Rate My Professor Claire Maree

Professor Claire Maree is Professor in Japanese at the Asia Institute, Faculty of Arts, University of Melbourne. She graduated from the University of Western Australia with a BA and was awarded a Monbusho Fellowship to research in Japan, where she earned her MA in 1997 and PhD in 2002 from Information and Language Sciences, University of Tokyo. Prior to joining the University of Melbourne in January 2011, she held positions as Associate Professor at Tsuda-Juku University from 2004 to 2010 and Lecturer at Toyo University from 2001 to 2004. She has taught either as an adjunct or in intensive sessions at Waseda University, Ochanomizu University, International Christian University, University of Saitama, Meikai University, and Kyushu University, and served as a teaching assistant at the University of Tokyo.

Claire Maree's research centers on critical language studies and discourse analysis, with particular emphasis on critical approaches to language and identity studies in gender and sexuality, language education, and contemporary Japanese culture and society. Her key expertise is in the linguistic analysis of identity. Major publications include queerqueen: Linguistic Excess in Japanese Media (Oxford University Press, 2020), which critically analyzes the figure of the queerqueen in Japanese media texts and proposes the concept of 'language labor'; Discourse, Gender and Shifting Identities in Japan: The Longitudinal Study of Kobe Women’s Ethnographic Interviews 1989-2019, Phase One; and 『「おネエことば」論』 (Seidosha, 2013), which traces the historical positioning of onê-kotoba in the queer community and its representations in popular culture. Other significant works feature chapters such as 'Telop and titles on the Japanese small screen' in Subtitling Today: Shapes and their Meanings (2015) and 'Sorry Guys!: The discursive construction of queer spatiality in Japanese women-only club flyers' in Language, Sexuality and Power: Studies in Intersectional Sociolinguistics (2016). She has directed projects including Writing Identity Onto the Screen: Subtitles and Captions in Japanese Media and Thirty Years of Talk: A Panel Study of Kobe Women’s Interview Discourse. Maree has also served as Deputy Associate Dean Research Grants at the Asia Institute and contributes to understanding diversity in Australia’s LGBTQI+ community.