Justine Wiesinger, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor of Japanese at Bates. She teaches both Japanese language and courses on Japanese culture, including literature, film, and theater. She is a Fulbright scholar, having conducted research for her book project in 2015-2016 at Waseda University in Tokyo, and has presented at major conferences around the world, most notably the Tanaka Symposium on 3.11 at Oxford University, and the “Literature after 3.11 Today” conference at INALCO in Paris and recently chaired the panel, “Voices Lost and Found in Fukushima” at the MLA International Symposium (Summer 2019). Wiesinger was also invited to speak at the University of Maryland in 2019 presenting a portion of her research which discusses how bodies can claim trauma – a concept that is intrinsically tied to the devastating aftermath of Japan’s 2011 earthquake, tsunami and Fukushima disaster. In addition to writing the play “Waters Rise” produced by the Women’s Theatre Festival in Durham, North Carolina that premiered in October 2019, she is currently working on a book project which brings to focus the film and theatre that was created as a response to Japan’s 2011 disasters.