Topic: Surname Activism and the Household Register in Japan.
Biography:
Linda White, Associate Professor in Japanese Studies, has been teaching at Middlebury in anthropology, gender studies, and Japanese studies since 2005. She earned her B.A. from Michigan State University, her M.A. in Asian Studies from Cornell, and her M.A. and PhD in Anthropology from the University of Colorado. She teaches courses that address contemporary issues in Japanese society, including globalization, gender, and current social problems.
Her research focuses on Japanese feminist activism, intersections between gender and family law, and attitudes about the body. White has spent seven years living in the Tokyo area. She has received grants from the Fulbright Foundation, the Japan Foundation, and the Social Science Research Council for ethnographic research on feminist issues. Her book examining the feminist movement to end gender inequality and expose patriarchal bias in family law in Japan, “Gender and the Koseki in Contemporary Japan: Surnames, privilege and power” will be published by Routledge in 2018.