Workshop on Scholarly Communication: “The Art of Herding Cats: Reimagining Classroom Lectures and Conference Presentations” (a continuation of a series at Harvard) June 24, 2025 @ Doshisha University, Kyoto

This workshop brings together presenters from four universities to explore innovative approaches to scholarly communication. Moving beyond conventional formats, the event highlights alternative, dynamic ways to engage audiences. We invite participants to rethink the possibilities for sharing knowledge with both colleagues and students across diverse academic settings.

Hosted by The Institute for the Liberal Arts, Doshisha University

DATE: June 24 (Tuesday) 2025
TIME: 12:00 - 2:00 pm
LOCATION: Doshisha University, Imadegawa, Muromachi Campus
Kambaikan 6F Main Conference Room (寒梅館6階大会議室)
103 Gosho Yahata-cho, Kamidachiuri-sagaru, Karasuma-dori, Kamigyo-ku, Kyoto-shi

Register by June 15, 2025 via the QR code on the flyer or at this link: https://forms.gle/HHLVs2AsbrStfHtE9

New Book Announcement: Mark Bookman's "Disability Publics: Making Accessibility in Modern Japan"

A personal note: Dr. Mark Bookman was an incredible scholar, the foremost expert on historical and contemporary disability issues in Japan, a wonderful and caring person any my good friend. He was here in Japan doing research and working on his PhD dissertation, all the while writing several articles and making many presentations. He eventually finished his degree, got a post doc at Tokyo College and then a position at Ritsumeikan University. I was very lucky to know him and benefit from his knowlwdge. At times we were able to work together, and he always found the time to watch many of my presentations (and then give me compliments and his frank and honest critiques). This is the book we have all been waiting for...

Book Description (from Oxford University Press):

This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license. It is free to read on Oxford Academic and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations.

Over the last 150 years, activists and policymakers have tried to improve access to Japan's built environment, education, employment, entertainment, and medical care systems for disabled persons, but these attempts have frequently excluded as many impaired individuals as they have empowered. Their technological and legislative interventions have not only structured the everyday lives of disabled individuals, but also women, children, old people, migrant laborers, wounded veterans, and members of other vulnerable groups, by both creating and removing obstacles to social participation.

Why and how have stakeholders pursued these accessibility projects for different demographics in modern Japan? To unpack this question, this book investigates the history of Japan's "disability publics": coalitions of activists, government officials, and other interested parties who have advanced policy agendas for specific communities by responding to social, political, and economic circumstances. It demonstrates that pressures tied to macrosocial processes such as industrialization, urbanization, militarization, globalization, and population ageing have played a key role in defining Japan's disability publics. Equally influential have been international flows of information, products, and people working in the welfare sphere, which have inspired Japan's disability publics to implement domestic reforms. A final contributing factor arose from social crises and mega-events (such as the "triple disaster" at Fukushima, the global COVID-19 pandemic and the Tokyo 2020 Paralympics) which have provided windows of opportunity for catalyzing policy changes.

Disability Publics uses this history to intervene in current debates about inclusion and will guide future policymaking efforts by asking stakeholders to consider who has a seat at the table, how they come to be there, and what they fail to imagine when developing accessibility measures. In so doing, and by unravelling the politics of Japan's disability publics in this comprehensive way, the book outlines a path towards a more equitable society.

***

Many of our Japanese Studies colleagues will know Dr Mark Bookman's work on disability in Japan. He was trained as a modern historian, but he had many fruitful collaborations with anthropologists during his career. Over the last year, I have been honored to work with Mark's father and Professor Nagase Osamu of Ritsumeikan University to bring Mark’s UPenn dissertation to publication. Please help us sustain his legacy and buy the book at this discount, or recommend it to your library or … read it for free! OUP has happily agreed to make the manuscript open access after its publication in September 2025. (Carolyne S. Stevens, book editor)

For more information: https://global.oup.com/academic/product/disability-publics-9780198979739?cc=jp&lang=en&

New Book Announcement: "Art x Research x Archives: Investigating Art and Creative Humanities" edited by the Center for Future Creation and Inheritance, Tokyo University of the Arts / 東京藝術大学未来創造継承センター編『アート×リサーチ×アーカイヴ――調査するアートと創造的人文学』

Art x Research x Archives - Investigative Art and Creative Humanities
Supervisor: Yoshitaka Mori
Edited by Tokyo University of the Arts Future Creation and Inheritance Center
Getsuyosha 2,400 yen 46-size (188mm long x 130mm wide x 19mm wide, 310g weight) 272 pages (8 pages in color) ISBN: 978–4–86503–207–9 C0070

Contemporary art has expanded its scope by adopting research methods from sociology and cultural anthropology, while traditional humanities have also begun to incorporate new endeavors related to vision and hearing into their research. Archives do not simply support culture, but are beginning to play a role in actively creating it. The forefront of art is introduced through the multiple different practices of artists and researchers active in a cross-disciplinary field! [This book is a transcript of a portion of the public lectures given at the "Yurakucho Geidai Campus" in collaboration with the Tokyo Metropolitan Government, Mitsubishi Estate, and Tokyo University of the Arts.]

Authors: Watanabe Hidenori (Professor at the University of Tokyo Graduate School), Kawase Itsushi (Visual Anthropologist), Shitamichi Motoyuki (Artist), Okahara Masayuki (Professor Emeritus at Keio University), Takayama Akira (Director and Artist), Hasegawa Ai (Artist, Keio University), Habaya Kazuma (Center for Future Creation and Inheritance, Tokyo University of the Arts)

アート×リサーチ×アーカイヴ――調査するアートと創造的人文学
毛利嘉孝=監修
東京藝術大学未来創造継承センター=編
月曜社　本体2400円　46判（縦188mm×横130mm×束幅19mm, 重量310g）272頁（内カラー8頁）ISBN:978–4–86503–207–9　C0070

現代芸術は社会学や文化人類学などのリサーチ手法を採用することでその領域を拡大し、伝統的な人文学も視覚や聴覚などにかかわる新たな試みをその研究に取り込み始めた。アーカイヴは文化を単に支えるだけでなく、それらを積極的に生み出す役割を担いつつある。横断的な領域で活動するアーティストや研究者による、複数の異なる実践から紹介するアートの最前線！【本書は、東京都と三菱地所と東京藝術大学の三者連携による「有楽町藝大キャンパス」公開講座の一部を収録した講義録です。】

著者：渡邉英徳（東京大学大学院教授）、川瀬慈（映像人類学者）、下道基行（アーティスト）、岡原正幸（慶應義塾大学名誉教授）、高山明（演出家・アーティスト）、長谷川愛（アーティスト、慶應義塾大学）、幅谷和眞（東京藝術大学未来創造継承センター）

For more information: https://urag.exblog.jp/243923067/

Presentation Announcement:「The “Crisis” of Sociality: Caring for the Dead Otherwise with Anne Allison」

May 23, 2025 / 6:00pm -7:30pm / Room 301, Building 10, Sophia University / In person only / No registration required

Responding to the record low birthrate and population decline of the year before, Prime Minister Fumio Kishida declared Japan “on the brink of not being able to maintain social functions” in 2023. Seeing this as a crisis of social reproduction, he announced policies to incentivize young people into having and raising children—to reembrace the family as the center of life/livelihood. For youth themselves, however, this is a model declining in both viability and appeal. This talk addresses a different contingency; as sociality continues to downsize in Japan—to single households, solo lifestyles, childless futures—what are the effects on the elderly who once counted on “the family” to both care for and bury them? This is another dimension to the “crisis” in sociality today: the post-(re)productive who increasingly find themselves “without anyone else to depend upon” (miyori ga nai) in what some call Japan’s “era of family-less dead” (ienaki jidai no shisha). Facing all-aloneness as they age and enter the grave, seniors—and Japan itself—must confront a model of (reproductive) sociality that is not only being rejected by youth but sentencing the elderly to a wastebin of neglect. Looking at moves that are arising to both avoid and anticipate such an end, the talk considers what any of these new “ending” trends portend for a post-familial future as mapped by caring otherwise for the dead.

For more information: https://www.icc-sophia.com/post/the-crisis-of-sociality-caring-for-the-dead-otherwise-with-anne-allison

Announcement & Call for Participation: 1st Kansai Sociolinguistics Colloquium for Young Researchers @ Doshisha University, Institute for the Liberal Arts

The Doshisha University Institute for the Liberal Arts in cooperation with the University of Bremen (Germany) is initiating the first colloquium for young researchers in the field of sociolinguistics. We invite graduate students, postdoctoral, and early-career researchers to participate in our colloquium and present their current work. The aim of the colloquium is to connect young scholars in the field of sociolinguistics (broadly imagined) and provide a supportive space to discuss their ongoing research. Our focus is to provide a forum for feedback for emerging academics and their unfinished research projects. The conference will be an in-person-only event, and the conference presentation language will be English (with support for Japanese, German, and Spanish during the Q&A and informal spaces). The colloquium will be held at Doshisha University (Imadegawa), on 12 July 2025. Depending on the interest of participants, we plan on several thematic sessions to group scholars of similar sub-fields together, to create an ideal working environment. Each participant will have 10 minutes to present, preparing the audience and the mentors for a 20-minute discussion guided by the presenter. This should leave ample room for feedback and productive criticism. As we are focusing on young researchers, we will refrain from charging a participation fee. We will reserve space for lunch at a local, reasonably-priced restaurant. We also plan to invite all participants for informal drinks in Kyoto after the Colloquium.

The guiding topic of the Colloquium is “Critical Sociolinguistics in a Modern World”, focusing on Japan, Japanese, or any other context worldwide. The invitation is open to any approach within sociolinguistics as well as researchers outside of linguistics interested in language. We welcome submissions from all areas of sociolinguistics, including but not limited to:

● Language and Power
● Language Ideologies
● Multilingualism and Linguistic Inequality
● Race, Ethnicity, and Linguistic Discrimination
● Gender, Sexuality, and Language
● Migration, Mobility, and Language
● Digital Communication
● Ethnography of Communication
● Pragmatics
● Postcolonial Language Studies, Indigenous Language Studies, and Decolonial Linguistics

Abstracts are to be submitted here, containing no more than 300 words, an area of study, and institutional affiliation, by 6 June 2025 (11 a.m. JST).

Timeline:

● Call for papers ends: 6 June 2025, 11 a.m. (JST)
● Notification of results: 13 June 2025
● Registration opens: 13 June 2025
● Registration closes: 4 July 2025, 11 a.m. (JST)

Questions and concerns can be addressed via email to lgrausam@uni-bremen.de Organizing committee:
● Greg Poole – Doshisha University, Institute for the Liberal Arts
● Leon Grausam – University of Bremen, Faculty for Linguistics and Literary Studies

For more information: https://sites.google.com/view/kansaisoclincolloc/home