Unbinding Histories: The Emergence of Local Women's History in Early Postwar Japan
Dr. Curtis A. Gayle
Research
Duties associated with my postdoctoral research fellowship at the Modern East Asia Research Centre during the 2006/2007 academic year focused upon writing a research monograph. This monograph takes up the role of histroy-writing as a 'revolutionary praxis' during the early postwar era by looking at several local women's history-writing groups within the overall context of histroical consciousness between the late 1940s and early 1960s. It breaks new ground in showing that local women's history emerged right after the war, not as a result of Western influences but instead within the context of debates on the role of history as a way to transform Japanese society. During the academic year I rewrote and organised all the chapters for this monograph, save the conclusion. i expect to have the full research monograph ready for submission to the international review process of the MEARC/Leiden Series sometime in the fall of 2007.
I am also editing the papers that were presented at the November 2006 international workshop "Proletarian Culture and Resistance in Prewar Eats Asia. I aim to present them for publication during the 2007/2008 academic year. This anthology looks from a historical perspective at the intellectual and social role of radical forms of culture as a way to resist Japanese imperialism in east Asia during the first-half of the twentieth-century.
Products academic year 2006/2007
- Organisation of and participation in international workshop Proletarian Culture and Resistance in Prewar East Asia, Leiden University, November 2006;
- Article (in Japanese, part of an edited anthology) on Japanese intellectual's views of China in the early postwar era, Waseda University Tokyo, August 2007;
- Chapter "Marxist Historical Theory in Modern Japan" in an edited volume entitled Geschichtswissenschaft in Japan. Themen, Ansätze und Theorien, December 2006;
- Paper discussing the role of cultural resistance against Japanese nationalism and imperialism during the 1920s and 1930s for 25th Anniversary Conference Department of Japanese Studies, National University Singapore, October 2006.
