Sophia University Institute of Comparative Culture Lecture Series 2016

Touching things from afar: Global history, bodies and the material turn

Anne Gerritsen
University of Warwick

18:30-20:00, 15 April, 2016
Room 301, Building 10, Yotsuya Campus, Sophia University

The field of history has been transformed in the last decade and a half by the study of global
connections and globalization. Instead of focusing on nation-based narratives, historians have
shifted their attention to economic, political and increasingly also cultural interactions between
nations. One of the problems with this development is the suggestion of homogeneity it creates. The
study of global material culture and the bodily experience of touching new materials and surfaces, I
suggest, offers one way of challenging that homogeneity and understanding better the processes of
appropriation and rejection that were part of the global circulation of goods.

Biography
Anne Gerritsen is professor of History at the University of Warwick, and holds the Kikkoman Chair of
Asia-Europe Exchange at the University of Leiden. She studied Sinology in Leiden and Cambridge, and
holds a PhD from Harvard University. She is currently Director of the Global History and Culture
Centre at Warwick. Her teaching and research is in the field of Chinese history, but more recently
she has worked on the early modern exchange between Asia and Europe, focusing on porcelain, but also
on foodstuffs like soyasauce and rhubarb.

Lecture in English / No prior registration necessary

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