Modern Japan History Workshop
CALL FOR PRESENTERS: Details here. For more information, please contact the organizer.
Upcoming Talks
Thursday, May 9th @ 18:00
Curating Empire: National Parks Established, Planned, and Imagined in the Japanese Colonies
Aaron Stark (Brown University)
This talk examines the histories of national parks in the so-called "outer lands/gaichi(外地)" of the Japanese empire and seeks to tie them to histories of placemaking and environmental management. Despite Japan and its former colonies hosting some of the oldest national parks in Asia, Anglophone historiography has yet to extensively engage with such histories, while Japanese-language historiography has tended to downplay or even ignore the imperial aspect of national parks by maintaining a strict and imaginary bifurcation between parks in the metropole and those in the colonies. In this presentation, I contend that examining colonial national parks in all its guises (established parks in Taiwan, planned parks in Korea, and imagined parks in Manchuria) offers a useful and unique lens for understanding how the imperial state sought to create not only a colonial system of environmental management, but a new curated sense of place dedicated to the service of empire.
Thursday, June 13th
Julian Tash (University of Pennsylvania)
Thursday, July 18th (ONLINE)
Joel Littler (University of Oxford)
Directions to the Workshop
MJHW meets in Building 10, Rm. 301 at Sophia University's Yotsuya Campus.
The closest station is Yotsuya on the JR, Tokyo Metro Namboku or Marunouchi Lines. For more information on access see: https://www.sophia.ac.jp/eng/aboutsophia/access/campus/