Crossing the Straits: Fukuoka and Pusan in the Making and Unmaking of Empire

This talk will look at the making and unmaking of an imperial region within the Japanese Empire; that of the two cities of Fukuoka and Pusan and the urbanizing, industrializing zone that surrounded them. I place this study of regional imperialism and the idea of an imperial region in comparative frameworks to draw attention to how the scales at which we analyse Japanese imperialism may help or hinder our ability to connect its dynamics to those of other examples across the globe.  

This event is free and open to the public. Please RSVP to this event here.

About the speaker:

Hannah Shepherd is Assistant Professor in the Department of History at Yale University. Before joining the Yale faculty, she was Junior Research Fellow in History at Trinity College, University of Cambridge. She holds degrees from Harvard University (AM, PhD), SOAS (MA), and the University of Oxford (BA Hons). Shepherd’s teaching and research interests focus on modern Japan and its colonial empire, with an emphasis on the connected twentieth-century histories of imperial expansion, urban growth, and movement of peoples between Japan and Korea. Her current book project, Cities into Empire: Fukuoka, Pusan, and Japan’s Imperial Urbanization 1876-1953, focuses on two cities on either side of an imperial border. This project is based on her Ph.D. dissertation, for which she was awarded the 2019 Harold K. Gross Dissertation Prize by the Harvard Department of History. Her broader interests include urban and spatial history, Pacific history, migrants and migrations, and the histories of women in Empire.