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Dr. Owen Griffiths Associate Professor of History Coordinator, Zhejiang Exchange-China Summer Study Faculty Adviser, ATLIS Mount Allison University 63D York St. Sackville, NB, Canada E4L 1G9 Tel: (506) 364-2359 E-mail: ogriffiths@mta.ca |
Education
May 2000: Ph.D., History, University of British Columbia, “The Reconstruction of Self and Society in Early Postwar Japan, 1945-49.”
April 1996 – February 1997: AIEJ Research Fellow, Tokyo University of Foreign Studies.
April 1991 – July 1992: Monbushô Research Student, Meiji University, Tokyo.
June 1989: B.A., History/Japanese Studies, University of Victoria. *
Teaching:
Courses Offered for 2009-10
Fall 2009
HIST 2721: Patterns of Human Settlement (T/Th 8:30 – 9:50)
This survey course in comparative history explores the patterns of human migration throughout the world, concentrating particularly on the relationship between geography and culture. Using Asia as its focus, the course examines how societies grow and decline and how historical identities are constructed from these processes.
HIST 3761: The Making of Modern East Asia (T/Th 10:00 – 11:20)
The transformation of the modern world is in large measure the story of the growth and development of East Asia. Focusing on Japan and China, this course examines the history of this region since the nineteenth century, paying particular attention to how people wrestled with the radical changes wrought by their increasing interaction with each other and the Euro-American world.
Winter 2010
HIST 1991: The Uses and Abuses of History (T/Th 10:00 – 11:20)
From everyday life to the world of international finance and politics, all people build arguments and make decisions based, in part, on a particular understanding of the past. Through a series of case studies, this course explores these processes in an effort show how history is a fundamental tool in all forms of decision making and, therefore, why history matters.
HIST 2731: Understanding Modern Asia
This survey course focuses on the historical events and processes that led to the formation of modern Asia since the 19th century. Central to this story are the ways in which the peoples of this diverse region have struggled to understand, adapt to, and simultaneously re-define their understanding of what it means to be modern.
HIST 4001: History Through Film (F 2:30 – 5:20)
This seminar combines both national and international dimensions of Japan’s postwar experiences through an exploration of selected feature films produced from 1936 to 2006. These films will cohere around a number of interrelated themes including the relationship between history, memory and the past, changing gender roles, and Japan’s location in the world. We will supplement our readings of films with textual sources about postwar Japan in an effort to understand the problems and challenges of representing history through film.
Other Courses
HIST 3721: The Confucian World
HIST 3710: China Since 1949
HIST 4401: Canada and the Pacific Rim
HIST 4701: Asia in War and Revolution
HIST 4911: Writing History
Research
Peer-Reviewed Academic Publications
“Militarizing Japan: Patriotism, Profit, and Children’s Print Media, 1895-1925,” Japan Focus (Fall 2007).
“What We Forget When We Remember the Pacific War,” Education About Asia, Spring 2006, 5-10.
“Need, Greed, and Protest in Japan’s Black Market, 1937-1945,” Journal of Social History 35:4 (Summer 2002), 825-59.
“Japanese Children and the Culture of Death, August – January 1945,” in James Martens, ed., Children and War: A Historical Anthology, New York University Press, 2002), 160-71.
“War Responsibility and the Reconstruction of Self and Society in Early Postwar Japan,” in Hugh Millward and James Morrison (eds.), Japan at Century’s End: Changes, Challenges, Choices, Fernwood Publishing, 1997, pp. 21-33.
Other Academic Publications
“A Nightmare in the Making: War, Nation, and Children’s Media in Japan, 1891-1945,” International Institute of Asian Studies Newsletter, 38 (October 2005), 12-14.
“The Discourse of Defeat and the Victor’s Discourse: Japanese and Americans Deconstruct the National Character,” Proceedings of the International Association of Asian Studies, Spring 2001, pp. 67-102.
“Preface: Revising Images of Japan’s Past,” Japan Studies Association of Canada, Montreal, Que., Proceedings of the Sixth Annual Japan Studies Association of Canada Conference, Spring 1996, pp. 25-29.
Other Creative Activity
“Lest We Forget,” The War Poetry Website, November 2008.
“Explore Mt. A.,” written and recorded for promotional video for Mount Allison Explore/Go Global Summer Programs, November 2008.
“What is It?,” written and recorded for Conduct Becoming (Voices Against Cancer): Take a Moment, March 2008.
“Human History,” written and recorded for Conduct Becoming (Voices Against Cancer): When We Were Young, March 2007.
“Introduction to a Dramatic Reading of Copenhagen,” The ATLIS Journal of International Studies, Spring 2007.
Book Reviews
Takeshi Matsuda, Soft Power and Its Perils: U.S. Cultural Policy in Early Postwar Japan and Permanent Dependency, Pacific Affairs, 81:4 (Winter 2008), 631-32.
Emiko Ohnuki-Tierney, Rice as Self: Identities Through Time, Pacific Affairs, 68:2 (Summer 1995), 279-80.
Byron K, Marshall, Academic Freedom and the Japanese Imperial University System, 1868-1945, Pacific Affairs 68:1 (Spring 1995), 124-25.
Katherine Dillon et al (eds.), The Pearl Harbor Papers: Inside the Japanese Plans, Pacific Affairs 667:3 (Fall 1994), 453-54.
Hilary Conroy and Harry Wray (eds.), Pearl Harbor Reexamined: Prologue to the Pacific War, Pacific Affairs 66:1 (Spring 1993), 116-17.
Conference Papers
“Hot-Blooded!: Air Power and Future War in Japanese Children’s Magazines, 1915-1930,” Association of Asian Studies Conference, Boston, March 2007.
“Militarizing Japan: “Patriotism, Profit and Children’s Print Media, 1894-1925,” Japan and the World Conference, Wittenberg University, Springfield, OH, November 2006.
“Constructing Japanese Childhood in a World of Crisis,” International Congress of Historical Sciences, Sydney, Australia, July 2005.
“The Martial, the Male, and the Media: Noma Seiji and Kodansha at War, 1937-1945,” Association of Asian Studies, Chicago, Ill, March 2005.
“Lies, Damn Lies, and Museums,” Japan Studies Association of Canada, University of Victoria, Victoria, BC, October 2004.
“Children, Media, and Japan at the Crossroads,” Japan Studies Association of Canada, MacMaster University, Hamilton, ON, October 2003.
“Dehumanizing the Self: Japanese Children and the Pacific War,” Global Alliance for Preserving the History of World War II in Asia, San Diego, CA, USA, November 2002.
“Representations of War and Defeat in Japanese Children’s Magazines, January 1945 – January 1946,” Association of Asian Studies, Chicago, Il, USA, March 2001.
“The Asia/Pacific in the Canadian Imagination,” The International Conference on Canada and the World Order,” Mount Allison University, Sackville, NB, July 1998.
Workshops/Colloquia
“Totality and Absolutism in the Philosophy of Tanabe Hajime,” Phoenix Philosophy Colloquium, Mount Allison University, April 2007.
“Time, Periodization, and Japanese History,” Phoenix Philosophy Colloquium, Mount Allison University, April 2006.
“Japan and America Meet on the “Diamond,”” Faculty Works In Progress Seminar, Mount Allison University, October 2003.
“Black Markets, Children, and Rethinking Identity in Modern Japan,” Faculty Works In Progress Seminar, Mount Allison University, September 2002.
Professional Associations/Memberships
Association of Asian Studies
Education About Asia
Japan Studies Association of Canada
The Society For Modern Japanese Literature
Society for the History of Children and Youth
Global Alliance for Preserving the History of World War Two in Asia