(Japan Standard Time) Friday May 10, 2024 | 7:00-8:30 AM

(Americas, Eastern Time)Thursday, May 9, 2024 | 6:00-7:30 PM

 

REGISTER FOR ZOOM

 

Author: Simon Avenell, Professor in the School of Culture, History, and Language, Australian National University

Discussant: Robert Hoppens, Associate Professor of History, University of Texas Rio Grande Valley

 

The Modern Japan History Association invites the wider community to a conversation with Simon Avenell (Australian National University). Professor Avenell will be speaking about his new book, Asia and Postwar Japan: Deimperialization, Civic Activism, and National Identity (Harvard University East Asia Center Press, 2022). Asia and Postwar Japan examines Japanese deimperialization from 1945 until the early twenty-first century. It focuses on the thought and activism of progressive activists and intellectuals as they struggled to overcome rigid preconceptions about "Asia," as they grappled with the implications of postimperial responsibility, and as they forged new regional solidarities and Asian imaginaries. Professor Avenell reveals the critical importance of Asia in postwar Japanese thought, activism, and politics--Asia as a symbolic geography, Asia as a space for grassroots engagement, and ultimately, Asia as an aporia of identity and the source of a new politics of hope. Robert Hoppens (University of Texas Rio Grande Valley) will serve as discussant.