Please join the East Asia: Transregional Histories workshop in conjunction with the Arts and Politics of East Asia Workshop and the Midwestern Japanese Studies Workshop in welcoming:

Robert Tierney

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

“Terminal Time, Authenticity and Looking Back at Meiji”

Friday, May 12th

4-6 PM

CEAS 319 (1155 E. 60th St.)

Discussants:

Alex Jania, University of Chicago

Professor Tierney will be presenting a draft of a chapter in his current book project. The chapter is an exploration of the writing of Nakae Chōmin’s One Year and a Half and its sequel, composed in 1901 after Chōmin was diagnosed with terminal cancer. In the chapter, Professor Tierney explores the concept of “terminal time,” and how Chōmin both reacted to and learned to live with his death sentence as reflected in the two novels.

This event is being held as a part of the Midwestern Japanese Studies Workshop, which also includes presentations by graduate students on Saturday, May 13th starting at 8:30 AM. The workshop and conference are sponsored by the Center for East Asian Studies.

As always, first-time attendees are welcome. Light refreshments and snacks will be served.

If you have any questions or require assistance to attend, please contact Jessa Dahl at jdahl@uchicago.edu or Erin Newton at emnewton@uchicago.edu.

Amy Borovoy

Associate Professor of East Asian Studies, Princeton University

“Japan Studies in the Postwar Era: Reflections on Modernity and Society in American Social Thought”

Thursday, April 27

4-6 PM

CEAS 319 (Harris School, 1155 E 60th St.)

Please join the East Asia: Transregional Histories Workshop and the Committee on Japanese Studies in welcoming Professor Amy Borovoy (Princeton University) as she presents a section of her new project. Professor Borovoy has provided the following abstract for her talk:

In the decades following World War II, Japan emerged as a “place to think with” for American social scientists. Until 1945, Japan studies had been centered in Europe. Although understanding “total war” was the initial provocation for American social science research, as in the 1946 classic, The Chrysanthemum and the Sword, not long after, social scientists began to see in Japan compelling forms of socio-centrism, social community and cultural identity. By the 1970s, Japan studies had become fruitful terrain for reflecting on the excesses of American liberal individualism. In this project, I analyze this process through a series of canonical texts in anthropology and sociology, from Benedict, to occupation-era village studies, to Thomas P. Rohlen’s ethnography of a Japanese bank and Ezra Vogel’s Japan as Number One. Japan’s modernity offered powerful insights for those wrestling with American post-industrial society, but it was an experiment made possible by a particular historical moment, and one that raised as many questions as it answered.

As always, first-time attendees are welcome. Light refreshments and snacks will be served. This event is sponsored by the Committee on Japanese Studies at the Center for East Asian Studies.

If you have any questions or require assistance to attend, please contact Jessa Dahl at jdahl@uchicago.edu or Erin Newton at emnewton@uchicago.edu.

Alex Jania

University of Chicago, History Department

“‘A Blood Red Sun Rises’: Affective Nationalism in the 1923 Korean Panic and Massacre”

Thursday, April 20th

**3-5 PM**

John Hope Franklin Room (SSR 224)

Discussants:

Gregory Valdespino, University of Chicago History Dept.

Please join us at a slightly earlier time as the East Asia: Transregional History Workshop welcomes our own Alex Jania, who will present his second-year seminar paper entitled “‘A Blood Red Sun Rises’: Affective Nationalism in the 1923 Korean Panic and Massacre.” This paper explores the affective nationalism of the Korean Panic and Massacre in order to understand the relationship between emotion, violent ethnic scapegoating, and the imagining of the nation. This study uses the recollections of children who lived through the disaster in Tokyo and Yokohama, in addition to a critical passage from the Tokyo novelist Ema Shū’s disaster memoir When the Sheep Rise in Anger to explore how latent Japanese prejudices against Koreans created an affective environment that led to massacre. Using these sources, the study explores the creation and circulation of hate, fear, insecurity in the Korean Panic and later, excitement, security, and ambiguity in the Korean Massacre. Ultimately, he argues that the desire for a feeling of security and its creation through violence was a powerful, but fraught, part of Japanese affective nationalism following the Great Kantō Earthquake.

Alex’s paper can be found in the post below.

As always, first-time attendees are welcome. Light refreshments and snacks will be served. If you have any questions or require assistance to attend, please contact Jessa Dahl at jdahl@uchicago.edu or Erin Newton at emnewton@uchicago.edu.

Kyle Pan

University of Chicago

“Aiding War Criminals in the ‘New’ Japan: A Study of The War Convicted Benefit Society, 1952-1958.”

April 6th, 4-6 PM

John Hope Franklin Room (SSR 224)

Please join us as the East Asia: Transregional Histories workshop welcomes our own Kyle Pan as he presents his second year seminar paper to the workshop. In “Aiding War Criminals in the ‘New’ Japan: A Study of The War Convicted Benefit Society, 1952-1958,” Kyle examines the nature and activities of The War Convicted Benefit Society from 1952 to 1958 in order to show that war crime trials and other policies intended to dismantle the “militarism” in Japanese society had unexpected yet significant consequences for the postwar Japanese state and society.

Kyle’s whole seminar paper is posted on the East Asia: Transregional Histories workshop website. He has also provided a more focused range of pages that he would like feedback on: 5-6, 13-15, 23-29, 33-34, 41-44, 47-48, 50-51 and the conclusion.

As always, first-time attendees are welcome. Light refreshments and snacks will be served.

If you have any questions or require assistance to attend, please contact Jessa Dahl at jdahl@uchicago.edu or Erin Newton at emnewton@uchicago.edu.

Covell Meyskens

Assistant Professor, Naval Postgraduate School

“The Demilitarization of Chinese Socialism”

Thursday, March 30th, 4:30-6:30 PM

Social Sciences Tea Room (SSR, 2nd Floor)

Discussant: Weichu Wang (University of Chicago)

Please join the East Asia: Transregional Histories Workshop as we welcome University of Chicago alumni Covell Meyskens (Naval Postgraduate School), who will present the first chapter of his new book project for workshop discussion. The chapter, titled “The Demilitarization of Chinese Socialism,” examines the CCP leadership’s approach to the security of socialist China between the late 1940s when they founded the PRC and the late 1970s when a new leadership under Deng Xiaoping rose to power after Mao’s death in 1976.

As always, first-time attendees are welcome. Light refreshments and snacks will be served.

If you have any questions or require assistance to attend, please contact Jessa Dahl at jdahl@uchicago.edu or Erin Newton at emnewton@uchicago.edu.