Select Presentations

An updated and revised version of this page is available at the new Re-Envisioning Japan.

This is a list of paper presentations, panels, and workshops related to Re-Envisioning Japan: Japan as Destination in 20th Century Visual and Material Culture since 2006. The list also includes upcoming presentation.  The earliest presentation, “Japanese Studies: Past, Present, Future” (Nagoya University, 2006) was about my decision to introduce objects from my collection in the classroom and how I developed a conceptual framework for using visual and material culture in “Tourist Japan,” my course based on this project, which I taught for the first time in 2002. I refined my focus on this subject for two subsequent conferences: the first was on using material culture in the undergraduate Asian studies curriculum (Beloit, 2009), and the second focused on new approaches to teaching Japanese studies in higher education (De Paul, 2010). Between 2009 and 2012, I spent a great deal of time huddled over a workbench in the Moving Image Department at the George Eastman Museum, inspecting amateur and educational small gauge films in their collection, including titles from Eastman Kodak’s circulating Kodascope Library (films for home entertainment and education, produced between 1924-1939 but circulating in some countries as late as the 1960s) and Eastman Classroom Films (Eastman Kodak Co., Teaching Division). The papers I gave in 2011-2012 (Columbia University, McGill University, Rikkyō University, Northeast Historic Film Archive), focused on the results of this work. All presentations that I have given since 2013, when this site was established, have focused on Re-Envisioning Japan as an open-ended digital humanities project comprising both a physical collection and a digital environment designed through a process of collaboration and iteration for the purpose of exhibiting this collection. For example, in designing this site we have placed a high priority on creating the best possible digital surrogate for each object in order to emphasize its materiality, recognizing the tendency for casual or passive viewers to misinterpret these objects as merely two-dimensional images. In addition, reiterative and collaborative prototyping also been essential to the process of designing a framework that reflects my research and the curatorial choices that I have made in building it.

 

Upcoming presentations

“Archives in Between: Digital Humanities and Material Culture in Asian Studies Scholarship and Teaching, ” panel and workshop, Association for Asian Studies annual conference, Toronto, March 16, 2016. Panel Chair and presentation. (refereed)

 

2013-2016

“Re-Envisioning Japan: Ephemeral Film Recuperation, Restoration, and Digital Curation,” panel with Nora Dimmock and Josh Romphf, AMIA 2016, Association of Moving Image Archivists, Pittsburgh, Nov. 10, 2016. Panel organizer and presentation. (refereed)

Re-Envisioning Japan: Recuperating Ephemeral Histories through Collaborative Digital Curation, DH Pedagogy, and Web-Based Publication” (with Nora Dimmock and Iskandar Zulkarnain), Negotiating Borders through Digital Scholarship, Bucknell University Digital Scholarship Conference. Bucknell University, October 28, 2016. (refereed)

“Routes: 20th Century Japan in Objects, Images, and Personal Exchange,”  Department of  Languages, Literatures and Linguistics, Syracuse University, (April 1, 2016, invited speaker).

 Archives In Between: Cultural Preservation, Material to Digital. Panel organizer, moderator, and presentation,  “Re-Envisioning Japan: a digital archive of material culture.” University of Rochester, February 20, 2015.

“Introducing Re-Envisioning Japan,” for the panel, “Re-Envisioning Japan: a Faculty-DH Center Collaboration,” Digital Scholarship Colloquium 2014: Pedagogy and Practices, The Freedman Center for Digital Scholarship, Kelvin Smith Library, Case Western Reserve University, November 6, 2014. Panel organizer and presenter for panel on Re-Envisioning Japan with REJ team members in the University of Rochester Digital Humanities Center. (refereed)

“Re-Envisioning Japan as Destination in 20th Century Visual and Material Culture,” 2014 International Conference on Digital Future and Mediated Society: Digital Media and Cultural Communication, Zhejiang University (China), May 25, 2014. (invited speaker)

“Re-Envisioning Japan,” University of Southern Alabama, March 25, 2013. (invited speaker)

 

2011-2012

“Re-Envisioning Japan,” UR Year One, University of Rochester, September 18, 2012.

“Destination Japan: Japan in Cherry Blossom Time and Japan as Seen From a Rickshaw,” Wunderkino 2: On the Varieties of Cinematic Experience, 13th Annual Northeast Historic Film Summer Symposium, Northeast Historic Film Archive, July 26-28, 2012. (refereed)

“Re-envisioning Japan in Silent Educational and Travel Films,” Asian Studies Conference Japan, Rikkyō University, June 30-July 1, 2012. (refereed)

“The Personal Collection as Alternative Archive,” The Makino Collection at Columbia: The Present and the Future of an Archive, Columbia University, November 11, 2011. (invited speaker)

“Destination Japan: Identifying Japan in 20th Century Visual and Material Culture,” McGill University, March 24, 2011. (invited speaker)

“Finding Film,” guest lecture for course taught by Professor Jane Gaines (“Film Finding”), Columbia University, February 18, 2011. (invited speaker)

 

2006-2010

“Tourist Japan: Identifying Japan in 20th century Visual and Material Culture,” Teaching Japan: Pedagogical Possibilities in US Higher Education, DePaul University, October 29-30, 2010. (refereed)

“Tourist Japan,” Asian Arts and Material Culture Colloquium, Beloit College, September 25-26, 2009. Freeman Colloquium on new approaches to using material culture in the Asian Studies undergraduate curriculum. (refereed)

“Nihon bunkagaku–kako, genzai, shōrai” (「日本文化学—過去、現在、将来」/Japanese Studies: Past, Present, Future). Lecture in Japanese, Nagoya University workshop, January 9, 2006, Nayoga, Japan. (invited speaker)