Alexandria Dugal
DPhil Student
Research Topic
‘Women in an Extraordinary Time’: The Canadian Methodist Eiwa Girls’ Schools and the Creation of a Transnational Cultural Space in Inter-war and Pacific War Japan
I am researching the inter-war and Pacific War experiences of female Japanese students, teachers and Canadian missionary teachers of the Japanese Eiwa girls' mission schools of the Women's Missionary Society of the Methodist Church of Canada (from 1925 the United Church of Canada).
Focusing on the 1930s, my research explores how these students, teachers, and missionaries navigated this turbulent time through education within the cultural space of their school institutions, and how their period writings demonstrate an awareness of global and societal conditions, and an intellectual connectivity to Christian women in wider Japanese society, and beyond.
This study demonstrates there is a new way of looking at Japan-Canada connectivity on a transnational level through examining women, youth, and this inter-generational women’s networks.
Supervisor: Professor Sho Konishi
College: Mansfield College
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Publications
- “The Coexistence of Christianity and Japanese Nationalist Sentiment during the Pacific War: Murota Tamotsu of the Shizuoka Eiwa Jogakkō,” Princeton Journal of East Asian Studies, 13 (2018): 83-93.
- “Martha Jane Cunningham: A Women’s Missionary Society Pioneer,” International Bulletin of Mission Research 42.1 (2018): 76-84.
Conference Participation
- “‘Messengers of peace’: Kawai Michi, the Eiwa girls’ schools, and education in 1930s Japan,” Women, Gender and Culture Seminar, University of Oxford, 4 Feb 2019
- “‘To make students internationally minded:’ A discussion of pre-war curriculum at the Tōyō Eiwa Jogakkō,” Japanese Studies Graduate, University of Oxford, 14 Nov 2019
- “Student Reports, Internationalism, and Collective Identity at the Japanese Eiwa Schools,” History of Childhood Seminar, University of Oxford, 12 Jun 2019
- “‘Friends of Other Lands’: Peaceful Transnational Exchange and the Eiwa School Network in Pacific War Japan,” Fifth Berlin International Global History Student, Freie Universität, Berlin, 31 May - 2 Jun 2019
- Panel Chair, Reopening the “Opening of Japan” Conference, University of Oxford, 11 May 2019
- “‘Such Unrighteous War’: Christianity in the Pacific War at the Japanese Shizuoka Eiwa Mission Girls’ School,” The 2019 Interdisciplinary History of War Conference, University of Oxford, 19 Mar 2019
- “Japan’s Gendered Peace and Suffrage Activism at Home and through a Transnational Lens,” Pacific Worlds in Global History: Graduate Perspectives on Approaches, Challenges & Disciplinary Futures Workshop, University of Oxford, 30 Nov 2018
- “Japanese Activist Christian Women and Gendered Ideas of War and Peace in the 1930s,” University of Reading Research in Progress Postgraduate Conference – Histories of Gender, 24 Oct 2018
- “A Duality of Duty: Pacific War Mobilization at the Japanese Eiwa Girls’ Schools,” New Voices in the History of War Seminar, University of Oxford, 8 Jul 2018
- “In an Unlikely Time and Place: Seeking out Hidden Transnational Connections through the Eiwa School Network,” Oxford Sudbury Transnational and Global History Seminar: Graduate Approaches to Global History, University of Oxford, 25 May 2018
- “Murota Tamotsu and the Coexistence of Christianity and Japanese Nationalist Sentiment during the Pacific War at the Shizuoka Eiwa Jogakkō,” International History of East Asia Seminar, University of Oxford, 5 Feb 2018
Graduate-Level Funding and Awards
My DPhil research has been generously supported by Mansfield College and the Caird Fund, the Japan Foundation Endowment Committee, the Canadian Centennial Scholarship Fund, the Sir Richard Stapley Educational Trust, the Ishibashi Foundation, the Arnold, Bryce, and Read History Fund, the St Hugh’s College Colin Matthew Travel Fund, and the British Association of Japanese Studies.
