Jiajun Liang received his PhD in Japanese literature and culture from UCLA and MA in Japanese Studies from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. His research is focused primarily on modern Japanese literature, film, and popular culture, with particular attention to the literary and cultural representation of memories and traumas of colonial violence through a transnational lens. His current book project, tentatively titled “Rethinking the Postwar from Outside: Japanese Culture in Decolonization,” examines the discursive transformations in the postwar Japanese literary and cultural terrain by focusing on the massive transnational flows such as repatriation, demobilization, and deportation in the aftermath of the collapse of the Japanese empire. His article “Impossible to Return: Abe Kōbō, Repatriation, and Postwar Japan” was published in the summer 2022 issue of The Journal of Japanese Studies. He is additionally working on a few article projects on transmedia movements in postwar Japan, examining how modes of media representation and circulation shift the frames of interpretation.
Office Location: ACS 119
