Dr Mark Pendleton
BA, PhD
School of East Asian Studies
Senior Lecturer in Japanese Studies
Full contact details
School of East Asian Studies
Jessop West
1 Upper Hanover Street
Sheffield
S3 7RA
- Profile
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I am a social and cultural historian who joined SEAS in January 2012 after completing a PhD in history at the University of Melbourne.
My doctoral thesis explored how the 1995 Tokyo subway gassing is remembered politically and culturally in the context of postwar Japan through various forms of life writing and memorial practices.
During my PhD candidature, I was a Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) research scholar at Tokyo University of Foreign Studies, and a visiting fellow at New York University.
I have lived in Japan for a total of about six years, including as a high school exchange student in Kyoto, an undergraduate exchange student in Osaka, and a salaried worker based in Tokyo.
I also worked in a number of non-governmental organisations in Australia.
In the School of East Asian Studies, I look after the Japanese Studies undergraduate programme as the degree tutor.
I have a strong interest in equality and diversity and serve on the Faculty of Social Sciences Equality and Diversity Committee and as faculty representative on the university’s Gender Equality Committee.
I am also available for commentary on any issues related to my research and have been interviewed by various print and broadcast media.
- Qualifications
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- BA (Griffith)
- PhD (Melbourne)
- Research interests
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My research is interdisciplinary in nature, drawing from history, cultural studies, memory studies, literature, geography and critical theory.
While my core interest lies in the history of twentieth century Japan, I also maintain active research interests in the histories of gender and sexuality, transnational social movement histories, the politics of violence and the relationship between memory and history.
While developing my doctoral research into a book manuscript I have also begun new research projects on modern ruins and industrial heritage in Japan and on queer/LGBT literary figures in postwar Japan.
In 2013, I was part of a consortium with scholars from different UK universities that received an Arts and Humanities Research Council exploratory grant to work on a project called 'The Future of Ruins: Reclaiming Abandonment and Toxicity on Hashima Island' and I am currently part of a team working on a second AHRC grant on ‘Reconfiguring Ruins’.
From August to November 2015, I will be a research fellow at the International Research Centre for Japanese Studies (Nichibunken) in Kyoto.
- Publications
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Edited books
Journal articles
- Fieldwork from home?: Covid-19 and the patchwork future of Japan-based fieldwork pedagogies. Japanese Studies. View this article in WRRO
- And I dance with somebody: queer history in a Japanese nightclub. History Workshop Journal, 90, 297-310. View this article in WRRO
- Remembering romit dasgupta. PORTAL: Journal of Multidisciplinary International Studies, 17(1-2), 155-182.
- Some new directions for the study of coal mining history and heritage. Waseda RILAS Journal, 8, 395-399. View this article in WRRO
- Going Underground with Murakami Haruki: storytelling, oral history and “the japanese psyche” after Tokyo subway sarin attack. Ethnologie française, Vol. 49(1), 141-152.
- Thinking from the Yamanote: space, place and mobility in Tokyo's past and present
. Japan Forum, 30(2), 149-162. View this article in WRRO
- Bringing little things to the surface: intervening into the Japanese post-Bubble impasse on the Yamanote
. Japan Forum: the international journal of Japanese studies, 30(2), 257-276. View this article in WRRO
- Reconfiguring ruins: Beyond Ruinenlust. Geohumanities, 3(2), 531-533. View this article in WRRO
- Engaging Hashima: Memory Work, Site-Based Affects, and the Possibilities of Interruption. Geohumanities, 2(1), 167-187. View this article in WRRO
- Some Gays and the Queers. M/C Journal, 15(6).
- Subway to Street: Spaces of Traumatic Memory, Counter-memory and Recovery in post-Aum Tokyo. Japanese Studies, 31(3), 359-371.
- On the Move: Globalisation and Culture in the Asia-Pacific Region. Intersections: Gender and Sexuality in Asia and the Pacific(23).
- Beyond the Desire for Law: Sex and Crisis in Australian Feminist and Queer Politics. Australian Feminist Law Journal, 31, 77-98.
- Mourning as global politics: Embodied grief and activism in post-Aum Tokyo. Asian Studies Review, 33(3), 333-347.
- THE DISAPPEARANCE OF DESIRE. OVERLAND(193), 48-51.
- Looking Back to Look Forward: The Past in Australian queer anti-capitalism. Melbourne Historical Journal, 35, 51-71.
- Mining an Anthropocene in Japan: On the Making and Speculative Remaking of Geological Imaginaries. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers.
Chapters
- A History of Mentalities in Japan in the Early 1970s―Premonitions of anxiety in Economic Prosperity In Hein L (Ed.), The New Cambridge History of Japan (pp. 770-793). Cambridge University Press
- Gender and culture in Japan today INTRODUCTION, ROUTLEDGE COMPANION TO GENDER AND JAPANESE CULTURE (pp. 1-7).
- Introduction : Gender and culture in Japan today In Coates J, Fraser L & Pendleton M (Ed.), The Routledge Companion to Gender and Japanese Culture (pp. 1-7). Routledge View this article in WRRO
- On Möbius strips, ruins and memory: The intertwining of places and times in Hino Keizō’s Tokyo In Thornbury B & Schulz E (Ed.), Tokyo: Memory, Imagination, and the City Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. View this article in WRRO
- Return to Battleship Island In Shaw DB & Humm M (Ed.), Radical Space: Exploring Politics and PracticeRe Lanham, MD and London: Rowman & Littlefield.
- Memory, Justice and Post-terror Futures In Neumann K & Thompson J (Ed.), Historical Justice and Memory (pp. 202-220). Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.
- Theme Parks and Station Plaques: Memory, Forgetting and Tourism in post-Aum Japan In Sion B (Ed.), Death Tourism: Disaster Sites as Recreational Landscape Seagull Books
- Transnational Sexual Politics in East Asia In Mackie V & McLelland M (Ed.), Routledge Handbook of Sexuality Studies in East Asia London and New York: Routledge.
- The Politics of History, circa 2008 In Wotherspoon K & Ropers E (Ed.), Written Into History: Celebrating Fifty Years of the Melbourne Historical Journal, 1961-2011 (pp. 415-418). Parkville, VIC: The Melbourne Historical Journal.
Book reviews
- Japan Since 1945: From Postwar to Post-Bubble. Edited by Christopher Gerteis and Timothy S. George. (London, United Kingdom: Bloomsbury, 2013. Pp. xv, 318. $39.95.). The Historian, 78(1), 126-127.
- Male sex work and society. Culture, Health & Sexuality, 18(1), 112-114.
- Money, Trains, and Guillotines: Art and Revolution in 1960s Japan. By William Marotti. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2013. xx, 418 pp. $94.95 (cloth); $25.95 (paper).. The Journal of Asian Studies, 74(1), 219-220.
- Ruins of (European) Modernity. Cultural Studies Review, 17(2), 361-366.
Reports
- LGBT+ Histories and Historians: Report
- Fieldwork from home?: Covid-19 and the patchwork future of Japan-based fieldwork pedagogies. Japanese Studies. View this article in WRRO
- Research group
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I enjoy research supervision and welcome enquiries from potential students wishing to work on any topic related to my expertise.
- Teaching interests
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Historical enquiry is about developing a respect for both historical truthfulness (or in other words respecting what we have and don’t have access to from the past) and critical analysis.
As such, I like to use a range of archival materials and primary sources in my teaching, exposing students to the real work of history from early in their academic careers.
As a cultural historian, these materials include film, music, literature, testimony, art and other media, as well as the traditional textual sources of the discipline.
When considered in combination with a range of theoretical and methodological approaches, these primary materials become the foundations for developing both an understanding of the past and the important skills of critical thinking, analytical writing and argumentation that the humanities and social sciences provide.
- Teaching activities
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I coordinate the following modules:
- EAS2034 Modern Japanese History
- EAS2000 East Asian Fieldwork
I also teach into our Level Two Japanese language programme, taking responsibility for a section introducing students to critical reading skills through reading Japanese newspapers, and am part of the teaching team for the interdisciplinary first-year module IPA1010 Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Trans* Studies.