Elyssa Faison

University of Oklahoma, History, Faculty Member

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Faison’s first book, Managing Women: Disciplining Labor in Modern Japan, was published by the University of California Press in 2007. She is co-editor with Dr. Ruth Barraclough (Australian National University) of Sexing Class: Gender and Labor in Korea and Japan, which was published by Routledge in 2009. She is currently working on a two book-length projects. The first is tentatively titled Transnational Technologies of Remembering: Atomic Experiments in Cold War America, Japan, and the South Pacific. The second is a social history in the form of a biography of the socialist feminist Yamakawa Kikue (1890-1980).
Phone: 405-325-6002

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Peter Halden

Swedish Defence University

Christoph Kalter

University of Agder

Rita Chin

University of Michigan

Andrew Kettler

University of South Carolina Union

Susanne Kord

Heide Fehrenbach

Northern Illinois University

Elon Heymans

University of Amsterdam

Michael Wintle

Robert Vilain

Steven Vande Moortele

University of Toronto

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Books by Elyssa Faison

Gender and Labour in Korea and Japan: Sexing Class

Bringing together for the first time sexual and industrial labour as the means to understand gend... more Bringing together for the first time sexual and industrial labour as the means to understand gender, work and class in modern Japan and Korea, this book shows that a key feature of the industrialisation of these countries was the associated development of a modern sex labour industry. Tying industrial and sexual labour together, the book opens up a range of key questions: In what economy do we place the labour of the former "comfort women"? Why have sex workers not been part of the labour movements of Korea and Japan? Why is it difficult to be "working-class" and "feminine"? What sort of labour hierarchies operate in hostess clubs? How do financial crises translate into gender crises? This book explores how sexuality is inscribed in working-class identities and traces the ways in which sexual and labour relations have shaped the cultures of contemporary Japan and Korea. It addresses important historical episodes such as the Japanese colonial industrialisation of Korea, wartime labour mobilisation, women engaged in forced sex work for the Japanese army throughout the Asian continent, and issues of ethnicity and sex in the contemporary workplace. The case studies provide specific examples of the way gender and work have operated across a variety of contexts, including Korean shipyard unions, Japanese hostess clubs, and the autobiographical literature of Korean factory girls. Overall, this book provides a compelling account of the entanglement of sexual and industrial labour throughout the twentieth century, and shows clearly how ideas about gender have contributed in fundamental ways to conceptions of class and worker identities.

Managing Women: Disciplining Labor in Modern Japan

At the turn of the twentieth century, Japan embarked on a mission to modernize its society and in... more At the turn of the twentieth century, Japan embarked on a mission to modernize its society and industry. For the first time, young Japanese women were persuaded to leave their families and enter the factory. Managing Women focuses on Japan's interwar textile industry, examining how factory managers, social reformers, and the state created visions of a specifically Japanese femininity. Faison finds that female factory workers were constructed as "women" rather than as "workers" and that this womanly ideal was used to develop labor-management practices, inculcate moral and civic values, and develop a strategy for containing union activities and strikes. In an integrated analysis of gender ideology and ideologies of nationalism and ethnicity, Faison shows how this discourse on women's wage work both produced and reflected anxieties about women's social roles in modern Japan.

Talks by Elyssa Faison

Medical Science, Peace Movements and Atomic Maidens: Internationalizing Japan's Early Cold War

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Hiroshima Maidens and Lucky Dragons: Shaping Japan's Postwar Nuclear World

Papers by Elyssa Faison

History : War memory and Japan’s ‘postwar’

Press. Last, but very far from least, I would like to thank the two most wonderful Europeans in m... more Press. Last, but very far from least, I would like to thank the two most wonderful Europeans in my life, my partner Anna Katharina Schaffner and our daughter Helena. The former's feedback on the manuscript was invaluable, leading me not only to reformulate but also to rethink parts of my argument. I dedicate this book to Anna Katharina and Helena, in love and gratitude.

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Tokyo Twilight: Alienation, Belonging, and the Fractured Family

Ozu International : Essays on the Global Influences of a Japanese Auteur, 2015