The below lecture by Prof. James Clifford, scheduled on Wednesday, December 13, was cancelled due to sudden illness in the lecturer’s family (Prof. Clifford’s trip to Japan itself has been cancelled).
- Speaker: James Clifford, Professor, University of California, Santa Cruz
- Moderator: Yoshinobu Ota, Professor, University of Kyushu
- Date & Time: Wednesday, December 13th, 2006, 7:00 – 8:30 p.m
- Venue: Lecture Hall, International House of Japan
- Admission Fee: 1,500 yen (Students: 1,000 yen, IHJ Members: Free)
- Language: English/Japanese (with simultaneous translation)
Dr. Clifford is a professor in the History of Consciousness Department at the University of California, Santa Cruz, a program known as a center for critical interdisciplinary analysis in the Humanities and Social Sciences. The founding director of the university’s Center for Cultural Studies, Dr. Clifford is a world-renowned “post-modern” anthropologist who has challenged conventional disciplinary norms and methods, contributing to postcolonial critiques of Euro-centric epistemologies. He is currently engaged in comparative studies of contemporary “indigenous” societies and cultures. In his lecture he will discuss the dialectic of global forces and local agencies, and the challenge these processes offer to unified visions of history.
James Clifford
Trained and beginning his scholastic career as a historian, James Clifford received his M.A. from Stanford University and obtained his Ph.D. in history from Harvard University. Prior to his current position, he has served as a visiting professor of anthropology at University College of London and Yale University. Throughout his professional career, he has published many books and writings which have been translated into many different languages and are very frequently cited in various areas of arts and cultures. They include On the Edges of Anthropology (Prickly Paradigm Press, 2003), Routes: Travel and Translation in the Late Twentieth Century (Harvard University Press, 1997), The Predicament of Culture: Twentieth Century Ethnography, Literature and Art (Harvard University Press, 1988), and Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography (Co-edited with George Marcus, University of California Press, 1986. New Edition: Oxford University Press, New Delhi, 1990).
Yoshinobu Ota
Yoshinobu Ota has an M.A. from Northwestern University and a Ph.D. from the University of Michigan. Teaching at the Graduate School of Social and Cultural Studies, University of Kyushu, he specializes in anthropology, cultural studies and postcolonial criticism. His major publications include Jinruigaku to datsu shokuminchika [Anthropology and decolonization; in Japanese] (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 2003), and The Predicament of Culture: Twentieth Century Ethnography, Literature and Art (Co-translator, Kyoto: Jimbun Shoin, 2003).
*In cooperation with Jimbun Shoin, Japanese translations of Dr. Clifford’s books published by Jimbun Shoin can be purchased at a special discount at his lecture, commemorating his first visit to Japan