Janet Borland
PhD Candidate Asia Institute |
Background
Janet Borland has been enrolled as a PhD candidate at the University of Melbourne since 2004. Janet commenced her tertiary studies at the University of Melbourne in 1995 following a year living in Kobe, Japan, as an Australia-Japan Society of Victoria high school exchange student. She completed an Arts (Hons)/Science degree at the University of Melbourne in 2000 with majors in Japanese and Psychology. Her honours thesis was titled ‘From Humble Beginnings to Humanitarian Leader: The Japanese Red Cross’. During this time she also studied at Kyoto University in 1998 as the University of Melbourne’s inaugural exchange student. After a brief break from undergraduate academic pursuits, she returned to the Department of History to undertake a Masters by research degree in 2002. The title of her MA thesis submitted in 2003 was ‘Capitalising on Catastrophe: Reinvigorating the State with Moral Values Through Education Following the 1923 Great Kantō Earthquake’. From 2002-2004 she was the Lionel Phillip’s Scholar and resident Japanese tutor at Queen’s College. Since 1995 Janet has been an active member of the Australia-Japan Society, and a Committee of Management member since 2002.
Research Interests
My PhD thesis explores how and why government officials attempted to use the 1923 Great Kantō Earthquake as an opportunity to reorder, reinvigorate and reshape imperial Japanese subjects on an ideological and physical level through education.
Publications
Articles in Refereed Journals
- ‘Stories of Ideal Japanese Subjects from the Great Kantō Earthquake of 1923,’ Japanese Studies 25, no. 1 (2005): 21-34.
- ‘Capitalising on Catastrophe: Reinvigorating the Japanese State with Moral Values through Education Following the 1923 Great Kantō Earthquake,’ forthcoming in Modern Asian Studies, 2006.
Book Reviews
- Aya Takahashi, The Development of the Japanese Nursing Profession: Adopting and Adapting Western Influences (London: Routledge Curzon, 2004), forthcoming in Japanese Studies, 2006.
Conference presentations: International and National
- 2005 Japanese History Workshop, University of Newcastle, 28-30 November
- ‘Education Unearthed: Fault Lines in Education Exposed by the Great Kantō Earthquake of 1923’
- 2005 Melbourne University Japan History Seminar Series, 6 October
- ‘Cultivating Strong Subjects: Education and the 1923 Great Kantō Earthquake’
- 2005 Fourth International Convention of Asia Scholars, Shanghai, 20-24 August
- ‘Shaping Minds and Building Bodies: Educators and the Great Kantō Earthquake’
- 2005 Conference on Natural Disaster in Asian History, Culture and Memory, National University of Singapore, 26-27 August
- ‘Education Unearthed: Educational Fissures Exposed by the Great Kantō Earthquake of 1923’
- 2003 Fourth Murdoch University Japanese Studies Symposium, Perth, 25-27 November
- ‘Moral Education and the Great Kantō Earthquake’
- 2003 Third International Convention of Asia Scholars, Singapore, 19-22 August
- ‘Capitalising on Catastrophe: Political Motives behind Commemoration of the Great Kantō Earthquake, 1923-1924’
Committees
2002- Australia-Japan Society of Victoria, Committee of Management Member