Japanese JAPN

Commencement Reception: Japanese Studies

Sponsored by:
Japanese
Middlebury College Department of Japanese Studies invites graduates and their families and friends to a Virtual Graduation Reception on Saturday, May 22, 2021 7:00 – 8:00pm (Eastern Daylight Time). Please join us to celebrate and congratulate our 2021 graduates. We look forward to seeing you and meeting your families. Please RSVP to lwhite@middlebury.edu by May 20.

Virtual Middlebury

The Myth of Homogeneity and the Realities of Racism in Japan, by Michael Sharpe

Sponsored by:
Japanese
This lecture interrogates the notions that Japan is homogenous and racism does not exist there. It highlights Japan’s heterogeneity and the ways in which the idea of homogeneity was constructed by various actors from the time of the late 19th century up to today. With the promotion of Japanese empire, there was expansion via colonialism into Asia where racism and ethnic hierarchy was readily used. This was in fact a multiethnic empire that strived to colonize with the Japanese at the top of the hierarchy and the denigration of other Asians peoples as backwards and inferior.

Virtual Middlebury

Closed to the Public

Talk by Benjamin Boas: "How I Published My Own Manga In Japan"

Sponsored by:
Japanese and East Asian Studies
In this talk, Benjamin will discuss how an early love of Japanese popular culture led him to study Japanese, move to Japan, and eventually publish a manga with the major Japanese publishing house, Shogakukan. He will describe his journey along the way including competing in international mahjong championships, turning his research on the Japanese gaming world into a Fulbright Fellowship and being appointed the official tourism ambassador for Tokyo’s Nakano Ward.

Franklin Environmental Center, The Orchard-Hillcrest 103

Open to the Public

Food, Gender, and Rock n Roll: Shonen Knife's Musical Oeuvre

Sponsored by:
Japanese
Brooke H. McCorkle, Assistant Professor in Music and Dance Department, University of Vermont, specializes in opera of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, film music, and the music of modern Japan. In particular she focuses on the different ways Western-style music has participated in Japanese political discourses over the last 150 years.

Franklin Environmental Center, The Orchard-Hillcrest 103

Open to the Public

Japanese film "Shusenjo"

Sponsored by:
Japanese
Director Miki Dezaki will screen his award-winning documentary, Shusenjo, that focuses on the Japanese “comfort women” system that spread throughout Asia in Korea, China, Taiwan, the Philippines, Indonesia, Burma, Malaysia, East Timor, and Micronesia during the 1930s and 1940s. The film is based on recent interviews with activists trying to get sincere apologies from the Japanese government and nationalists who question the facts that expose the widespread government- and military-backed infrastructure of the “comfort women” system. A Q & A will follow.

McCardell Bicentennial Hall 220