Philosophizing ‘Japan’: Minoda Muneki and the Question of Japaneseness
5480 South Cornell Avenue Apartment #512A Chicago, IL 60615
James E. Ketelaar, Susan L. Burns, Michael N. Forster
My interests deal with the process through which ideas put forward by intellectuals contribute to shaping social reality, and accounting for how ideas take on forms unanticipated by those who express them. As a case study, I analyze the Japanist movement of the interwar period in Japan, focusing on Minoda Muneki, who is often called the “Joseph McCarthy of Japan.” By evaluating the intellectual production of such actors in their literary, philosophical and political contexts, I critique the historiographical tendency to frame ultranationalists as foreign to rational discourse and recount the ways in which political ideals shape social reality.
Introduction to East Asian Civilizations: Japan Introduction to East Asian Civilizations: Vietnam
"The World in their Image: Utopian Theories of Leadership and Empire in Wartime Japan,” October 2011, 16th Annual Graduate Student Symposium, UCLA Terasaki Center for Japanese Studies. “The Language of Japanism,” Oct. 3, 2010, panel on “Embodied Japan: Language and Ritual Performance in the Modern Period.” Midwest Conference on Asian Affairs 2010, The Ohio State University. Tosaka Jun, “The Fate of Japanism: from Fascism to Emperorism” and “Liberalist Philosophy and Materialism: Against two types of liberalist philosophy” (Translation) in Tosaka Jun: Marxist Philosopher and Cultural Critic (forthcoming). Koyasu Nobukuni, "Japanese Intellectuals in China" (Translation with introduction) Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus (forthcoming).
International Institute of Education Fulbright Fellow, 2007-08
Organizer, Graduate Student Conference in East Asian Studies, 2012; Japanese interpreter for campus events involving guest speakers and performers from Japan; Member of English language translation team for the cultural theory journal "Shiso Chizu"