CM Seminar: Doing Transnational Public History: The Okinawa Memories Initiative

Abstract:

The Okinawa Memories Initiative (OMI) is a public history project that explores the experience of dramatic change in postwar Okinawa under the presence of the largest American military base complex in East Asia. Public history has, with few exceptions, been essentially an effort of local historians with local populations. But the broader goal of OMI has been to think about the impact of the bases on all who have a stake in Okinawa—Okinawans in the islands and abroad in diaspora as well as Americans on base and migrants from other parts of Asia and Latin America. This has meant envisioning a public history project that is in several languages and engages audiences in places throughout the globe. In pursuit of those goals, OMI centers pedagogical and public service approaches to its research agendas. This talk will cover the different sources OMI develops for its research, the organization of the project and future directions.

Bio:

Alan Christy received his PhD in History at the University of Chicago. He began teaching at UC Santa Cruz in 1995. He studies the modern history of Japan and Okinawa, the formation of social sciences in Japan and historical memory. With Prof. Alice Yang, he is the co-Director of the Center for the Study of Pacific War Memory, a research center housed in The Humanities Institute. He has published two books, A Discipline on Foot: Japanese Native Ethnology, 1910-1945 (Rowman and Littlefield, 2012) and a translation of Rereading Japanese History, by Amino Yoshihiko (Center for Japanese Studies, University of Michigan, 2012).

The Zoom access link and passcode are:
https://ucsc.zoom.us/j/95102901569?pwd=d3hGZ21YN2Q0K21tOHBkL2dwNDN2Zz09
Passcode: 02222021