Dr. Hiroshi Kurushima, Professor, National Museum of Japanese History, Chiba Prefecture, Japan
Field : The Late Edo Period (Early Modern Japanese History) |
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Dr. Gregory Smits, Associate Professor, Pennsylvania State University
Gregory Smits is a specialist in early modern East Asian intellectual history, the history of the Ryukyu Kingdom, and historical earthquakes in Japan and East Asia. His book Visions of Ryukyu: Identity and Ideology in Early Modern Thought and Politics has recently appeared in Japanese translation as Ryukyu no jigazo: kinsei Okinawa shisoshi (Ryukyu self-portraits: early modern Okinawan intellectual history) Reviewed by Dr. Kurayoshi Takara (in Japanese), and his recent articles include “Examining the Myth of Ryukyuan Pacifism.” He has published numerous articles on aspects of earthquakes and earthquake-related culture, including “ Namazu-e: Catfish Prints of 1855,” "Danger in the Lowground: Historical Context for the March 11, 2011 Tohoku Earthquake and Tsunami," and most recently, "Conduits of Power: What the Origins of Japan’s Earthquake Catfish Reveal about Religious Geography." His book Seismic Japan: The Long History and Continuing Legacy of the Ansei Edo Earthquake will be published by the University of Hawai’i Press. |
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Dr. Manabu Yokoyama, Professor, Notre Dame Seishin University, Okayama Prefecture, Japan
Field : Japan-Ryukyu cultural history, Japanese Cultural History, Biography of Frank Hawley, Shio Sakanishi, Sakamaki families in Hawaii. For more information : |
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Mr. Travis Seifman, PhD student, University of California Santa Barbara
Travis Seifman completed an MA in Art History from UH Manoa in 2012. For his MA thesis, he examined Japanese Edo period depictions of Ryukyuan subjects in a variety of formats, focusing on many of the objects presented in this exhibit as representative examples. He is now a first-year PhD student in History at UC Santa Barbara, and is considering in his PhD work examining the logistics and material culture of the Ryukyuan missions to Edo in greater detail. |
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Dr. John Szostak, Associate Professor, UHM Art History Department
Dr. John Szostak is Associate Professor of Japanese Art History at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, and has previously taught at the University of Washington and the University of British Columbia. He completed his Ph.D. at the University of Washington, and conducted his doctoral research at Kyoto University as a Fulbright research fellow. |
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Dr. Mark McNally, Associate Professor, UHM History Department
Mark McNally received his BA degree from Pomona College in Asian Studies (1990) and his MA and PhD degrees in History from UCLA (1995, 1998). He spent three years in Nagoya as a participant in the Japan Exchange and Teaching Program (1990-1993). He has been a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Edwin O. Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies at Harvard University (1999-2000) and a Foreign Research Scholar at Tokyo University's Historiographical Institute (2005). In 2008, he was the Erwin von Baelz Guest Professor at the Eberhard Karls University, Tubingen (Germany). He has been a recipient of various grants and fellowships, including a Fulbright fellowship. His research interests are primarily in early modern Japanese social and intellectual history, including Confucianism and Kokugaku. He is completing a monograph on Tokugawa exceptionalism, and researching the development of Yamato Learning (Wagaku). |