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ASA-JAAS
ASA-JAAS Delegate Report 2006
ASA-JAAS Delegate Reports 2006
Report of the ASA President
Karen Halttunen
July 2006
Among the many unique opportunities I"ve enjoyed as president of the American Studies Association, my trip to Japan with the ASA delegation in June 2006 has proved among the richest and most rewarding. It was an especially great honor to participate in both the annual meeting of the Japanese Association of American Studies, and its one-day International Symposium on “American Studies in Trans-Pacific Perspective,” on the occasion of JAAS"s fortieth anniversary, a significant milestone for a vitally successful academic society. Members of the ASA delegation—which included Professors Paul Kramer (Johns Hopkins University) and Curtis Marez (University of Southern California) as well as myself—are deeply grateful to the JAAS officers and members who welcomed us to these meetings, as well as to the various universities in Kyoto and Tokyo where we were invited to discuss our work with fellow scholars and students of American studies. We are also indebted to the American Embassy in Japan and to the US-Japanese Friendship Commission for their continuing support of this intellectually and professionally fruitful exchange between American and Japanese scholars in the field of American studies. Such support is vital to the future of the strong—and strengthening—connections between our two communities, and to the growing emphasis on transnationalism now shaping scholarship in our shared field of interest.
Though it is impossible to cite all the many people whose hard work and generous hospitality made our trip so rewarding, I"d like to express my particular thanks to several individuals. First, I"m deeply grateful to Professor Daizaburo Yui (Tokyo Woman"s Christian University), president of the Japanese Association of American Studies, who welcomed the ASA delegation to the meeting at Nanzan University, and generously shared his presidential podium with me; and to Professor Natsuki Aruga (Saitama University), Chair of the Planning Committee for the enormously successful International Symposium, who invited me to contribute to its concluding roundtable discussion over which she presided. I would also like to echo Curtis Marez"s special thanks to Professors Juri Abe (Rikkyo University), Naoki Onishi (International Christian University), and Hisako Yanaka (Kyoritsu Women"s University), of the JAAS International Committee, who assisted us with every last logistical detail of our trip: translating our needs to hotel clerks, hailing taxicabs, purchasing train tickets, answering our questions about various places we wished to visit during our free time, and—at one unforgettable event—even entertaining us with song after dinner—all with warmth, efficiency, and tireless good humor. Their labors included months of advance planning as well as close attention to all the minutiae of sheltering, feeding, and transporting us during our two-week stay, and we can"t thank them enough for making us so comfortable throughout our visit. The American Embassy in Japan was the sine qua non of our visit; we are particularly grateful to Mr. Mark J. Davidson, Cultural Affairs Officer; Ms. Margot Carrington, Program Development Officer; and Mr. Zia Syed and Ms. Erika Wada.
My own trip to Asia began with a three-day visit to Korea. I flew into Incheon Airport on June 6, and the next morning participated in a roundtable discussion on “Promoting American Studies in Asia” at Korea University, with board members and present and previous presidents of the American Studies Association of Korea. My host was the infinitely gracious Professor Ji-moon Suh, current president of ASAK, whose friendship I came to value greatly over the course of the following week, when we both attended the JAAS conference at Nanzan University, and then participated together in a graduate seminar at Doshisha University in Kyoto. The roundtable on “Promoting American Studies in Asia"—a topic on which I found I knew very little!—initiated my steep learning curve concerning the distinct opportunities and challenges of teaching American studies in Korea, where such key conceptual issues as multiculturalism, exceptionalism, and the globalization of American culture have a sharply distinct valence from their meanings in the United States. In the afternoon of June 7, I gave a talk on “Defining the Discipline” at a curriculum development workshop sponsored by Sogang University and the US Embassy. It generated a lively exchange on the question of whether American studies can or should be treated as a “discipline.” My own strong commitment to a fully interdisciplinary understanding of the field was questioned by many Korean scholars concerned about setting a high standard for scholarly rigor, and for maintaining a distinctive profile for American studies in the context of the broader interest in area studies, the strength of English/British language and literature programs, and Korean students” growing inclination to study Chinese over English.
The workshop continued through the morning of June 8, moderated by Dr. Kim Nam Kyun of Pyongtaek University, when these issues were discussed at greater length by participants from an impressive range of institutions including Chungnam National University, Korea Military Academy, Kwandong University, Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, Howon University, and Korea University. One of the key issues that emerged during these discussions was the desirability of exchanging students between American studies programs in Korea and the United States, in summer programs as well as more extensive periods of study and cultural immersion—an issue I hope to pursue at my own university. I am grateful to Dr. Roe Jae Ho, Dr. Sangkee Park, and the other faculty members in Sogang University"s excellent—and impressively international—American studies program for welcoming me to their workshop and teaching me so much about American studies programs “abroad”; and to Dr. Don Q. Washington, Minister-Counselor for Public Affairs at the US Embassy in Seoul, and Ms. Carolyn B. Glassman, Country Program Officer, for arranging and supporting my visit.
Later that afternoon on June 8, I took a flight to Nagoya, Japan, in time to attend the all-day International Symposium on “American Studies in Trans-Pacific Perspective” at Nanzan University on Friday, June 9. This symposium—involving scholars from Japan, Korea, China, the Philippines, Australia, Russia, and the United States—was an extraordinary success. Paul Kramer"s report below offers excellent summaries of the individual papers and comments, which collectively made a strong case for decentering the US from its continental moorings, and challenging the Eurocentric orientation of American studies scholarship by shifting attention from the Atlantic “world” to the Pacific. Exploring topics such as US imperialism in the Pacific, Asian immigration to the US, the Filipino Revolution, the recent rise of anti-Americanism in Korea, the impact of John Dewey in Japan and China, US historiography in Japan, and the changing image of the US as “benevolent hegemon,” this symposium generated lively discussion and controversy over the historical role of the US in the Pacific. Most important, it marked a significant step in the internationalization of American studies: from an “international” exchange of ideas between scholars from different countries towards a fully transnational understanding of our field of study. Taken together, the seven papers and the comments that followed them offered a range of creative ways to think our way out of three persistent paradigms: the nation-state box, an Atlantic-centered history of the US, and American exceptionalism. Professor Gary Okihiro"s metaphorical emphasis on the Pacific Ocean as a fluid medium proved particularly compelling, as the borders between “native” and “foreign” scholars of American studies in the Trans-Pacific grew increasingly difficult to draw. The symposium concluded with a reception, generously hosted by Richard F. Szippl, Vice-President of Nanzan University, and by the Japanese Association for American Studies.
On June 10 and 11, the annual meeting of JAAS was held. Most of the Saturday sessions were in Japanese, and our hosts were kind enough to occupy the ASA delegates and other non-speakers of Japanese with a tour of Nagoya Castle and a delicious lunch before the presidential session—we were fortunate to glimpse a kimono-clad wedding party at the hotel restaurant—and a visit to the Tokugawa Art Museum with its beautiful Edo-period treasures afterwards. The presidential session took place in early afternoon, when I spoke on “Postnationalism and American Studies in Place,” arguing that a focus on local and regional place offers an alternative to the transnational escape from national and nationalist histories; and President Daizaburo Yui spoke on “Historical Lessons in Asian-American Relations: Searching for the Intercivilizational Dialogue,” offering a powerful analogy between the attacks on Pearl Harbor and on the World Trade Center on 9-11, and arguing that “The first step toward making a dialogue of civilizations possible is to overcome ethnocentric attitudes and have the confidence to consider one"s own civilization in a critical light.” We ended our day with a lavish reception attended by several hundred conference participants—by now I was beginning to understand the scope of Japanese hospitality, and to appreciate the art form of the toast and the pre- and post-prandial speech. (I say “we” ended our day with the reception, but in fact, the younger ASA delegates kept going, visiting a Nagoya salsa club before calling it a day. I"m reliably informed that Professor Paul Kramer is an accomplished salsa dancer, and that we have the photographic evidence to prove it.)
On Sunday, June 11, the final day of the JAAS conference, I attended two workshops. “Relocating ‘America” in American Studies” included papers by Professor Sheila Hones (University of Tokyo), arguing for a shift in understanding geography from something we live in to something we do; Paul Kramer, critiquing both the “imperial” and the “transnational” turns for inadvertently continuing to reinforce the bounded nation-state; and Professor Kohei Kawashima (Musashi University), demonstrating what the history of sports can contribute to a transnational American Studies. The second workshop, “New Dynamics between the United States and the Asia/Pacific Community,” offered papers by Curtis Marez on the unexpected connections between representations of Asians and Latin Americans in global cinema; Professor Gayle Sato (Meiji University) on Japanese-American war memory in novels by Karen Tei Yamashita and Murakami Haruki; and Professor Sung Hee Park (Ewha Woman"s University) on the distinct histories of “truth” vs. “opinion” in Korean and American journalism. At the end of the conference, the ASA delegates and the other international scholars who had participated in Friday"s symposium were treated to a wonderful dinner (and to the challenge, for inflexible Westerners, of sitting seiza), including entertainment through song and dance by our hosts. For their gracious hospitality and unfailing kindness, we are grateful to Vice-President Szippl of Nanzan University; Masaki Kawashima, Director of the Center for American Studies at Nanzan University (now celebrating its thirtieth anniversary); to the members of the JAAS International Committee; and, once again, to the US Embassy for its support.
On Monday, June 12, the ASA delegates plus Professors Ji-moon Suh and Sung Hee Park from the Association of American Studies in Korea traveled by bullet train to Kyoto, where we checked into our hotel and then went out to explore that beautiful city on foot, visiting several temples and Nijo Castle in addition to the central shopping district. On Tuesday, June 13, we visited Doshisha University, where President Erji Hatta honored us by hosting a luncheon. That afternoon, we participated in that program"s annual Graduate Seminar, devoted this year to “American Studies and Postnationalism: Prospects and Challenges.” Organized by Professor Masahiro Hosoya, Dean of the Graduate School of American Studies, and Professor Gavin James Campbell, Associate Dean, this roundtable discussion—which included Professor Keiko Ikeda of Doshisha—effectively picked up some of the issues we had begun discussing at the International Symposium, to explore the various possibilities and pitfalls of pursuing a postnational, or international, or transnational, or global approach to American studies. We addressed such questions as, to what degree these approaches implicitly reinforce the nation-state as the proper purview of our study, and whether or not we should regard such reinforcement as a problem; how we should include the study of material and institutional embodiments of nationhood as well as its fictive dimensions; how we might approach the teaching of a more global “American” studies; and what sorts of transnational efforts we should be making to globalize professionally. This seminar afforded us our first opportunity to engage in discussion with Japanese graduate students in American studies, several of whom addressed the question of how their research was or was not influenced by the current role and standing of the US in world affairs. After the roundtable, our hosts offered us a tour of Doshisha University"s Center for American Studies, with its pleasant reading room, computer facilities, and extensive library holdings, and gave us the much-appreciated gift of internet access for an hour or so, before Professor Campbell took us on a tour of the campus and the beautiful Nanzen-ji Temple close by. That evening, our Doshisha hosts treated us to an extraordinary dinner at a restaurant in Kyoto"s Gion District, where the conversation and the sake flowed unimpeded and new friendships were made.
On Wednesday, June 14, I was picked up at my hotel (a courtesy for which I am deeply grateful) by Professor Minako Baba of Kwansei Gakuin University. She accompanied me by train to Hyogo, and then treated me to lunch at the faculty club, before my presentation to a small group of graduate and postgraduate students plus a few faculty members. I spoke on “Murder and the Gothic Imagination in America,” and was delighted with the quality and depth of the questions that followed. I was asked about the relationship between the Gothic imagination and social criticism, and the employment of Gothic horror in response to murderous acts of racist lynching. One scholar wanted to explore the subject of murder in popular songs and ballads of the 19th century. Another asked a question that taught me more about Japanese culture than I could possibly have taught him about American culture: why do Americans tend to splinter good from evil in a simplistically Manichean fashion, instead of understanding human nature as invariably mixing the good and the bad within every individual? And does the Gothic mode represent evil as an autonomous power in the universe, or solely as a product of human minds? I came away from my visit to Kwansei Gakuin University with exciting new perspectives on my own research interests. That evening, Curtis Marez, his partner Professor Shelley Streeby from U.C. San Diego, and I had the good sense to accept President Erji Hatta"s recommendation of a tiny sushi bar in Kyoto, where we sat at the bar and were both fed and entertained by a master of both the art of preparing raw fish and the art of conversation between parties who lack a shared language.
On Thursday, June 15, the three ASA delegates traveled by train to Tokyo, where we were met at the train station by two very obliging and engaging graduate students. They accompanied us to our hotel, where they assisted us with check-in, and then took us to a sushi restaurant for lunch. That afternoon, I again spoke on “Murder and the Gothic Imagination in America,” this time at Keio University, where I was hosted by Professor Takayuki Tatsumi and the American Embassy. The audience of perhaps 50 people, most of them students of Professor Tatsumi, was particularly interested in comparing and contrasting the contemporary Japanese interest in crimes of murder with the American, and once again, I learned at least as much as I taught on this occasion. We were all struck by the powerful parallels between Japanese and American narrative conventions of murder in terms of both the horror and the mystery of the crime, and we discussed once again the contrast between American Manicheanism and the Japanese understanding of human nature as morally mixed. One member of the audience asked whether I thought that the American Gothic response to murder is in any way shaping the experiences of modern American soldiers in such conflicts as the war in Iraq—a question that hadn"t previously occurred to me, and that I found very illuminating. After the lecture, I was hosted first at a reception, and then at a restaurant dinner, attended largely by Professor Tatsumi"s students, both graduate and undergraduate. We had a roaring good time, and I was particularly grateful for the opportunity to talk with Japanese undergraduates in American studies, who proved quite willing to share with me their own research interests and, in some cases, their plans to study in the United States. Professor Tatsumi"s hospitality was unforgettable, and I came away both impressed and inspired by the vitality, dedication, and ambition of his teaching at both the undergraduate and the graduate levels.
From Friday, June 16 through Monday, June 19, I was granted the gift of free time to explore the vibrantly exciting city of Tokyo. I spent that time examining the rich collections of Tokyo National Museum, wandering Ueno Park and visiting the Ueno Tosho-gu Shrine, exploring Senso-ji Temple and the hundreds of small shops on Nakamise-dori, learning some urban history at the creative Edo-Tokyo Museum, checking out the cutting-edge technological gadgets of Akihabara, luxuriating in the department stores of the downtown shopping district, and touring the awe-inspiring Tokyo Fish Market where Paul Kramer and I narrowly avoided death by fish fork-lift and celebrated our survival with a sushi breakfast. The last official event of my trip was a buffet dinner graciously hosted by Cultural Affairs Officer Mark Davidson and his wife, Kuniko Davidson, in their home, where the ASA delegates were delighted to be reunited with many of the scholars who had welcomed us to the JAAS conference one week earlier. Dinner was excellent, the Davidsons were warmly hospitable, and it was a pleasure to recap our week with people who were beginning to feel like old friends, and to look forward to gathering again at the annual meeting of the American Studies Association in Oakland, California in October. On Tuesday, June 20, I flew back to Los Angeles.
At the International Symposium in Nagoya, Professor Jun Furuya (Hokkaido University) observed provocatively that “One of the most salient consequences of globalization is the emergence of a common culture based on a sense of propinquity, which in turn results from the power of a hegemonic nation.” Throughout my visit to Japan, I was repeatedly reminded of the subtle complexities buried in his comment. Japanese and American scholars of American studies share much in common, both intellectually and culturally; and yet our encounters with one another are filled with constant reminders of the historical power relationships that have produced our “common"-alities. The hegemonic power, past and present, of the United States haunts our efforts to create a truly transnational scholarship—just as the presumed center-periphery relationship between the American American Studies Association and the Japanese Association of American Studies (or the Korean, or any other) shadows our attempts to create a fully transnational professional community. But exchanges such as the ASA-JAAS Project have made great strides towards both a genuinely transnational scholarship and a fully transnational professional community. Professor Furuya"s call for examining US history and culture “from the ‘other side” of the Pacific” was fulfilled, for me and the other ASA delegates, during our recent visit to Japan. It"s of vital importance to the field of American studies—wherever it is pursued, world-wide—that such travels and exchanges continue. Once again, I"d like to express my deep gratitude to the US-Japanese Friendship Commission and to the US Embassy in Japan for their continuing support of this exchange.
Delegate Report
Paul A. Kramer
I"m immensely grateful to the American Studies Association and to the Japanese Association for American Studies for the chance that I"ve had to serve as an ASA delegate to the JAAS symposium at Nanzan University and to engage in conversation with scholars at Doshisha University, Waseda University and the University of Tokyo. It has been one of the most valuable intellectual encounters that I"ve had, and one that I believe will shape my thinking for years to come. What follows is a condensed account of the presentations I attended and the dialogues that I participated in.
The international symposium at Nanzan University, “American Studies in Trans-Pacific Perspective,” which took place from June 9th through 11th, showcased the inter-disciplinary richness of American Studies scholarship being carried out in Japan and in the nations of Asia and the Pacific. Its first panel featured works that examined the “frames” of American Studies scholarship. Prof. Ian Tyrrell argued for an Atlanticist bias in emerging “transnational” historical scholarship on the United States and suggested—in the interests of a more “global” history—the need for greater attention to the Pacific in narrating histories of migration, geopolitics, reform and the environment. Prof. Jun Furuya provided a critical genealogy of U. S. historical studies in Japan, suggesting that what he perceived as its culturally isolated character was due to particular histories of Japanese-American encounter. Specifically, he emphasized the long-standing Japanese perception—an Atlanticist one—of the United States as merely a lesser Western power that lacked a meaningful “historical” tradition, as well as U. S. scholars” Eurocentric orientation and traditional inattention to the contexts of Americanist knowledge-production in other nations. Prof. Gary Okihiro advanced, as an alternative to Atlanticist American Studies, a Pacific-oriented and “oceanic” perspective capable of seeing the United States as an “island"—simultaneously located in the core and periphery—linked to East Asia and the islands of the Pacific by circulations of peoples, commodities and cultures. In his comment, Prof. Yasuo Endo opened up broad questions regarding how to define the Pacific itself: as singular or plural, as natural geography, as invented concept and as an interplay of fantasy and actuality.
In the second panel, Prof. Oscar Campomanes explored the life and critical writings of the early 20th century Filipino nationalist and revolutionary Apolinario Mabini as exemplary of an early transnational and anti-imperialist American Studies, one concerned with studying the colonizer and inhabiting the empathic space of the “other.” Prof. Sun Youzhong discussed the trans-Pacific career of John Dewey in Japan and China and the contexts of his reception and interpretation across the 20th century, as an argument for both the utility of Deweyan pragmatism in present-day China and the broader need to study intellectual and high-cultural exchanges between the United States and Asia. Prof. Victor Sumsky traced the rise and fall of what he called the United States” “benevolent hegemon image” in Asia across the post-World War II period, seeing it surging as a mode of disciplining the U. S."s allies in the context of a reconstructed Japan and the newly-industrializing Asian economies, and declining in the wake of Communism"s collapse, the Asian financial crisis and the invasion of Iraq. Prof. Seong-Ho Lim presented a careful statistical and interpretive exploration of a striking phenomenon—the rapid shift of South Korean public opinion from “pro-American” to “anti-American” positions—and traced this to interacting U. S. and South Korean nationalisms, as well as the democratization of South Korean society and a greater openness towards the expression of long-standing criticisms. In her comment, Prof. Fumiko Nishizaki argued for the need to see “America” as a “problem” rather than a “solution.”
On our second day at the conference, we attended the two afternoon keynote addresses by the Presidents of the American Studies Association and the Japanese Association of American Studies. (The day"s panels were presented in Japanese, and foreign delegates were treated to a wonderful trip to Nagoya Castle.) Prof. Karen Halttunen of the ASA presented her research on the imagination and construction of place among early New England historical societies as an argument for seeing the “local” as an alternative to the “national” frame in American Studies scholarship. Prof. Daizaburo Yui of JAAS drew parallels between the mobilization of the Japanese military state leading up to the attack on Pearl Harbor, and Al Qaeda"s preparations for the 9/11 attacks, as part of an effort to “bridge the gap” between the United States and the Islamic world.
The third day consisted of smaller-scale workshops. I had the honor of presenting at a workshop entitled “Relocating ‘America” in American Studies,” chaired by Prof. Julie Higashi, alongside Prof. Sheila Hones and Prof. Kohei Kawashima, each of whom presented exciting critiques of the themes and modes of American Studies. Prof. Hones did so from the perspective of meta-geography, criticizing the ways that scholars often take “space,” its shapes and dynamics for granted, rather than as constructed and reconstructed by human interactions. She called on American Studies scholars to cultivate a critical self-consciousness about their own space-making practices and the presumptions that come along with them. Prof. Kawashima made the case for sports as an exemplary subject-matter for transnational scholarship, analyzing its surprising absence from American Studies scholarship and exploring its utility for understanding cross-cultural interpretation and exchange, and their limits. I presented a methodological discussion of the problems and prospects of a “transnational” or “crossed” U. S. history by exploring and critiquing what I called the “imperial” and “transnational” turns. The former, I argued, emphasizes power and domination but also U. S.-centered actors and dynamics; the second highlights cross-border flows and fluidity but often does so in order to give meaning to the “nation.” Both risk what I called “imperial reflexivity,” using the “world” to answer questions about the United States or “exporting” U. S.-based questions, rather than rethinking history"s questions and topographies at the often tense meeting-points between traditionally nation-based historiographies. Particularly in studies of migration, reform and empire, I suggested, scholars are developing new concepts, shapes and tools for writing the past where “national” histories open out onto each other. The workshop I attended that afternoon, “New Dynamics between the United States and the Asia/Pacific Community” featured the work of my co-delegate Prof. Curtis Marez, Prof. Gayle Sato and Prof. Sung Hee Park. Prof. Marez presented his research on the complex intersections of Asian, Latin American and U. S. cinemas, at the levels of both transnational, inter-industry competition and the cross-racializing projects of film-makers. Prof. Sato analyzed two novels that dealt with memories of World War II and charted their bold re-mappings of time, historical memory and transnational space. Prof. Park explored the changing meanings of, and boundaries between, “truth” and “opinion” within professionalizing journalistic practice in South Korea.
The scale and organization of the JAAS symposium at Nanzan was truly impressive, as was the vast graciousness and hospitality of our hosts, exemplified by a lively dinner at the conference"s close. I am grateful to Prof. Daizaburo Yui, Prof. Natsuki Aruga, Prof. Naoki Onishi, Prof. Juri Abe, Prof. Ichiro Iwano, Prof. Masaki Kawashima, and Vice President Richard Szippl, as well as to the U. S. Embassy, which co-sponsored the event. I was struck throughout the event by the diversity of American Studies scholarship presented, and also by the very different—and, in some cases, incommensurable—questions that appear to be asked by it. As I"d hoped, “America” was a quicksilver presence in the work, redefined by each presenter in his or her own terms, terms that were often refreshingly defamiliarizing to me: as a hegemonic force in the world, to be critiqued as such; as a source of inspiration and cultural vitality; as a meta-geographical category in need of challenge. I was also impressed, both favorably and not, by the presence of the “war on terror” in the deliberations. Much of the scholarship appeared propelled, at very different levels and degrees of intensity, by the desire to understand an “American” subject newly-imprinted with the nationalist-exceptionalist precepts of the Bush administration and its imperial ambitions. (On the first day, an arrogant, condescending and long-winded attack on the panelists for their critical perspectives by one member of the audience, who identified himself as a member of the U. S. military, and who referred to the presenters not by their proper names but by their nationalities, was something of an inadvertent primary source.) As much from the presenters themselves as from informal conversations with other scholars, I detected a tone of bewildered, and in some cases radicalized, disappointment with the United States, particularly with the current administration"s unilateral foreign policy, military aggressiveness and disregard for international public opinion. Talking to some members of JAAS, I gathered that, until recently, something approximating a “benevolent hegemon image” of the United States had been a common (if never consensual) point of departure; I was told that the tenor of the symposium not been this critical since the Vietnam War. Prof. Nishizaki"s call to consider “America” a “problem"—as opposed to a “solution"—appeared to resonate widely if uneasily.
This ended up being the core of our discussions at Doshisha University in Kyoto, where Dean Masahiro Hosoya and Prof. Gavin Campbell of the Graduate School of American Studies invited representatives from the United States and South Korea to participate in an open, roundtable discussion of “transnational” American Studies with Prof. Keiko Ikeda, other members of the Doshisha faculty and graduate students on June 13th. The conversation, based on questions we had discussed at a delightful lunch with University President Eiji Hatta, was wide-ranging, dealing with our own research agendas, with issues of training and the framing of questions and projects. Some graduate students present shared their own research interests; ideally, I would have liked to learn more. The discussion eventually turned toward the question raised at the Nanzan symposium of “America” as a “problem.” Prof. Ji-Moon Suh, president of the Korean American Studies Association, made an impassioned critique of the idea of “America” as a “problem”; where she said that she herself had advanced such an approach during earlier, less critical times, she felt that it had gone too far in the present context. She called for a scholarship that, on the one hand, saw the good in American culture and, on the other, involved less “politicized” interpretations, emphasizing aesthetics and beauty in American literature, for example. Prof. Shelly Streeby observed that literary scholars, rather than seeing “America” as a whole as a “problem,” also found critical resources within American culture, as in Henry David Thoreau"s challenges to U. S. aggression in the Mexican-American War. My own sense in this discussion was that, perhaps ironically, this vision of “America” as a “problem” reproduced the unified, homogeneous and bounded sense of the nation. Where social and cultural history and literary scholarship over the last generation has emphasized the layered diversities of “America"—and contestation over who would speak in its name—the current climate may be promoting (even for purposes of critique) a sense of both the uniformity and exceptionality of the United States. We were able to continue these and many other discussions at a wonderful dinner following the workshop.
The remainder of my trip consisted of three lectures and seminar discussions in Tokyo, in which I presented a talk entitled “Race-Making and Colonial Violence in the U. S. Empire: The Philippine-American War as Race War,” adapted from a chapter in my book, The Blood of Government: Race, Empire, the United States and the Philippines (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006). Prof. Hatsue Shinohara invited me to speak to her graduate seminar in international studies in the Graduate School of Asia-Pacific Studies at Waseda University on June 15th. Prof. Yoshikatsu Hayashi asked me to present my work to his graduate class in U. S. diplomatic history at Meiji University on the 16th; at that event, Prof. Gayle Sato introduced me in exceedingly kind terms and Ms. Yukiko Terazawa, a graduate student in English literature, graciously undertook the difficult task of interpreting between Japanese and English during the question-and-answer period. Prof. Yasuo Endo invited me to present before his graduate seminar in U. S. diplomatic history at the University of Tokyo on June 20th. In all three settings, I especially enjoyed my dialogues with students, receiving wide-ranging questions regarding, for example, the underlying causes of the U. S. invasion of the Philippines, and points of comparison and contrast between this war and the current war in Iraq. My hosts in each case took case of every possible logistical arrangement—from providing detailed directions through Tokyo"s subway system to arranging technical assistance with digital projectors to printing up beautiful posters—and also treated me to some of the loveliest academic dinners I"ve ever had the pleasure to attend, measured not only in food and sake, but in liveliness, humor and intellectual exchange. Toward the end of my stay in Tokyo, on June 19th, we and many of our Japanese hosts were the guests of Mark Davidson, the cultural attaché of the U. S. Embassy, at an enjoyable dinner at his home. During his toast on that occasion, Mr. Davidson praised cultural and intellectual exchange for their own sakes, and insisted on the importance of Americans” “listening” to the perspectives of those outside the United States.
Alongside the many, rich opportunities for formal exchange, I appreciate the fact that the organizers also allowed us less structured time with which to explore Nagoya, Kyoto and Tokyo. During this down-time, I was the recipient of much hospitality that I look forward to reciprocating. In Kyoto, Prof. Campbell took a day out of his busy schedule to show us some of Kyoto"s most fascinating sites, such as the Kitano Tenman-gu Shrine (filled with eager students seeking intellectual inspiration), a traditional tea-house and an indigo dye workshop. Taihei Okada, a graduate student in Philippine history at Hitotsubashi University who I met through my colleague Prof. Yoshiko Nagano, offered to take me around Tokyo, resulting in a darkly illuminating tour of the Yasukuni Shrine and what its web-site calls its “Nationalist War Memorial Museum.” (Since arriving back in the United States, this particular trip has inspired me to undertake a research project on war, memory and forgetting in the Philippine-American War case.) I shared strong coffee with Prof. Koichi Okamoto of Waseda University, who also works in Philippine history, in a fantastic, dimly-lit, basement café called Brazil in the Jimbocho used-book district. My friends and colleagues from Hopkins, Motoe Sasaki and Curtis Gayle, treated me to an evening of kabuki and izakaya. (The kabuki drama, a 1910s comedy called The Zen Substitute, featured a world-weary aristocrat who sneaks out to visit his lover and—inevitably—gets caught by his clever wife; it reminded me of an artful, highly refined I Love Lucy episode.) The following day, Motoe Sasaki shared her knowledge of Tokyo with Karen Halttunen and myself, taking us to the Akihabara electronics district, and to Asakusa and the Sensoji Temple. Waseda University graduate students Song Wei and Liu Tiewa took me by monorail for a pleasant stroll through Odaiba. I look forward to picking up the many dialogues that began on these outings when I have the chance to show my hosts my small part of the United States. My thanks to the ASA and JAAS, and to new colleagues and friends in Japan, who generously shared with me the greatest gift scholars give each other: something new to think about.
Delegate Report
Curtis Marez
I am pleased to report that as an intellectual and cultural exchange, my trip to Japan was a wonderful success. I am grateful to the JAAS, the ASA, and the Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission, and particularly so to the many individuals who so generously helped and hosted President Halttunen, Professor Kramer and myself. So great is my debt to three people in particular that I would like to start by giving them my deepest thanks: Professors Juri Abe, Naoki Onishi, and Hisako Yanaka. As the members of the international committee they did an excellent job of hosting the dozen or so international visitors. All three met us at the hotel in Nagoya the night before the Symposium and helped us check in and purchase train tickets for our subsequent travel within Japan. Once the conference began, they deftly performed the numerous challenging tasks, from organizing transportation to hosting receptions and dinners, which helped make the three-day conference so productive and pleasant. I am especially thankful to Professor Yanaka, who personally helped organize the trip for my partner, Professor Shelley Streeby, and I. She started to plan for my travel and talks well in advance of my arrival and continued for months to provide assistance. And throughout my visit she helped to make me feel most welcome.
I would also like to thank the students, staff and faculty at Nanzan University in Nagoya for doing such an excellent job of hosting the International Symposium in honor of the 40th anniversary of the founding of JAAS as well as the JAAS Conference. For someone like myself who is interested in American Studies and globalization, the Symposium was fascinating. That day, organized under the rubrics “Framing American Studies in Trans-Pacific Perspective” and “Cultural and Political Exchange Across the Pacific,” speakers from Australia, China, Japan, the Philippines, Russia, South Korea, and the U.S. delivered an interesting and diverse group of papers. The commentators for the two panels raised incisive questions about the talks and, more broadly, about methods and concepts. I was particularly interested in the remarks by the discussant for the second panel, Fumiko Nishizaki (Seikei University, Japan), concerning the limits and possibilities of taking “the trans-Pacific” as a unit of analysis. Both before and after the panel, I greatly enjoyed talking with her, in part because we have similar editorial positions—she is the editor of the Japanese Journal of American Studies and I have just become the editor of American Quarterly. At different points during the conference I was also fortunate to speak with Professor Natsuki Aruga (Saitama University) who led the roundtable discussion that concluded the Symposium. Prof. Aruga is also the Vice President of JAAS, and the chair of the Symposium planning committee, and I greatly admired her leadership within the organization.
The International Symposium enabled me to engage in lively and intense discussions with American Studies scholars from across the Pacific. During the conference, the international visitors participated together in organized events such as lunches and sightseeing trips, and as a result I got to know scholars such as Oscar V. Campomanes (Atheneo de Manila University, Philippines), Seong-Ho Lim (Kyung Hee University, South Korea), Gary Okihiro (Columbia University, United States), Sung Hee Park (Ewha Woman"s University, South Korea), Ji-moon Suh (Korea University, South Korea), Victor V. Sumsky (Russian Academy of Sciences, Russia), and Ian Tyrrell (University of New South Wales, Australia). And of course at the same time I became better acquainted with my colleague Karen Halttunen and my fellow delegate Paul Kramer.
After the International Symposium our hosts provided us with a beautiful reception. Preceded by warm toasts and friendly speeches, the wonderful food and conversation made it a memorable evening. The following day, during the conference sessions in Japanese, our hosts arraigned for the international visitors to tour Nagoya Castle before returning to Nanzan for the Presidential Addresses of Professors Daizaburo Yui (Tokyo Woman"s Christian University and JAAS President) and Karen Halttunen. The first was a provocative comparison between the Asia Pacific Wars and the contemporary war on terror; the second analyzed forms of New England antiquarianism that disarticulated the region from the national imaginary. Both were stimulating and generated animated discussions. During the afternoon sessions in Japanese, the international guests were once again taken sightseeing, this time to a local museum, before returning to the University for a nice reception.
I began the final day of the conference by attending a workshop titled “Relocating ‘America” in American Studies,” chaired by Julie Higashi (Ritsumeikan University) and including papers by Sheila Hones (U of Tokyo), Kohei Kawashima, (Musashi University), and Paul Kramer. The panel stimulated a lively discussion and debate about the significance of geography and place in American Studies that complemented Karen"s Presidential Address. My own panel took place that afternoon and was chaired by Yasuhiro Katagiri (Tokai University). In addition to my paper, “American Studies, Asia Pacific Studies, and Latin American Studies in the World System: Lessons from the History of Global Cinema,” it included a paper by Gayle Sato (Meiji University, Tokyo) called “Manzanar Murakami and Kafka on the Shore: A Transnational Reading of Japanese/American War Memory in Novels by Karen Tei Yamashita and Murakami Haruki”; and one by Professor Park titled “Truth or Dare: The Changing Views on Opinion in News.” The questions and comments from the audience were excellent, and in my case I was pleased that people were interested in my larger call for research at the intersection of the three area studies. Both during the question and answer period and after my talk I was happy to be able to speak with a number of graduate students and junior faculty who were thinking about histories of race and popular culture in comparative and transnational ways. And I greatly benefited from the comments and questions I received from Professors Aruga and Suh, especially. Finally, the international visitors and the conference organizers enjoyed a beautiful meal and celebrated the conclusion of an excellent conference.
On Monday June 12 Professor Yanaka helped the ASA group and the South Korean delegation negotiate the potentially confusing trip from the conference hotel to the bullet train that would take us to Doshisha University in Kyoto. After checking into the hotel we all gathered to find a place for lunch, and during the walk I enjoyed talking with Professor Park about our shared interests in debates over intellectual property and international relations in Asia and Latin America. After a brief sightseeing tour of Kyoto"s pachinko palaces and covered shopping arcades, Shelley and I returned to the hotel to rest for the following day"s activities. The next morning we were met by Professor Gavin James Campbell of the Graduate School of American Studies at Doshisha. Professor Campbell had generously organized our visit, and he escorted us through the grounds of the old Imperial Palace to the gates of the University and an ivy-covered building that recalled a New England college. (Doshisha"s founder, in fact, graduated from Amherst.). There we enjoyed a lovely lunch with President Eiji Hatta and American Studies faculty members Takashi Sasaki, Keiko Ikedo, and Dean Masahiro Hosoya. I am especially grateful to Dean Hosoya for so graciously hosting us. Later that afternoon, the Korean and U.S. professors, including Professor Streeby, joined Doshisha faculty, including Professor Ikedo and Professor Christian Collet, in a roundtable discussion concerning the prospects for postnationalist American Studies. For those of us who had recently participated in the JAAS conference, this was an interesting moment of reflection upon the different ways that scholars had positioned the U.S. in relationship to the world, and much of the conversation focused on the political and ethnical questions raised by doing American Studies work after 9-11; the complex relationships among culture, society, and the state; and significance of the present for the past and the past for the present.
The event was attended by faculty and graduate students and I had some of my most rewarding intellectual exchanges after the roundtable, talking with students about their research. I was particularly intrigued by the trajectory of one student who currently studies the works of Gloria Anzaldúa and Sandra Cisneros but who initially became interested in Chicano/a literature after reading Bless Me, Ultima, a novel that was written by my father"s cousin, Rudolfo Anaya. I also greatly enjoyed talking with Professor Ikedo since we share similar interests in the performance of cultural memory. I was intrigued by accounts of her current research on “historical re-enactors” at U.S. parks and other venues, as well as the research of one of her students into Japanese subcultures that appropriate music and fashion from the U.S. 1950s, a topic that resonates with my own study of similar Chicano/a contexts. After the roundtable, Dean Hosoya gave us a tour of the impressive Center for American Studies, including its excellent library. (As a media scholar within American Studies I was pleased to see that the library had a good collection of music, film, and television shows.) And that evening the Dean hosted a lovely dinner for us with Doshisha faculty. On the next day, Professor Campbell graciously offered to take Paul, Shelley, and I sight seeing in Kyoto. Along the way I was intrigued to talk to him about his new research project, a study of Western visitors to Japan!
On Thursday the 15th Karen, Paul, Shelley and I all said goodbye to Professors Park and Suh, who returned to Seoul, and boarded a train for Tokyo, where we were greeted by two graduate students from Keio University who escorted us to our hotel. With some free time before my next talk, Shelley and I attempted to negotiate the complicated Tokyo subway system. Made up of a tangle of color-coded lines, the bustling transit system can seem overwhelming, particularly with limited Japanese and in the heat and humidity of Tokyo"s rainy season. Although we made our share of mistakes, we found it an excellent way to see the city. In contrast with car-centric Los Angeles, it appeared that an important part of Tokyo life took place on the subway. In my admittedly limited experience, the city"s highly complex public transitscape converges in remarkable ways with a new mediascape. As a scholar of media and popular culture, I was interested in how the subway served as a central context for the use of media devices such as cell phones and game players, the reading of manga, and the display of fashion, and how all of these practices might map or mediate the transit of people, capital, and culture.
Many of the students and professors I met were in a constant state of transit. A number of people, for example, traveled several hours by train to attend my Saturday afternoon lecture at Rikkyo University. From the hotel Shelley and I took the subway to a nearby stop where we were met by a graduate student who escorted us to the University. I was invited by Professor Abe, who in addition to her role in JAAS works in Native American Studies and is affiliated with Rikkyo"s Institute for American Studies, the oldest such center in Japan. She was an exemplary host, arranging to have my paper translated into Japanese so that audience members with limited English could follow along, securing an excellent translator for the question and answer period, and publicizing my talk widely. As a result I was fortunate to have a large audience of around 100 students and professors hear my lecture on Native American media discourses and practices. Professor Abe thoughtfully invited a diverse collection of intellectuals to my talk, including a group interested in U.S. film and TV history and a critical mass of scholars working in Native American Studies, which made for an exciting interdisciplinary conversation afterwards. Finally, I had a fun and engaging dinner with a group of faculty and graduate students. Subsequently, Professor Abe has commissioned an essay from me for the Rikkyo American Studies Journal, and I hope this is just the beginning of a long and productive relationship.
The following Monday I attended a reception in honor of Karen graciously hosted in their home by Mark J. Davidson, Cultural Affairs Officer with the U.S. Embassy in Tokyo, and his wife Kuniko Davidson. I am grateful to them for their generous hospitality and for making possible a reunion with many of the new friends I made at the JAAS conference. Among others, the reception was attended by Juri Abe, Natsuki Aruga, Masahiro Hosoya, Fumiko Nishizaki, Naoki Onishi, and Hisako Yanaka., and I was happy to be able to speak with them again near the end of my visit.
My final lecture, “Visions of the Future in African American and Latino Popular Cultures,” took place at Tokyo"s Meiji University. I want to thank Professors Yoshikatsu Hayashi and Gayle Sato for organizing my talk and for gracefully accommodating my audio-visual needs, including some last minute requests. I was particularly pleased to again see Professor Sato whose panel I had been on at the JAAS conference. I enjoyed, among other things, talking to her about the representation of Latino Los Angeles in the novels of my former colleague from UC Santa Cruz, Karen Tei Yamashita, With the aid of a translator Professor Sato moderated the question and answer period after my talk and I am thankful for her insightful comments and questions. A mix of faculty and graduate students attended and the discussion afterward was thoughtful and engaging. I particularly enjoyed speaking to graduate students about their research, including those who joined us for dinner.
I hope I have expressed some sense of my appreciation to all the individuals and organizations that made my visit possible, especially my many Japanese hosts. I also hope I have conveyed my genuine excitement over the intense intellectual and cultural exchanges, as well as how much I learned during the different stops on my Japanese itinerary. Back in Los Angeles, reflecting on my experiences in various public spheres in Japan, I have a new appreciation for the difficulties but also the productive possibilities of transpacific research in American Studies. I have returned not only with new connections to Japanese intellectuals who share similar research, teaching, and professional interests, but also with a renewed energy for scholarship. The visit catalyzed my thinking about the editorship of American Quarterly, for example. Moreover, it has transformed the way I think about the transnational flows of media and popular culture that are central to my research. From going to a Nagoya salsa club, to strolling through the covered shopping arcades of Kyoto, to browsing through t-shirts in Tokyo thrift stores, to admiring the elaborate outfits, so reminiscent of Chicano/a Goths, worn by young people in the Harajuku district of the city, I took every available opportunity to learn about cultural contexts that were illuminatingly like and yet unlike ones I knew and studied. And while the depth and breadth of my knowledge remains limited, I was given an invaluable introduction to Japanese popular culture that has profoundly changed the ways I think about the distinct yet related cultural forms that animate much of my teaching and research. For all of these and other reasons I feel most fortunate to have made the trip.
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