Kimberly Kono

Kimberly Kono teaches courses on modern Japanese language, literature and culture. Topics include representations of girlhood in Japanese popular culture; Japanese women’s writing; colonial literature; travel and East Asia; and images of otherness and Japan. She was awarded the Sherrerd Prize for Distinguished Teaching in 2009.

Her book Romance, Family and Nation in Japanese Colonial Literature (Palgrave, 2010) examines the tropes of romance, family and marriage in Japanese literature produced in colonial Taiwan, Korea and Manchuria during the 1930s and 1940s. She has published articles and translations in the Journal of Japanese Studies, U.S.-Japan Women’s Journal and Azalea: Journal of Korean Literature and Culture. Other research interests include feminist and postcolonial theory, travel writing, and Japanese popular culture.