Jana Aresin, M.A.

Research Interests

Mass Media and Gender
US Occupation of Japan
Reeducation and Democratization Policies and Narratives
Cold War Feminism
Museums and Representation
International Migration

Current Research Projects

Democracy, Consumerism and Gender Roles in U.S. American and Japanese Women’s Magazines during the Cold War (Dissertation Project)

Education

M.A. in Advanced Migration Studies, University of Copenhagen (2018)

B.A. in Japanese Studies, Leipzig University (2016)

Employment

• 2019-present: research assistant at the chair of American Studies at FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg

Fellowships & Grants

• 2024: Visiting PhD Researcher at the Swedish Institute for North American Studies (SINAS), Uppsala University
• 2022: BAA Dartmouth Stipend, “Futures of American Studies Summer Institute”, Dartmouth College
• 2022: Bavarian Library of Congress Fellowship at the John W. Kluge Center
• 2020-21: Junior research fellow at Karl-Franzens-University Graz
• 2019: BAA Summer Academy 2019, “State Narratives in Comparative Perspective”

Publications

Conference Papers

• “Imagining Social Transformation under Military Occupation: Democracy, National Identity, and Gender in Public Discourse in U.S.-Occupied Japan.” Occupation Studies Research Network Conference “Themes, Approaches, and Future Possibilities”, July 10-11, 2025, King’s College, London.
• “Alternatives to Democratic Capitalism? The Shifting Politics of Labor Activism in 1950s Japanese Women’s Magazines.” 19th Annual Conference of the Nordic Association for the Study of Contemporary Japanese Society (NAJS), May 22-23, 2025, University of Iceland, Reykjavík.
• “Raising Democratic Citizens: Women’s Rights and the Politics of the Home in early Cold War U.S. and Japanese Public Discourse.” 34^th Annual Conference of the Postgraduate Forum of the German Association for American Studies: “(Re-)Shaping the Public Sphere: Cultural Productions as/and Interventions,” November 21-23, 2024, FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg.
• “Learning from the Other, Defining the Self: Democracy, Women’s Rights, and International Solidarity beyond the Cold War Divide in U.S. and Japanese Women’s Magazines between 1945-1955.” SINAS Research Seminar, April 15, 2024, Uppsala University.
• “Gender and Economic Citizenship in Postwar Japan: The Politics of Women’s Labour and Consumption.” NNC / Asianet Conference: “Consuming Asia: Systems and Structures of Consumption in Modern and Contemporary Asia,” June 22-23, 2023, University of Bergen.
• “A Benevolent Empire? Representations of Women’s Liberation and Democracy in Japanese Women’s Magazines under U.S.-Occupation.” 5th EU-Japan Young Scholars Workshop: “Japanese Transnationalism and Empire,” November 4-6, 2022. Centre Européen d’Études Japonaises d’Alsace/Hosei University.
• “The Women Behind the Bamboo Curtain: Admiration and Anxiety towards ‘Red China’ in Japanese Cold War Women’s Magazines.” Workshop: “Cold War Disconnections and the Transformation of Internationalisms,” June 8-10, 2022, LMU Munich.
• “Visualizing Women at Work: Idealization and Realism in Japanese Women’s Magazines in the early Cold War.” Workshop: “The Politics of the Page: Visuality and Materiality in Illustrated Periodicals across Cold War Borders,” May 12-13, 2022, Philipps University Marburg [Online].
• “Democracy, Consumerism and Gender Roles in Japanese Women’s Magazines during U.S. occupation and the early Cold War”. International Conference: “Cultures of Occupation: New Paradigms, Models and Comparisons”, postponed to 2021, University of Nottingham.
• “Consumers, Workers, Democratic Citizens? Renegotiation of Women’s Roles in US and Japanese Women’s Magazines, 1945-1960.” Workshop: “Recreating Separate Spheres Across Not-So-Separate Worlds: Gender and Reeducation in Japan, Germany, and the USA after World War II”, February 20-21, 2020, Berkeley, CA.
• “From World War II Battlefield to Cold War Home Front? Reeducation Policies in U.S.-Occupied Japan, 1945-1952.” Workshop: “American Home Front(s)”, Bavarian American Academy Munich, July 20-21, 2019.
• “Democracy, Consumerism and Gender Roles in U.S. American and Japanese Women’s Magazines during the Cold War.” Project presentation at the annual BAA Summer Academy 2019 “State Narratives in Comparative Perspective”, May 25 – June 8, Nuremberg.

Courses

• Genres of Feminism in Contemporary U.S. (PS)
• Aktuelle Interkulturalitätstheorien (MA seminar)
• Cold War Culture in the United States and Beyond (PS)
• Women’s Movements and Feminism(s) in the United States (PS)
• Grundseminar Culture (GS)