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

• 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

Edited Volumes

• Aresin, Jana, Dijana Simić, Silvia Schultermandl and Si Sophie Pages Whybrew, eds. Affective Worldmaking. Narrative Counterpublics of Gender and Sexuality. Bielefeld: Transcript, 2022.

Journal Articles

• Aresin, Jana. “Locating Women’s Political Engagement: Democracy in Early Cold War US and Japanese Women’s Magazines, 1945–1955.” Comparativ 31.1 (2021): 66-81.

Book Contributions

• Aresin, Jana.“Between Denazification and Reconstruction: US Occupation Policies and Practice in Germany 1945.” The Diary of Lt. Melvin J. Lasky. Into Germany at the End of World War II. Ed. Charlotte Lerg. New York: Berghahn Books, 2022. 29-37.
• Aresin, Jana. “Kikujiro (Kikujirō no natsu, 1999).” Lexicon of Global Melodrama. Ed. Heike Paul, Sarah Marak, Katharina Gerund, and Marius Henderson. Bielefeld: Transcript, 2022. 229-232.
• Aresin, Jana. “‘We need to imagine a new kind of woman’: Narrating Identity in Postwar Women’s Magazines in Japan, 1945-1955.” Affective Worldmaking. Narrative Counterpublics of Gender and Sexuality. Ed. Silvia Schultermandl et al. Bielefeld: Transcript, 2022. 127-137.
• Aresin, Jana. “Revisiting Stunde Null: The Impact of U.S. Reeducation Policies in Post-War Germany on Transatlantic Relations.” New Perspectives on Transatlantic Relations. Multidisciplinary Approaches. Ed. Jürgen Gebhardt and Stefan Fröhlich. Heidelberg: Winter, 2021. 71-86.
• Aresin, Jana. “Zwischen Diaspora und hybrider Identität: Generationeller Wandel in Identitätsdiskursen der koreanischen Minderheit in Japan.” Japan 2021. Politik, Wirtschaft und Gesellschaft. Munich: Iudicium, 2021. 234-257.

Conference Papers

• “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

• Cold War Culture in the United States and Beyond (PS)
• Women’s Movements and Feminism(s) in the United States (PS)
• Grundseminar Culture (GS)