Please join the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures (EALC) for the second annual John Wang Distinguished Lecture in Asian Studies: “Toward a More Fluid Area Studies: Japan in the Age of Three Worlds” by Dr. Michael K. Bourdaghs. 

This event is open to the general public and will take place on Tuesday, May 26, 2026, in Levinthal Hall, Stanford Humanities Center.

Dr. Michael K. Bourdaghs is the Robert S. Ingersoll Distinguished Service Professor of East Asian Languages & Cultures at the University of Chicago and the author, most recently, of A Fictional Commons: Natsume Sōseki and the Properties of Modern Literature (2020). His previous books include Sayonara Amerika, Sayonara Nippon: A Geopolitical Prehistory of J-Pop (2012, Japanese translation 2012) and The Dawn That Never Comes: Shimazaki Tōson and Japanese Nationalism (2003). He is also an active translator, including Kojin Karatani's The Structure of World History: From Modes of Exchange to Modes of Production (2014). A native of Minnesota, he received his Ph.D. in East Asian Literature from Cornell University in 1996. He has received, among others, a Mellon Fellowship in the Humanities (1989), a Japan Foundation Research Fellowship (2000), and a Guggenheim Fellowship (2019).

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Details:

When: Tuesday, May 26, 2026 | Reception: 3:30 PM | Lecture: 4:30 PM

Where: Levinthal Hall, Stanford Humanities Center, 424 Santa Teresa St, Stanford, CA 94305

Admission: Open to the general public. Attend in person or participate virtually through Zoom. Registration is required for both options.

Please complete the RSVP Form to register before the event. Your response will help us plan accordingly.

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"Toward a More Fluid Area Studies: Japan in the Age of Three Worlds”

By: Dr. Michael K. Bourdaghs, Robert S. Ingersoll Distinguished Service Professor in East Asian Languages and Civilizations, University of Chicago

Abstract: Any project to critically rethink Japan’s cultural and intellectual history from the Cold War era has to grapple with the fact the Japan Studies is itself, as a form of area studies, a product of the Cold War. The very categories and methods that define this form of scholarship carry on problematic ideological legacies that continue to shape scholarly and popular understanding of the region. This lecture presents an experimental model for moving beyond Cold War structures for studying Japan precisely by returning its gaze to the Cold War world and proposing a more fluid model for approaching the work of Japanese cultural producers from the last half of the twentieth century, rethinking Japan not as an area but rather as a nexus in the flows of the Three Worlds of the Cold War era.

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For any inquiries or technical difficulties, please contact Kim Nguyen at thkimng@stanford.edu.

We hope to see you there!