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1. Toward A Comparative History of Sexual Violence and War - A Book Talk with Feminist Chizuko Ueno

Author:
Chizuko Ueno and Carol Gluck
Publication Date:
05-2024
Content Type:
Video
Institution:
Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University
Abstract:
Speaker: Chizuko Ueno, Professor Emerita University of Tokyo, Chief Director of the Non Profit Organization, Women’s Action Network Moderator: Carol Gluck, George Sansom Professor Emerita of History, Columbia University Sexual violence in war is a perennial and a global phenomenon. The “comfort women” system of sexual slavery in Asia and sexual assaults by Allied soldiers in Europe during World War II, the rape camps in Bosnia in the 1990s war in the former Yugoslavia -- the list is long and continues to this day. Based on her book, A Comparative History of War and Sexual Violence, Ueno explores a range of issues, including the discourse of victimhood and the question of agency, rape as a weapon of war, and also love and “horizontal collaboration” between enemies. A provocative argument from Japan’s leading feminist and influential social activist. Speaker Bio: Chizuko Ueno is an emeritas professor at the University of Tokyo. Chief Director of the Non Profit Organization, Women’s Action Network ( http://wan.or.jp/) . A leading feminist theorist and an influential social critic, a prolific author of books and articles and a high-profile intellectual in Japan. In 1994, one of her many acclaimed books, Kindai Kazoku no Seiritsu to Shuen (The Rise and Fall of the Modern Family), won the coveted Suntory Academic Award. English publications are available as follows; The Modern Family in Japan: Its Rise and Fall (2009), Nationalism and Gender (2004). Asahi Shinbun Award winner in 2012 for her contribution to feminism and women’s studies, in addition to studies of care. Received Hän Honor from the Finnish government in 2019 for the contribution to promote gender equality. Selected as a member of American Academy of Art and Sciences in 2020. Event sponsored by the Weatherhead East Asian Institute and co-sponsored by the Japan Research Program.
Topic:
War, History, Sexual Violence, Comfort Women, and Book Talk
Political Geography:
Japan, Europe, Asia, and Balkans

2. Public Interest and State Legitimation: Early Modern England, Japan, and China–Book Talk, Wenkai He

Author:
Wenkai He and Junyan Jiang
Publication Date:
12-2023
Content Type:
Video
Institution:
Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University
Abstract:
Wenkai He is an associate professor of Social Science in the Division of Social Science at The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. He conducts deep and contextualized historical analysis of state formation in England, Japan, and China from the 16th to 19th century. He will give a talk on his second book, Public Interest and State Legitimation: Early Modern England, Japan, and China (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2023), which investigates the connections between state capacity, state legitimation and the expansion of political participation. He demonstrates how in each case a public interest-based discourse of state legitimation provided a common platform upon which state and society collaborated to provide public goods such as famine relief and large-scale infrastructural facilities. Each discourse of state legitimation entailed ‘passive rights’ that allowed subordinates to justify their demands on the state to redress welfare grievances. Conflicts between domestic welfare and other dimensions of public interest, however, could instigate cross-regional and cross-sectoral mass petitions for fundamental political reforms that were likewise justified by the state’s proclaimed duty to safeguard the public interest; these mass petitions might ultimately transform the state. Such a political ‘great divergence’ occurred in England (1760s-1780s) and Japan (1870s-1880s), but not in China.
Topic:
History, State Formation, Book Talk, and Public Interest
Political Geography:
Japan, China, Europe, Asia, and England

3. Book Talk with Jessamyn Abel, Author of "Dream Super-Express"

Author:
Jessamyn Abel, Takuya Tsunoda, and Ariana King
Publication Date:
10-2023
Content Type:
Video
Institution:
Weatherhead East Asian Institute, Columbia University
Abstract:
A symbol of the "new Japan" displayed at World's Fairs, depicted in travel posters, and celebrated as the product of a national spirit of innovation, the Tōkaidō Shinkansen—the first bullet train, dubbed the "dream super-express"—represents the bold aspirations of a nation rebranding itself after military defeat, but also the deep problems caused by the unbridled postwar drive for economic growth. At the dawn of the space age, how could a train become such an important symbol? In Dream Super-Express (Stanford University Press, 2022), Jessamyn Abel contends that understanding the various, often contradictory, images of the bullet train reveals how infrastructure operates beyond its intended use as a means of transportation to perform cultural and sociological functions.
Topic:
History, Infrastructure, Sociology, Culture, Economic Growth, and Book Talk
Political Geography:
Japan and Asia