Alexandria Dugal

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 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 1920s and 1930s, my research explores how these students and missionary teachers 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 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

- “Student Reports, Internationalism, and Collective Identity at the Japanese Eiwa Schools,” History of Childhood Seminar, Magdalen College, University of Oxford, 12 June 2019
- “‘Friends of Other Lands’: Peaceful Transnational Exchange and the Eiwa School Network in Pacific War Japan”, Fifth Berlin International Global History Student Conference, Friedrich-Meinecke-Institut, Freie Universität, Berlin, Germany, 31 May-2 June 2019
- Panel Chair, Reopening the “Opening of Japan” Conference, The Nissan Institute of Japanese Studies, St Antony's College, The 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, All Soul's College, University of Oxford, 19 March 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, The Pacific World as Analytical Space: Problems and Potential, Nuffield College, University of Oxford, 30 November 2018
- “‘Men Make War, Women Must End War’: Japanese Activist Christian Women and Gendered Ideas of War and Peace in the 1930s,” The University of Reading Research in Progress Postgraduate Conference - Histories of Gender, 24 October 2018
- “A Duality of Duty: Pacific War Mobilization at the Japanese Eiwa Girls’ Schools,” New Voices in the History of War Seminar, All Souls College, University of Oxford, 18 July 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, Pembroke College, 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 February 2018
- “God and Patriotism in Japan’s Pacific War-era Mission Schools,” Saint Mary’s University, 7 April 2016

Graduate-Level Funding and Awards

My research has been generously supported by Mansfield College and the Caird Fund, the Japan Foundation Endowment Committee, the Ishibashi Foundation, the Arnold, Bryce, and Read History Fund, the St Hugh’s College Colin Matthew Travel Fund, the Sir Richard Stapley Educational Trust, the Canadian Centennial Scholarship Fund, and the Monbusho (MEXT) Graduate Studies Scholarship Program.