Via 서울대학교.
The University of Pittsburgh's Asian Studies Center will host Takashi Fujitani and his talk "Feeling of Freedom: Japanese and American Wartime Films on the Liberation of the Philippines, 1943-45" on March 26.
This presentation analyzes Japanese and American filmic representations of the liberation of the Philippines during World War II in the Asia-Pacific. Professor Fujitani argues that while the occupations of both these militarized empires disavowed colonialist and cam in the name of freedom and self-determination for all peoples, they were very similar attempts to establish a new and postcolonial form of empire that depended upon producing the feeling that their empires enabled freedom and equality. They talk further explores how the American and Japanese films mobilized the tropes of choice, death, romance, and race to produce images of their empires as spaces of freedom and equality.The event starts at 3:00 pm in 4130 Posvar Hall (map) and is free and open to the public.
Takashi Fujitani is the Dr. David Chu Professor and Director in Asia Pacific Studies. His research focuses especially on modern and contemporary Japanese history, East Asian history, Asian American history, and transnational history (primarily U.S./Japan and Asia Pacific).
Much of his past and current research has centred on the intersections of nationalism, colonialism, war, memory, racism, ethnicity, and gender, as well as the disciplinary and area studies boundaries that have figured our ways of studying these issues. He is the author of Splendid Monarchy (UC Press, 1996; Japanese version, NHK Books, 1994; Korean translation, Yeesan Press, 2003) and Race for Empire: Koreans as Japanese and Japanese as Koreans in WWII (UC Press, 2011; Japanese version forthcoming from Iwanami Shoten); co-editor of Perilous Memories: The Asia Pacific War(s) (Duke U. Press, 2001); and editor of the series Asia Pacific Modern (UC Press).
