Followed by drinks. All welcome.

If “the Anthropocene” suggests a rupture of the Earth System where our future looks nothing like our past,
what role is there for historians? Are we simply antiquarians with no insight into this predicament, or can we
still offer political critique? Julia Thomas addresses this question in three ways, explaining why many scientists
find “the Anthropocene” a compelling concept; showing how this concept challenges the history’s disciplinary
assumptions; and finally demonstrating how historians, through self-reflection on our practices, might
contribute. Using the example of early modern Japan, she proposes a new form of critical history as we move
from modernity’s promise of freedom and abundance to the more modest goal of sustainability with decency.

About the speaker
THOMAS is an intellectual and political historian of modern Japan, trained
at Princeton, Oxford, and the University of Chicago. Thomas is the author
of more than 30 articles and book chapters, including Reconfiguring Modernity:
Concepts of Nature in Japanese Political Ideology which received the
2002 John K. Fairbank prize from the American Historical Association. She
has three projects currently under contract, The Anthropocene co-authored
with geologists Jan Zalasiewicz and Mark Williams for Polity Press; The Historian’s
Task in the Anthropocene: Theory, Practice, and the Case of Japan for
Princeton; and, a co-edited collection titled Visualizing Fascism (forthcoming
from Duke) on the rise of the twentieth-century global right.