The project focuses on Japan's and Germany's emergence as newly formed nation-states in the late nineteenth century. Uncertain political identities were then covered-up by a rhetoric of grand ambitions. What by now has often faded out of memory in both countries is the fact that in the process of consolidating their nation-state at home, the two countries also established empires abroad such as Germany in Africa and Japan in Korea and China. The purpose of this bi-lateral cooperation between research teams in Germany and Japan is to look at the history of their respective empires, its implication for the present and its current representations.
The research project “Entangled Pasts in a Global Present: Gender, Labor and Citizenship” will be co-conducted by Prof. Harald Fuess together with Yoko Nagahara, Professor of History at the Graduate School of Letters at Kyoto University, including a research team of postdoctoral and doctoral students from both universities.
The kick-off workshop “Labor and Citizenship in the Twentieth Century” will take place in the assembly hall of Rakuyu-Kaikan at Kyoto University, on Friday April 14, 2017. At this workshop, members of the team from Heidelberg are going to give presentations on their research topics. The second workshop on “Gender and Race in Global History” will be held in Heidelberg in December 2017. The research team from Heidelberg then returns to Kyoto for the third workshop prior to the HeKKSaGOn meeting in April 2018 to discuss the politics of competing memories and the writing of common histories.
The funding is a cooperated program between the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) and the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS). The Japan Society for the Promotion of Science is an independent administrative institution, established for contributing to the advancement of science in all fields of the natural and social sciences and the humanities.
Harald Fuess is Chair for Cultural Economic History at the Cluster “Asia and Europe” and at the Heidelberg Centre for Transcultural Studies. He is also Project Professor in Top Global University Program at Kyoto University.
The team from Heidelberg consisting of researchers and young scholars is represented by: M.A. Takuma Melber, M.A. Andreas Eichleter, Dr. Steven Ivings, M.A. Maksym Grinenko, Dr. Till Knaudt and Dr. Jaok Kwon-Hein.
Pictures by Jordy Meow (Wikimedia)