Lecture: Commercialism, Cuisine, and the Other Hiroshige

May 18, 2000

Note: This program was originally scheduled for May 17
Lecture: Commercialism, Cuisine, and the Other Hiroshige
Hans Thomsen (Dept. of Art and Archaelogy, Princeton University)
403 Kent Hall, Columbia University (116th St. & Amsterdam Ave.)
6:30 PM
Co-sponsored by the Ukiyo-e Society of America
Program Change: Donna Welton’s lecture on Genroku Period Prints and Printed Books has been replaced by this program

NOTOJI Masako  (Professor of Area Studies)

Notoji Masako, a Professor at the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, University of Tokyo, is considered one of Japan’s most active anthropologists. Professor Notoji attended graduate school in the United States (the University of California, Los Angeles), taught at Musashi University in the 1980s and early 1990s, and has been affiliated with the University of Tokyo since 1992. In 1994, she was the Toyota Visiting Professor at the Center for Japanese Studies, University of Michigan.

Professor Notoji’s research interests focus on U.S. Popular Culture, Comparative Ethnic Relations, and U.S.-Japan Cultural Relations. Several of her major publications include Dizunirando to iu seichi (Disneyland as America’s Sacred Land, Tokyo, Iwanami Shoten, 1990); “Some Aspects of the Cultural Identity Crisis of Modern Japanese Intellectuals: The Case of Junichiro Tanizaki,” Journal of Asian Culture (UCLA) vol. 5, 1981; “Directions of the U.S. Multiculturalism,” in Why Ethnicity Now? (University of Tokyo Press, 1994, in Japanese); and “Ethno-politics in Historical Exhibits in the U.S.,” in Multiculturalism in America (University of Tokyo Press, 1999, in Japanese).

During her two-month stay (March to May 2001) as a Visiting Fellow of the Donald Keene Center, Professor Notoji presented various lectures and workshops at Columbia University (at the Donald Keene Center, the American Studies Program, the East Asian Institute, the Department of Anthropology, the Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race, the History Student Benkyokai, and Teachers College), Brown University, the University of Washington, and Rutgers University. Lecture titles included: Anthropology and History in Japan; Teaching American Studies in Japan; Popular Uses of History in Japanese Life; Dazzlement, Consumption, and the Hyperreal: American Theme Parks in Japan; Diversity in Japan; The Role of Sports in U.S.-Japan Cultural Relations; and New Directions in American Studies in Japan. Professor Notoji also spent a significant amount of time meeting with students from area universities, discussing her varied academic, professional and cultural interests with students of Anthropology, History, International Studies, American Studies, Literature, Language and Religion.