EARLY MODERN JAPANESE CULTURAL STUDIES
In the past several decades, scholarship on the literature, history, and art history of Early Modern Japan, known as the Edo Period, has achieved spectacular development in Japanese academia. Our department is one of the few US universities equipped to teach and fully engage in this area of scholarship. Our faculty is exceptionally strong in Edo studies. Following in the footsteps of previous UCSB faculty Robert Backus, an important Edo literature and intellectual history specialist (still teaching an occasional course as professor emeritus) and Henry D. Smith, a leading scholar of Edo history and culture (currently teaching at Columbia University,) more than half of the Japan-side faculty who have joined UCSB over the last decade specialize in Edo. Included are: Haruko Iwasaki (early modern popular literature, culture, and language), Luke Roberts (early modern history), Katherine Saltzman-Li (early modern drama), and Miriam Wattles (early modern art history). Thanks to this unique concentration of Edo scholars in various fields, the Department is able to offer many courses that expose undergraduate and graduate students to the history and culture of Early Modern Japan. High-level training is offered to both undergraduates and graduate students in the complex written language, an opportunity unavailable at most U.S. universities.
Another important strength of our program is the interdisciplinary research among the faculty. An extraordinary degree of interaction occurred between writers and other kinds of artists, leading to intense interconnectedness among the verbal, visual, and dramatic arts. Our faculty focus on these interactions in their research and in the courses they teach. Students who choose to pursue an Edo specialization in their studies will be expected to develop linguistic, historical, and cultural expertise that will allow them to approach their work within an interdisciplinary framework. |
FACULTY
Haruko Iwasaki
(early modern popular literature, culture, and language)
Luke Roberts
(early modern history)
Katherine Saltzman-Li
(early modern drama)
Miriam Wattles
(early modern art history) |
