Pinned
The Japanese edition of Stranger in the Shogun’s City is available to preorder! With special thanks to my editor @Heihachiro8220 and my translator @noriko_ocean and my translation supervisor @HARA_Naofumi!
Amy Stanley
3,792 posts
Amy Stanley
@astanley711
History professor at Northwestern. STRANGER IN THE SHOGUN’S CITY. 将軍の都の客人
Joined May 2009
- It’s interesting how History is the discipline that’s exhorted to teach only - or mainly - what students find interesting and relevant. Chemists don’t teach only the molecules that students find interesting and relevant.
- OK, but one more thing: it kills me that the early generation of women's historians has been dismissed as not radical enough because all they did was "include women"
- Why is it that we got the AI that will write crappy essays before we got the AI that will scan a roll of microfiche and turn it into a beautifully in-focus PDF file?
- Replying to @astanley711Historians already have a pretty good idea of what’s interesting and relevant. But in a different way from other disciplines, we’re expected to be *of service* to an existing paradigm that tells us what’s relevant. Basically, that’s the nation, and that’s the problem.
- In some sense Reiwa is a perfect name for this era, because ordinary people look at it like, “huh, maybe this is a little authoritarian?” And then experts rush in with a very complicated reading and assure us it’s all fine and we misunderstood.
- Replying to @astanley711What they really did was something so radical that we still haven't come to terms with it: they put women at the center of their stories. They made women the protagonists and not the supporting characters.
- My essay on historical writing, #MeToo, and what we owe to our subjects, even two hundred years later, is up @AHAhistorians Writing the History of Sexual Assault in the Age of #MeToo | Perspectives on History | AHA historians.org/publications-a…
- Historians really hate foreshadowing. We hate it for a reason: the point of our work is always that at any point in the past there were many different possibilities for a future, and that we got one rather than another requires explanation.
- Replying to @astanley711But also, this isn’t why our students are interested. They often want to understand culture, or times and places *unlike* their own. They want to learn the history of their own communities so they can understand themselves and their families.
- Replying to @KatieHAdamsYou will look gorgeous no matter what, AND you have a great story for everyone you see. Hang in there!
- Replying to @astanley711I also think there’s a problematic assumption that students learn history because they’re pursuing state-oriented goals. They want to influence policy or go into public service or be “good citizens.”
- Ladies, if he: - Never texts back - Never watches your Insta story - Takes bribes - Is suspicious of large potted plants -Abolishes the wholesalers’ association - Exiles a prominent kabuki actor That’s not your man, it’s Mizuno Tadakuni, architect of the Tenpo Reforms
- Today I have seen: a man putting coins in a pay phone, people standing at stalls to read the physical copies of today's newspapers, and a sign announcing that new CDs have arrived at the library. Niigata Prefectural Library is like a lovely time warp.
