Graduate Fellowships For PHD Research in Japan
Graduate Fellowships For PHD Research in Japan
The KCC Japan Education Exchange Graduate Fellowships Program was established in 1996 to support qualified PhD graduate students for research or study in Japan. The purpose of the fellowship is to support future American educators who will teach more effectively about Japan. One fellowship of $30,000 will be awarded. Applicants may affiliate with Kobe College (Kobe Jogakuin) for award year, if selected.
Graduate Fellowship News
John Ostermiller, KCC-JEE Graduate Fellow in 2023 - 2024, gave a guest lecture entitled “Muslims and Multicultural Japan: a hijabi case study” at the University of Shizuoka on May 27, 2024.
Pamela Winfield, KCC-JEE Graduate Fellow in 2001 - 2002, has finished her Ph.D. at Temple University in the field of religious studies. She is currently an Associate Professor at Elon University, and has published a book entitled Icons and Iconoclasm in Japanese Buddhism: Kukai and Dogen on the Art of Enlightenment.
2024-2025 KCC-JEE Graduate Fellow
Lena Paulsen
Shojo Modernity:
Queer Girlhood and Tuberculosis in Early Twentieth Century Japan
University of Minnesota
Lena Paulsen studies modern Japanese history at the University of Minnesota, with specific focus on the history of girlhood. Her dissertation examines girlhood in the Taisho period through the lens of queer studies and disability studies, with the aim of demonstrating how queer(-coded) and tubercular(-coded) girls’ bodies were both pathologized and commodified, drawing on such varied materials as medical texts, popular sexology, girls’ magazines and media, literature, and advertisements.
Lena’s interest in the history of girlhood traces back to her undergraduate studies. For her independent research capstone at Macalester College, she wrote about the 1940 censorship of the popular girls’ magazine Shōjo no Tomo, which supposedly depicted girls too frail and sickly for wartime. She completed her M.A. in Japan Studies at Heidelberg University in Germany, with a thesis about girlhood and agency.
Over the course of her studies, Lena has studied at Nanzan University in Nagoya, Osaka
University, and the IUC school for advanced and business Japanese in Yokohama. She is
grateful to have received generous funding for her academic endeavors through the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD), the Sara Evans Fellowship for Women’s History, the Foreign Language and Area Studies Fellowship, the Japan Foundation Fellowship, and of course the KCC-JEE Fellowship.
