University Assistant
Resume:
JULIA ADENEY THOMAS
Chicago, IL 60637
email: abqnoh@r.postjobfree.com
ACADEMIC POSITIONS
Associate Professor, Department of History, University of Notre Dame, 2001-
Visiting Professor, Universit t Heidelberg, Germany, Summer, 2010.
Toyota Visiting Professor, University of Michigan, 2009-10.
Member, Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, New Jersey, 2004-05.
Associate Professor and Assistant Professor, Department of History, University of
Wisconsin-Madison, 1994-2002.
Visiting Scholar, Max-Planck-Institut f r Wissenschaftsgeschichte (Institute for the
History of Science), Berlin, Research Group on "The Moral Authority of Nature,"
1999-2000.
Assistant Professor and Lecturer (1992-94), Department of History, University of Illinois
at Chicago.
EDUCATION
University of Chicago
Ph.D., 1993, History
Major Professional Interests: Intellectual History, History of Modern Japan
Dissertation: "The Politics of Nature in Nineteenth-Century Japan"
Dissertation Committee: Harry D. Harootunian, Michael Geyer, Tetsuo Najita
M.A., 1984, Far Eastern Languages and Civilizations
M.A. Thesis: "The Captured Sun: Hiratsuka Raich and Early Japanese
Feminism"
University of Oxford, St. Peter's College and the Oriental Institute, 1981-83
Princeton University, History, A.B., magna cum laude, 1981
AWARDS FOR PUBLICATIONS
John K. Fairbank Prize in East Asian History, American Historical Association, 2002 for
Reconfiguring Modernity: Concepts of Nature in Japanese Political Ideology
Berkshire Conference of Women Historians, Best Article of the Year Award, 1999, "Photography,
National Identity, and the 'Cataract of Times:' Wartime Images and the Case of Japan."
American Historical Review (December 1998).
BOOKS
Ever So Real: Photography s Politics in Japan, 1940-60 (in process)
Kindai no saikochiku: Nihon seiji ideorogii ni okeru shizen no gainen, Japanese translation of
Reconfiguring Modernity with a new preface: Atarashii Busshitsu Shugi, (The New Materialism),
(Tokyo: Hosei University Press, 2008)
Reconfiguring Modernity: Concepts of Nature in Japanese Political Ideology (Berkeley and Los
Angeles: University of California Press, 2001)
Winner, John K. Fairbank Prize from the American Historical Association, 2002
EDITED VOLUMES
Rethinking Historical Distance with Mark Salber Phillips and Barbara Caine (under contract to
Palgrave/Macmillan Publishers)
Japan at Nature s Horizon with Ian J. Miller and Brett L. Walker (under review, University of
Hawai i Press)
FORTHCOMING ARTICLES AND THOSE IN PREPARATION
Commentary: Roundtable on Historiographic Turns in Critical Perspective, American Historical
Review
Landscape s Mediation Between History and Memory: A Visual Approach to Japan s Past, 1870-
1945, Asato Ikeda, et. al., eds. Dark Valley: Japanese Art and the Second World War (reprinted
from East Asian History)
Using Japan to Think Globally: The Natural Subject of History and Its Hopes, Japan at Nature s
Horizon edited by Ian J. Miller, Julia Adeney Thomas, and Brett L. Walker
A Photographic Measure: Intimate Trauma and Cool Distance, Rethinking Historical Distance
edited by Mark Salber Phillips, Barbara Caine, and Julia Adeney Thomas
ARTICLES AND BOOK CHAPTERS: 1) Nature, Politics, and Historiography
From Modernity with Freedom to Sustainability with Decency: Politicizing Passivity, The Future of
Environmental History: Needs and Opportunities, edited by Kimberly Coulter and Christof Mauch
(Rachel Carson Center Perspectives, University of Munich: March 2011)
Japan s Natural History as Resource for the Global Future, Oxford-Nagoya Environmental History
Workshop, edited by Tsunetoshi Mizoguchi (University of Nagoya: January, 2011)
The Exquisite Corpses of Nature and History: The Case of the Korean DMZ in Chris Pearson, Peter
Coates, and Tim Cole, eds, Militarized Landscapes: From Gettysburg to Salisbury Plain (London:
Continuum, 2010)
"The Exquisite Corpses of Nature and History: The Case of the Korean DMZ," (on line version) The
Asia-Pacific Journal, Vol. 43-3-09 (October 26, 2009)
'To become as one Dead': Nature and Political Subjectivity in Modern Japan" in Lorraine Daston and
Fernando Vidal, eds. The Moral Authority of Nature (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003)
High Anxiety: World History as Japanese Self-Discovery in Benedikt Stucktey and Eckhardt Fuchs,
eds., Writing World History: 1800-2000 (German Historical Institute London and Oxford University
Press, 2003).
Reprinted as Weltgeschichte als japanische Selbst-Entdeckung (World History as Japanese
Self-Discovery), Margarete Grandner, Dietmar Rothermund, and Wolfgang Schwentker,
eds., Globalisierung und Globalgeschichte (Wien: Mandelbaum Verlag, 2005)
Nature, Japan, and the World History of Modernity in James C. Baxter and Joshua A. Fogel, eds.,
Historiography and Japanese Consciousness of Norms and Values (Kyoto: Nichibunken, 2003)
The Cage of Nature: Modernity's History in Japan,"History and Theory 40,1 (February 2001)
Naturalizing Nationhood: Ideology and Practice in Early Twentieth-Century Japan," in Sharon
Minichiello, ed., Japan's Competing Modernities: Issues in Culture and Politics, 1900-1930
(Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1998)
"Women and Wine in Japan," Wine & Spirits (March 1988)
ARTICLES AND BOOK CHAPTERS: 2) Photography, Museums and Visual Culture
Comment: Socializing Trauma: The Problem with Photography, for Journal of Visual Culture,
Special Issue on Visual Evidence and Eyewitnessing, edited by Vanessa Schwartz and Lynn Hunt
(vol. 9, no.3, December 2010)
Landscape s Mediation Between History and Memory: A Visual Approach to Japan s Past, 1870-
1945, East Asian History, 36, 2008 (Published October 2010)
The Evidence of Sight, History and Theory, Theme Issue: Photography and Historical
Interpretation, 48 (December 2009)
Power Made Visible: Photography and Postwar Japan s Elusive Reality, Journal of Asian Studies,
67, 2 (May 2008)
The Sh wa Emperor and Photography: The Unreciprocated Gaze, in Ben-Ami Shillony, ed.,
Handbook of the Emperors of Modern Japan (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2008)
"Globalization in Question: Japanese Photography in Contemporary America" in Harumi Befu and
Sylvie Guichard-Anguis, eds., Globalizing Japan: Ethnography of the Japanese Presence in Asia,
Europe, and America (Nissan Institute/Routledge, 2001)
"History and Anti-History: Photography Exhibitions and Japan's National Identity" in Susan A. Crane,
ed., Museums and Memory (Stanford University Press, 2000).
Reprinted as Rekishi to hanrekishi Shashinkan to Nihon no nashuunaru aidentiti in Susan
A. Crane, ed., Myuujiamu to Kioku (Museums and Memories) (Tokyo: Arina Sh b, 2009)
"Photography, National Identity, and the 'Cataract of Times:' Wartime Images and the Case of Japan,"
American Historical Review 103, 5 (December 1998).
Reprinted in Genocide, Collective Violence, and Popular Memory: The Politics of
Remembrance in the Twentieth Century (Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, 2001)
Winner, Berkshire Conference of Women Historians' Best Article of the Year Award
Raw Photographs and Cooked History: Photography's Ambiguous Place in Tokyo's Museum of
Modern Art," East Asian History 12 (December 1996)
MAJOR EXTERNAL GRANTS
New Directions Post-Fellowship Award (NDPFA), Mellon Foundation, 2008-2011.
Andrew W. Mellon New Directions Fellowship, 2004-2006.
2005 Twentieth-Century Japan Research Award, McKeldin Library, University of Maryland.
Institute for Advanced Study (IAS), Princeton, New Jersey, Membership, 2004-05.
National Humanities (NEH) Fellowship, 2004-05.
Japan Foundation Short-Term Research Fellowship, Summer 2004.
Mombusho (Japanese Ministry of Education) Research Grant, 1998-99.
SSRC/JSPS (Social Science Research Council and the Japanese Society for the Promotion of
Science) Postdoctoral Fellowship, 1998-1999.
ACLS/SSRC Advanced Research Grant from the Joint Committee for Japanese Studies of the
Social Science Research Council and the American Council of Learned Societies, 1996
Department of Education (DOE) Course Development Grant, June 1996.
Northeast Asia Council U.S. (Domestic) Research Travel Grant, 1994.
INTERNAL GRANTS
Institute for Scholarship in the Liberal Arts (ISLA) Small Research Grant, 2011; International
Conference Travel Grant, 2010, 2011,
Kellogg Institute, Seed Money Fund, University of Notre Dame, Summer 2004.
University of Notre Dame, Faculty Research Program Grant, 2003-04.
Humanities Institute, University of Wisconsin, Fall 1997.
University of Wisconsin-Madison Graduate School Summer Research Grant: 1995, 1996, 1997, and
1999.
PREDOCTORAL HONORS, GRANTS, AND AWARDS
The Japan Foundation Fellowship Program, 1991.
Charlotte W. Newcombe Doctoral Dissertation Fellowship, 1990-91.
Fulbright-Hays Dissertation Research Fellowship (U.S. Dept. of Education), 1990 (declined)
Fulbright IIE/USIA Fellowship, 1990 (declined).
MacArthur Scholar, The University of Chicago Council for Advanced Studies on Peace and
International Cooperation, 1988-89.
National Graduate (Javits) Fellowship, 1986-90.
Center for East Asian Studies, Dissertation Grant, University of Chicago, 1987-88, 1989-90.
Japan-America Society of Chicago Scholarship, 1988-89.
Japan Foundation Fellowship (for language study, Inter-University Center, Tokyo) 1986-87.
Special Humanities Fellowship, University of Chicago, 1983-87.
INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCES CO-ORGANIZED
Fascisms, Then and Now, co-organized with Geoff Eley (University of Michigan), an investigation of
whether a theory of fascism drawn from historical work on Japanese, German, and Italian variants
might now be useful. Sponsored by the Nanovic Institute, University of Notre Dame, October 25-26,
2012.
Water and Value, a series of three conferences co-organized with Kathleen Morrison and Mark
Lycett (University of Chicago), Rohan d Souza (JNL Dehli), Prasenjit Duara (Singapore), and
James C. Scott (Yale) on the issue of fresh water in Asia. In Process.
Historical Distance and the Shaping of the Past organized with Mark Salber Phillips (Carleton
University) and Barbara Caine (Monash University) at King s College London, June 26-27, 2009.
Asian Environments Shaping the World organized with Prasenjit Duara (NUS) and James Scott
(Yale) at National University of Singapore, March 19-21, 2009. Japan s Natural Legacies
organized with Brett L. Walker (Montana State University) and Ian J. Miller (Harvard University).
Sponsored by Montana State, Harvard University and the University of Notre Dame in Montana,
October 1-5, 2008.
EXTERNAL SERVICE
American Historical Association (AHA) Nominating Committee, 2010-2013
Advisory Board of the book series "New Studies of Modern Japan" from Lexington Books/Rowman &
Littlefield, 2008-
Advisory Council, Department of East Asian Studies, Princeton University, 2006-2013.
Selection Committee for the International Dissertation Field Research Fellowship (IDRF) Program of
the SSRC, 2003-2006.
MacArthur Foundation Genius Grants Program, Nominator.
REVIEWS
Troubled Natures: Waste, Environment, Japan by Peter Kirby for The Journal of Japanese Studies
(forthcoming)
Science for the Empire: Scientific Nationalism in Modern Japan by Hiromi Mizuno for The Times
Literary Supplement (TLS) No. 5568/69, December 18 & 25, 2009
The Lost Wolves of Japan by Brett L. Walker for ISIS (September 2007) Vol. 98, No. 3
Shomei Tomatsu: The Skin of the Nation by Leo Rubinfien, Sandra Phillips, and John W. Dower for
The Journal of Japanese Studies (Winter 2006)
Bonds of Civility: Aesthetic Networks and the Political Origins of Japanese Culture by Eiko
Ikegami for Pacific History (October 2005) Volume 78, No. 3
The History of Japanese Photography by Anne Wilkes Tucker, et. al. for History of Photography
(Summer 2004) and Monumenta Nipponica (Winter 2003) Vol. 58, No. 4
Becoming Japanese : Colonial Taiwan and the Politics of Identity Formation by Leo T. S. Ching
for The Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History (Spring 2002)
Being Modern in Japan: Culture and Society from the 1910s to the 1930s edited by Elise Tipton and
John Clark for Monumenta Nipponica (Winter 2002)
"Springing the Trap of Modernity: A Review Essay of Stephen Vlastos's Mirror of Modernity," Osaka
City University Economic Review 35, 1 (October 1999)
"Kindai to iu wana o hajikesaseru--Mirror of Modernity: Invented Traditions of Modern Japan--o
megutte," Nihonshi kenky [Research in Japanese History] (August 1999)
The Meiji Unification through the Lens of Ishikawa Prefecture by James C. Baxter for The
Historian. (Summer 1997) Vol. 59, No.4
INVITED LECTURES AND CONFERENCE PAPERS
Photography, Civic Space, and the 1960 Crisis of Democracy, The European Association of
Japanese Studies Conference, Tallinn, Estonia, August 24-27, 2011.
Intimate Trauma, Cool Distance: The Photographic Politics of Domon Ken and Kimura Ihei,
University of Nottingham, England, May 19, 2011.
Manifesto for History in the Time of Climate Crisis, seminar for Dipesh Chakrabarty and Fredrik
Albritton Jonsson, University of Chicago, May 11, 2011.
Yael Hersonsky and a Film Unfinished, The Silence of the Archive: Roundtable Discussion, Film
Studies Center, University of Chicago, April 30, 2011.
AAS/ICAS Presentation: A War Without Pictures: Photography s Curious Position in Wartime
Japan for a panel entitled The Dominating Camera: War, Colonialism, and Photography,
Conference of the Association of Asian Studies and the International Conference of Asian Scholars,
Honolulu, Hawai i, March 31-April 3, 2011.
Intimate Trauma, Cool Distance: The Photographic Politics of Domon Ken and Kimura Ihei,
William & Mary, Williamsburg, Virginia, March 3, 2011.
Faculty and Graduate Student Seminar on Politicizing Passivity: From Modernity with Freedom to
Sustainable Decency, and a lecture, Intimate Trauma, Cool Distance: The Photographic Politics of
Domon Ken and Kimura Ihei, Northern Illinois University, February 24, 2011.
The Here and Now of Distance in Postwar Japanese Photography, for a workshop on Alternative
Technology of the Self: the Problematic of Here and Now, organized by Professor Takada
Yasunari in conjunction with the AJLS Conference, Yale University, October 14, 2010.
Keynote Address: Using Japan to Think Globally: The Natural Subject of History and Its Hopes,
The Environmental Histories of Europe, Japan, and Beyond, The Oxford-Kobe at Nagoya
Environment Seminar, Nagoya University, Japan, September 7-11, 2010.
A War without Pictures: The Curious Place of Japanese Photography in WWII, for Atrocity,
Photography, War Conference at the Monash University Center in Prato, Italy, June 15, 2010.
Environmental History: A Global Controversy for the Cluster of Excellence Asia and Europe in a
Global Context: Shifting Asymmetries in Cultural Flows," Universit t Heidelberg, June 10, 2010.
Intimate Distance, Cool Distance, Seminar, Universit t Heidelberg, Germany, June 8, 2010.
Environmental History and the Korean DMZ, Ruhr-Universit t, Bochum, Germany, June 2, 2010.
Intimate Trauma, Cool Distance: Photographic Politics in 1950s Japan, John Tagg s Viz Cult
Seminar, University of Binghamton, April 21, 2010.
The Exquisite Corpses of the Korean DMZ and of History, Global Environment Workshop,
University of Chicago, April 7, 2010.
Environmental History--A Global Controversy, Global History Seminar, The Institute for Historical
Research, The University of Notre Dame and the History Department of the University of Warwick,
March 24, 2010.
Intimate Distance, Cool Distance: Photographic Politics in 1950s Japan, at the University of
Chicago, East Asian Trans-Regional Histories Workshop, February 25, 2010.
Intimate Distance, Cool Distance: Photographic Politics in 1950s Japan, at the University of
Michigan Center for Japanese Studies, Noon Lecture Series, February 18, 2010.
AHA panel: After the Visual Turn: Reassessing How Historians Look at Photographs, with
Vanessa Schwartz, Susan Crane and James Opp, San Diego, January 7-10, 2010.
The Evidence of Sight, for a panel on History and the Visual in Postwar Japan, SWCAS,
Southwest Conference of Asian Studies, Austin, Texas, October 16-17, 2009.
The Exquisite Corpses of Nature and History: The Case of the DMZ (lecture) and The Evidence of
Sight (seminar), Lewis and Clark College, Portland, Oregon, October 4-5, 2009.
Intimate Trauma, Cool Distance: The Photographic Politics of Domon Ken and Kimura Ihei,
Historical Distance and the Shaping of the Past, King s College London, June 26-27, 2009.
Workshop Participant, Capturing the Moment: Visual Evidence and Eyewitnessing organized
jointly by Lynn Hunt (UCLA) and Vanessa Schwartz (USC), May 1-2, 2009.
Flirtatious Evidence: Photography s Metaphoric and Metonymic Promises, University of
Minnesota, April 21, 2009.
Flirtatious Evidence: Photography s Promises in Occupied Japan, University of Nevada at Reno,
April 9, 2009.
Panel Discussant, "The Politics of the Real and the Surreal in Early Postwar Japanese Photography,
Painting, and Performance," Association of Asian Studies Annual Meeting, Chicago, March 28,
2009.
No-Man s Land: History and Nature Between States in the Korean DMZ, Asian Environments
Shaping the World, National University of Singapore, March 21, 2009.
Flirtatious Evidence: Photography s Metaphoric and Metonymic Promises, Harvard University,
Edwin O. Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies, December 12, 2008.
History and Theory conference on History and Photography, Flirtatious Evidence: Photography s
Metaphoric and Metonymic Promises, Wesleyan, November 7-9, 2008.
Respondent to Papers: Conference on Japan s Natural Legacies sponsored by Montana State
University, Harvard, and the University of Notre Dame, October 1-5, 2008.
Panel Organizer: Speaking for the Wordless: Landscapes, Images, and Things with Thomas
Keirstead (Toronto),Peter Siegenthaler (Texas State), Reiko Abe-Austad (Oslo). Flirtatious
Evidence: The Games Photographs Play, European Association of Japanese Studies (EAJS), Lecce,
Italy, September 17-20, 2008.
The Exquisite Corpse and Korea s DMZ, Militarized Landscape Conference, University of Bristol,
England, September 3-6, 2008.
Raw Photographs and Cooked Culture: Photography s Ambiguous Place in the National Museum of
Modern Art, Tokyo, Symposium: Thinking about Museums, Exhibits, and the Modern City Some
Points of Departure, University of Irvine, California, May 29, 2008
Keynote Address: "The Seen, the Unseen, and the Unseeing: The Showa Emperor and Photography,"
in celebration of the East Asian Library Resources and East Asian Studies, University of Maryland,
May 2, 2008
The Exquisite Corpse and Korea s DMZ, at the Modern Japanese History Workshop, hosted by
Amherst College, April 26, 2008 and Not Art, Not Documentary, but Politics: Japan s Postwar
Photography," for the Department of History, Amherst College, April 25, 2008.
Not Art, Not Documentary, but Politics: Japan s Postwar Photography, University of Binghamton,
Binghamton, New York, April 16, 2008.
Discussant on Association of Asian Studies Panel on Life on the Margins in 1950s Japan, with
Peter Siegenthaler (Texas State), Kim Brandt (Columbia), Levi McLaughlin (Princeton), and Justin
Jesty (Chicago), Atlanta, April 6, 2008.
Not Art, Not Documentary, but Politics, University of Toronto, Canada, February 26, 2008.
Not Art, but Politics: Photography and Postwar Japan s Reality, Northwestern University, February
8, 2008.
Begging Veterans: Reality and Photography after the War, University of North Carolina, January
24, 2008.
The Elusive Reality of Postwar Japanese Photography, Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada,
November 15, 2007.
Postwar Japanese Photography's Fugitive Reality" at Birkbeck College at the University of London,
October 11, 2007 and at St. Antony's College, Oxford, October 12, 2007.
Leadership in Postwar Japan: the Seen, the Unseen., and the Unseeing, at The International
Conference on Japan in Honor of Professor Ben-Ami Shillony, Hebrew University, Jerusalem, April
29-May 2, 2007.
Not Art, but Politics: Photography and Postwar Japan s Fugitive Reality, Ohio State University,
April 20, 2007.
Real Photography as Social Critique: Beggars, Bourgeois Values, and Maimed Veterans in
Postwar Japan, on a panel titled The Politics of Real and Virtual in Japanese Culture,
Association of Asian Studies (AAS) Conference, Boston, March 22-25, 2007.
From Metropole to Colonial Hinterlands: Landscape in Japanese History and Memory, at the
City and State in 20th Century China and Japan Conference, Northwestern University, October 12-
13, 2006.
Landscape s Mediation between History and Memory, on a panel called When Looking at the
Past: Historians, Photography, and Memory, at the Collective Memory and the Uses of the Past:
An Interdisciplinary Conference, School of History, University of East Anglia, Norwich, U.K.
July 7-10, 2006.
Ecology and Japan Studies, panel commentator, Association of Asian Studies (AAS) Conference,
San Francisco, April 2006.
Time, Photography, and History, on a panel called Picturing History, American Historical
Association (AHA) Conference, Philadelphia, January 5-8, 2006.
History versus Memory, at an Indiana University workshop on The Japanese Empire: Gone but
Not Forgotten, September 15-16, 2005.
The Visual Turn in Japan s Approach to its Wartime Past: Landscape s Mediation, Keynote address
for the Memory and Identity Conference, University of Oslo, Norway, August 29-30, 2005.
What Photographs show about Democracy in Occupied Japan, Princeton University, April 26,
2005.
The Contentious Natures of the New Japan, Harrington Symposium on Transnational
Circulation of Nature and Landscape Narratives and Nation Building, University of Texas at
Austin, April 14-16, 2005.
Ecology and the Industrial State: The Beginnings of Environmentalism in Modern Japan panel
commentator, Association of Asian Studies (AAS) Conference, March 2005.
Environmental History s Challenge to the Discipline of History, Science, Technology, and Society
Group, MIT, March 2005.
The Politics of Photography in Occupied Japan, The Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton,
November 2004.
Bringing Nature into History, Conference in Honor of Harry D. Harootunian and Tetsuo Najita,
University of Chicago, June 2004.
Photography, Reality, and Democracy in Occupied Japan, University of Chicago, Franke Institute,
Metaphors and Materialism Conference, May 2004.
Organizer of the Photography and Modernity in Japan panel at the Association of Asian Studies
(AAS) Conference; presented The Aesthetics of Occupation, San Diego, March 2004.
Photography and Democracy in Occupied Japan, Yale University, January 2004.
The New Materialism: Bringing Nature Back into History European Association of Japanese
Studies (EAJS) Conference, Warsaw, Poland, August 26-31, 2003.
What Photography Tells Us About Democracy, University of Chicago, Franke Institute
Symposium: From Prints to Photography. May 16-17, 2003.
The Ed Lee Lecture: Photography, War, and the Ethics of Memory, Hamilton College and the
Munson Williams Proctor Arts Institute, Utica, New York, April 3, 2003.
The Barbara Payne Robinson Lecture: The Cultural Politics of Occupation: Photography in
Postwar Japan, Department of History, University of Arizona, March 6, 2003.
The Aesthetics of Democracy Intellectual History Workshop, University of Notre Dame, January
18, 2003.
American Historical Association Conference: Chair for the Panel entitled Articulating Discourses of
Rights in Non-Western Historical Contexts, January 3, 2003.
Cultural Policy and the American Occupation of Japan, delivered at the Culture and International
Relations Conference, Wittenberg, Germany, December 18-20, 2002.
Japan, Nature, and the History of Modernity, Invited Lecture, "Historical Consciousness,
Historiography and Modern Japanese Values" Conference, Canada October 30 - November 3, 2002
sponsored by the Japan Foundation and Nichibunken.
The American Occupation s Impact of Japanese Photography, School of the Art Institute of
Chicago, September 27, 2002.
History Department Faculty Colloquium: How should Historians think about Nature?
University of Notre Dame, September 2002.
Nature, Japan, and the World History of Modernity, Invited Lecturer, NEH Summer Seminar of
Premodernity, Modernity, and Postmodernity in Japan, Los Angeles, California, June 2002.
Social Darwinism s Progressive Posture in Meiji Japan, Association of Asian Studies, Annual
Meeting, on panel I organized on Social Darwinism in East Asia, April 2002.
Changing Concepts of Nature panel moderator at the Ecology, Theology, and Judeo-Christian
Environmental Ethics Conference. University of Notre Dame, February 21-24.
The Visible and the Invisible, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, November 15, 2001.
The University of Oslo, Norway. Center for East Asian Studies Lecture Series: Japan Writes World
History, May 15, 2001, and Photography, History, and Nationalism in Postwar Japan, May 16,
2001.
Marius Jansen and Li Po, Memorial Conference for Marius Jansen, Princeton University, May,
2001.
"Postwar Japanese Photography: Taboos, Totems, and Trans-Pacific Policies," School of the Art
Institute of Chicago, November 6, 2000.
"Cultural Nationalism in Postwar Japan," Center for the Humanities, University of Wisconsin-
Madison, October 13, 2000.
Panel Organizer and Discussant, "Figuring the Nation," Midwest Conference of Asian Affairs
Annual Conference, University of Indiana, October 7, 2000.
"High Anxiety: Japanese World History as National Defense," Invited Speaker, Writing World
History, 1800-2000: Historiography, Ideology, and Politics, German Historical Institute, London,
March 30-April 2, 2000.
"Natural Freedom," Max-Planck-Institut f r Wissenschaftsgeschichte (Institute for the History of
Science), Berlin, Research Group on "The Moral Authority of Nature," 1999-2000.
"Visual Stories: Photography, Narratives, and National Identity," International Congress of Asian
Scholars, Leiden, The Netherlands, June 1998, part of a panel I organized on "Dissent in Postwar
Japan." Other participants: Luk Van Haute (Belgium), Gunhild Borggreen (Denmark), and Eyal Ben
Ari (Israel).
"Bypassing Civil Society--From the Body to the State in Ueki Emori's Democratic Vision" on a panel
called "Imagining Civil Society in Meiji Japan" for the Association of Asian Studies (AAS) Annual
Conference, Washington, D.C., March 1998.
"Reconfiguring Nature: Japan's Confrontation with Modernity," UCLA, March 1998.
"What's so 'Japanese' about Japanese Photography in America?" and "Photography's Place in
Japanese Art Museums," School of the Art Institute, Chicago, November 1997.
"History and Anti-History: Photography Exhibitions and National Identity in Contemporary Japan,"
Indiana University, Bloomington, November 1997.
"Japaneseness through the Camera Lens: Global Art, National Interpretations?" European Association
of Japanese Studies Conference (EAJS), Budapest, August 1997.
"Faulty Memories: Photography Exhibitions, History, and National Identity in Japan,"
Visuality in Modern Japanese Culture Conference held at the University of Kansas. April 25-26,
1997.
"Inventing Tradition/Inventing Nature: Parallels and Contrasts in Meiji and Taisho Japan," Center for
Japanese Studies, University of California Berkeley: Spring 1996 Regional Seminar: The Status of
"Tradition" in Japanese Studies. May 4, 1996 at Berkeley in honor of Thomas Smith, Professor
Emeritus, Berkeley.
"Nationalizing Nature: Ideology and Practice in Early Twentieth-Century Japan," Northeast Asia
Council Conference on "Taisho Democracy: Competing Modernities in Twentieth-Century Japan"
Part I: "Taisho Demokurashii, 1900-1930," Hawaii, November 1995.
"The Failure of Liberalism in Meiji Japan," Princeton University, May 1995.
"Nature as Politics in Meiji Japan," Oriental Institute, University of Oxford, May 1994.
"Geography and Liberty: Mapping Politics in Late Tokugawa Japan," Midwest Regional Seminar on
Japan, St. Olaf's College, Minnesota, April 1994.
"The Politics of Nature," Seventh Annual Japan Anthropology Workshop: Culture in Japanese
Nature, Banff, Alberta, Canada, April 1993.
"The Topographical Imagination in Nineteenth-Century Japan," SSRC Rocky Mountain/Southwest
Japan Seminar, Tucson, Arizona, February 1993.
"Nature and Political Liberty in Early Meiji Japan," Midwest Conference on Asian Affairs, University
of Wisconsin-Oshkosh, October 1992.
COURSES TAUGHT [Graduate and Undergraduate]
Survey Course: Ancient Japan from Archeology to The Tale of Heike
Survey Course: Tokugawa to Prewar Japan
Concepts of Nature and Modern Historiography
Nature and the Environment in Europe and Japan (graduate seminar)
Liberalism and History (graduate seminar)
War Guilt: Japan, China, Vietnam and the United States (with Mauri Meisner)
The Meiji Ishin: Restoration, Renovation, or Revolution
Dissent in Postwar Japan
Intellectual History of Postwar Japan
Japanese "Fascism"
High Culture and Japanese Nationalism (graduate seminar)
The Occupation of Japan
The Horrors of History: Nanking and Hiroshima
Japan s Imperial House from Amaterasu to Akihito: Power, Gender, Religion
History Honors Colloquium: What is History?
Photography and History: Approaches to Suffering
The Historian s Craft (graduate seminar)
Seeing for Historians: Photography as Evidence and as Interpretation (graduate and undergraduate
seminar)
The Global Environment: Capitalism, Marxism, Fascism, and Nature (graduate and undergraduate
seminar)
AREAS OF INTEREST
Modern Political and Intellectual History
History of Japan
Nature and Environmental History
Photography
Historiography and Theory
Contact this candidate