Book Talk: Mari Yoshihara: Unpredictable Agents

February 16, 4:00pm - 5:00pm
Mānoa Campus, In Person - Hamilton Library Room 306 or Zoom - Register below

Mari Yoshihara (editor) is a professor of American Studies at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa and is the editor of American Quarterly. Her publications include Dearest Lenny: Letters from Japan and the Making of the World Maestro (Oxford, 2019), Musicians from a Different Shore: Asians and Asian Americans in Classical Music (Temple, 2007), Embracing the East: White Women and American Orientalist (Oxford, 2003), as well as numerous books in Japanese.

Sanae Nakatani is an associate professor at the University Education Center at Tokyo Metropolitan University. She earned her PhD in American Studies from the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa, and her research focuses on Nisei designers Isamu Noguchi, George Nakashima, and Minoru Yamasaki.

Ikue Kina is a professor at the University of the Ryukyus. Born and raised in Okinawa, she graduated from the University of the Ryukyus in 1990, founded in 1950 under U.S. rule. She has taught American literature with gender and indigenous perspectives at the university since 1996.

Unpredictable Agents is a collection of twelve personal essays by Japanese scholars of American studies recounting how they encountered “America” and came to dedicate their careers to studying it. The stories reveal the obvious yet often neglected fact that Japanese scholars neither come from the same backgrounds nor occupy similar identities solely because of their shared ethnicity and citizenship. Together, the essays illustrate the complex positionalities, fluid identities, ambivalent embrace, and unpredictable agency of Japan’s Americanists who continue to chart their own course in and across the Pacific. In this conversation, the editor and two of the contributors to the collection will share their stories, reflect on their paths as Americanists, and discuss the book’s significance for diverse audiences.


Ticket Information
Register in advance for the zoom access to this meeting

Event Sponsor
UH Press and Hamilton Library, Mānoa Campus

More Information
Clem Guthro, 8089567205, guthroc@hawaii.edu

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