MJHA Distinguished Annual Lecture
Our flagship annual event, the Modern Japan History Association's Distinguished Annual Lecture recognizes the achievements and contributions of a foremost scholar in the field of modern Japanese history. Each scholar in the field can give the lecture only once.
2026 Distinguished Annual Lecture: Jordan Sand
Thursday, October 8, 2026 | 7:00-8:30 PM ETWednesday, October 9, 2026 | 8:00-9:30 AM JST
REGISTER FOR ZOOM HERE
The fourth annual MJHA Distinguished Annual Lecture, on a topic TBA, will be given in October 2026 by Jordan Sand, Professor of Japanese History, Georgetown University.
The Stuff of Japanese History: Materialist Approaches
Digitization is altering how people apprehend lived reality. Historians can respond by producing work that is physically located, embodied, and material. Modern Japan provides unusually fertile ground for such materialist approaches. Using examples of four methods of learning from things — “unintentional witnessing,” “thing theory,” “thermodynamics,” and “object-oriented ontology” — this presentation will illustrate the insights to be gained from studying the “stuff” of Japanese history.