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CJS Lecture Series | Creation of and Participation in Networks: Visiting the Japan Biographical Database

Bettina Gramlich-Oka, Professor of Japanese History, Faculty of Liberal Arts, Sophia University, Japan
Thursday, December 9, 2021
7:00-8:30 PM
Off Campus Location
Please take note of the 7pm (Ann Arbor time) starting time.

For the edited volume Women and Networks in Nineteenth Century Japan (University of Michigan Press, 2020) ten scholars gathered to identify and examine women’s involvement in networks. With the aim to heighten awareness of the gendered history of research on networks, all ten authors thus placed women in the center of their analyses. The result paints a heterogeneous picture which preempts the determination of one simple network pattern or a uniform type of networks particular to “women.” Rather the diversity indicate that not gender alone but many other factors play into the individual’s form of participation in networks. In the presentation, I take this specific result of the volume further by making a comparison of the involvement in networks by a husband and a wife: Rai Shizu and Rai Shunsui. I do with the help of the visualization tools of the Japan Biographical Database.


Bettina Gramlich-Oka is Professor of Japanese History at the Faculty of Liberal Arts, Sophia University. Some of her publications include Thinking Like a Man: Tadano Makuzu (Brill, 2006) and the coedited volume Economic Thought in Early Modern Japan (Brill, 2010). In the past years, her research centers on the exploration of networks of the Rai family from Hiroshima during the Tokugawa period. The development of the online Japan Biographical Database ( https://proxy.qualtrics.com/proxy/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fjbdb.jp%2F&token=cC8PSwwI5mKuO7eTtsIPENF1WA0Jspur9zV%2B3UAd1Ig%3D) is part of this endeavor, as well as the coedited volume with Anne Walthall, Miyazaki Fumiko, Sugano Noriko, Women and Networks in Nineteenth Century Japan (University of Michigan Press, 2020). Gramlich-Oka is currently the chief editor of Monumenta Nipponica

Please register for the Zoom event here:
https://umich.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_Fhy9la3qQSyAk8yeM7hKhg

This colloquium series is made possible by the generous support of the U.S. Department of Education Title VI grant.

If there is anything we can do to make this event accessible to you, please contact us. Please be aware that advance notice is necessary as some accommodations may require more time for the university to arrange.
Building: Off Campus Location
Location: Virtual
Event Type: Livestream / Virtual
Tags: Asia, Japanese Studies
Source: Happening @ Michigan from Center for Japanese Studies, International Institute, Asian Languages and Cultures

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