Stranger in the Shogun’s City: From the Archive to the Page
East Asian Humanities and Culture Talks
April 8, 2025
3:30 PM - 5:00 PM
You are cordially invited to a guest lecture, “Stranger in the Shogun’s City: From the Archive to the Page” organized by the Department of Linguistics as part of our East Asian Humanities and Culture talk series. The talk is April 8 from 3:30-5:00 pm in 308 Grant Hall. Light refreshments will be provided after the event.
This exciting talk explores the challenges of narrating the life of Tsuneno, a 19th century Japanese woman who left her privileged rural life for a precarious existence in Edo (now Tokyo). Despite her rich but limited archival record, her story offers insight into women's mobility and literacy in early modern Japan. The discussion addresses gaps in historical sources, narrative choices, and the balance between personal interpretation and historical accuracy.
Dr. Amy Stanley is the Orrington Lunt Professor of History at Northwestern University. Primarily a social historian of early modern and modern Japan, she has special interests in global history, women's and gender history, and narrative. She is the author of Selling Women: Prostitution, Markets, and the Household in Early Modern Japan (UC Press 2012), as well as articles in the American Historical Review, The Journal of Japanese Studies, and The Journal of Asian Studies. Her most recent book, Stranger in the Shogun’s City: A Japanese Woman and Her World (Scribner, 2020), won the National Book Critics’ Circle Award in Biography and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. She received her PhD in East Asian Languages and Civilizations from Harvard in 2007, and she has held fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the Japan Foundation, the Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. She is currently at work on a narrative history of Japan from 1582 to 1945.
Date posted
Apr 4, 2025
Date updated
Apr 4, 2025