WFU Conference – Program
The Civil Wars of Japan’s Meiji Restoration & National Reconciliation: Global Historical Perspectives
Friday January 30
9:15 Introductions, Greetings
9:45-10:15 Keynote Address
Hoya Tōru (Historiographical Institute, University of Tokyo)
“A Military History of the Boshin War”
10:15-11:30 Ships, Arms, and Global Connections to the Boshin War
Chair: Jay Ford (Wake Forest)
Skipp Orr (Asian Development Bank) “From Stonewall to Azuma: the Global Journey of a Confederate Iron Clad to Imperial Japan”
Harald Fuess (Heidelberg): “Rifles for the Revolution: Louis Kniffler & Co. and the Victorious Domains of the Meiji Restoration”
Comment: Dani Botsman (Yale)
11:30-12:30 Lunch
12:30-2:00 Literary & Visual Perspectives on the Restoration & Japan’s Place in the Nineteenth-Century World
Chair: Andy Rodekohr (Wake Forest)
Nick Albertson (Wake Forest) “White Chrysanthemum: A Dutiful Daughter’s Odyssey in the Wake of the Meiji Restoration”
Chelsea Foxwell (University of Chicago) “To Hell With the Restoration: ‘Odontaku shinbun kidan’ (Ghostly Accounts of the Sunday News, 1872-3) and News Images of the Early Meiji Period”
Elizabeth Chew (Reynolda House) “James McNeill Whistler and the Arts of Japan”
Comment: Gennifer Weisenfeld (Duke)
2:00-2:15 Coffee
2:15-3:30 National Reconciliation after Civil Wars in Europe, United States & Japan
Chair: Yaohua Shi (Wake Forest)
Paul Escott (Wake Forest) “Reconciliation, Coexistence, and Change” (United States & Spain)
Mark Ravina (Emory) “Saigō Takamori and Robert E. Lee as Figures of National Reconciliation”
Comment: Simon Partner (Duke)
3:30-4:30 Wake Forest Student Panel
Hunter Davis (Class of 2015)
“Edmund DeWitt Patterson-The Unlikely Rebel: The Impact of the American Civil War on a Northern-Born Man Fighting for the Confederacy”
Alex Thomas (Class of 2015)
“A Citizen of Japan and the World”
Comment: Dani Botsman (Yale)
Saturday January 31
8:45-10:15 Japan’s Civil Wars: “Inside” and “Outside” Perspectives
Chair: Qiong Zhang (Wake Forest)
Maren Ehlers (UNC Charlotte): “Mountain Demons from Mito – The Arrival of Civil War in 1864”
Brian Platt (George Mason) “Civil War and Mobilization: Japan in Comparative Perspective”
Saeyoung Park (Davidson) “Reconfiguring Which Universe? The Unyō Maru Crisis of 1875 from Chosŏn Korean and Regional Perspectives”
Comment: Tobie Meyer-Fong (Johns Hopkins)
10:15-10:30 coffee
10:30-11:45 Pacific Frontiers and Civil Wars in Japan and the US
Chair: Yasuko Takata Rallings (Wake Forest)
Noell Wilson (University of Mississippi) “American Whalers and War in the 1860s:
How Civil War in the US and Japan Transformed North Pacific Whaling”
Lisa Blee (Wake Forest) “A Jurisdictional Solution to Territorial Crisis on the US Pacific Frontier: Indigenous People, Federal Law, and the Making of the Settler Colonial Nation”
Comment: Meg McKean (Duke)
11:45-12:45 lunch
12:45-2:15
Rebuilding after the Boshin War & US Civil War
Chair: Kristina Troost (Duke)
Robert Hellyer (Wake Forest) “From Swords to Hoes: Ex-Samurai as Tea Farmers”
Michael Pisapia (Wake Forest): “Gender, Education and the Nation-State in the United States and Japan, 1865-1890”
David Phillips (Wake Forest): “Imagery and Nation-Building: Tokyo’s Post-Restoration Experiment in Planning and Architecture”
Comment: Morgan Pitelka (UNC Chapel Hill)
2:15-2:30 Comments by David Howell (Harvard)
2:30-3:30 General discussion
3:30 Conference Closes