Roundtable on New Books by Japan Historians

Amy Stanley, Professor of History, Northwestern University
Tatiana Linkhoeva, Assistant Professor of History, NYU
Sarah Kovner, Senior Research Scholar, Columbia University
Kelly A. Hammond, Assistant Professor of East Asian History, University of Arkansas
Louise Young, Professor of History, University of Wisconsin-Madison

2020 has been a banner year for new books in Japanese history. At this event, moderated by Prof. Louise Young, four historians will discuss their new books, spanning the early nineteenth century until the mid-twentieth century, and ranging from Edo to Moscow to North China to the Philippines. Among the topics they will consider will be gender in history-writing, intellectual and social history, writing for different audiences outside the English-speaking world, the direction of future scholarship in Japanese history, and the challenges and opportunities in writing for a broader audience. They will also discuss releasing new books during a pandemic. This event will be open to advance audience questions.

Kelly Hammond specializes in modern Chinese and Japanese history, and her work focuses on Islam and politics in 20th-century East Asia. Her first book, China’s Muslims and Japan’s Empire: Centering Islam in World War II w ill be published in fall 2020 with the University of North Carolina Press in their “Islamic Civilization and Muslim Networks” series. Her next project is tentatively titled Islam and Politics in the East Asian Cold War.

Sarah Kovner is a Senior Research Scholar at the Arnold A. Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies at Columbia University. She received her Ph.D. from Columbia University. Kovner’s first book, Occupying Power: Sex Workers and Servicemen in Postwar Japan, was a Choice Outstanding Academic Title, and won the best book prize of the Southeast Conference Association for Asian Studies. Her new book, Prisoners of the Empire: POWs and Their Captors in the Pacific, will be published by Harvard University Press in 2020. Her work has been published in the Journal of Asian Studies, the Journal of Women’s History, and Diplomatic History. Her work has also been translated into Japanese and Chinese.

Tatiana Linkhoeva’s research and teaching interests center on imperial Japan, collaboration and resistance, and social/ist imaginaries. She received her Ph.D. from the University of California-Berkeley. Her 2020 book, Revolution Goes East. Imperial Japan and Soviet Communism, examined the impact of the Russian Revolution of 1917 on the Japanese Left and Japan’s imperial policy. Her second project is a comparative study of Japanese and Soviet empires and their colonial policies on the Mongolian territories.

Amy Stanley is a historian of early modern and modern Japan with special interests in women’s/gender history and global history. She received her Ph.D. from Harvard University. Her first book, Selling Women: Prostitution, Households, and the Market in Early Modern Japan (UC Press, 2012), explored how an expanding market for sex transformed the Japanese economy and changed women’s lives in the years between 1600 and 1868. Her 2020 book, Stranger in the Shogun’s City, is a history of Edo in the early nineteenth century, told through the life story of a runaway divorcee who married a masterless samurai and entered the service of a famous city magistrate.

Louise Young is a social and cultural historian of modern Japan. She received her Ph.D. from Columbia University. Her research and teaching interests include Japanese international relations, World War Two in Asia, comparative imperialism, and urban history. She is currently working on two book projects. The Idea of Class in Modern Japan is a social and intellectual history of the transition from a feudal status system to a modern class hierarchy, 1860-1940. Rethinking Japanese Imperialism examines Japan in the world as a history of the present, tracing this history from the forced opening of the Japanese market in the mid nineteenth century to the current conjuncture, with the rise of neo-nationalisms in Asia and the challenge to the neo-liberal world order.

Please send your questions in advance for the speakers to Athina Fontenot, af3018@columbia.edu

This event will be conducted online via Zoom. Registration required. Please register here.

This event is organized by the Weatherhead East Asian Institute of Columbia University.