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