside, and the College of William and Mary; University of Colorado, Boulder, currently associate professor of Japanese.

MEMBER:

Colorado Japanese Language Education Association (former president).

AWARDS, HONORS:

National Endowment for the Humanities grant; Japan Foundation grant; travel grant, Association of Asian Studies North East Asian Council, 2002; CGAH research grant, 2002; Freeman Foundation Grant for Curriculum Development, 2002.

WRITINGS:

Under an Imperial Sun: Japanese Colonial Literature of Taiwan and the South, University of Hawaii Press (Honolulu, HI), 2003.

Contributor to periodicals, including the Japan Studies Review.

SIDELIGHTS:

A professor of Japanese, Faye Yuan Kleeman is the author of Under an Imperial Sun: Japanese Colonial Literature of Taiwan and the South, a study of fiction written in Taiwan and nearby countries during World War II, when the Japanese were insisting on cultural assimilation within the territories they had invaded. She also writes about authors from Vietnam, Korea, and Micronesia, but most of her discussions are on Taiwanese writers. Some of these authors, such as Zhou Jingpo, had what Kleeman feels was an undeserved reputation as collaborators with the Japanese, as artists who gave in to the invaders' demands. "Thanks to Kleeman," remarked Andrew Horvat in Pacific Affairs, "we discover that these writers, far from advocating an easy compromise with foreign ways, spoke about honest if naive attempts at self-improvement, for which the ultimate reward was discriminatory treatment and second-class citizenship." While the critic praised the work as a whole, Horvat felt the final two chapters, in which "the author succeeds most fully in promoting a fresh, nuanced approach to the problems of ethnic identity of colonial subjects under Japanese rule," were most significant. The reviewer further asserted that Kleeman's study is particularly relevant to Japan today because of that country's current need for increased immigration to make up for its native population decline. Under an Imperial Sun, according to Horvat, "should be required reading for policy makers in Tokyo" because it reveals the damage done by forced assimilation of foreigners.

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Choice: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries, April, 2004, J.M. Hargett, review of Under anImperial Sun: Japanese Colonial Literature of Taiwan and the South, p. 1470.

Pacific Affairs, spring, 2006, Andrew Horvat, review of Under an Imperial Sun.

Reference & Research Book News, February, 2004, review of Under an Imperial Sun, p. 219.

ONLINE

University of Colorado at Boulder Department of East Asian Languages and Civilizations Web site,http://www.colorado.edu/ealc/ (March 13, 2008), faculty profile of Faye Yuan Kleeman.