The panel will discuss two important aspects of the efforts to rethink facets of twentieth-century East Asian history from transnational and global historical perspectives: the question of periodization and master narratives. The presenters will elaborate on relevant developments in academic research in various countries and regions of East Asia and elsewhere in the world, and they will carve out the historical turning points (and issues of contention) that come with alternative narratives and modes of periodization. The panel will also consider relevant debates in the wider public, which is particularly important because efforts to move historical thinking beyond national parameters can be closely connected with highly politicized themes.

Date:

June 15, 2023, 16:00 – 17:15

Program:

Chair: Dominic Sachsenmaier (University of Göttingen)

Sebastian Conrad (Freie Universität Berlin) Making Japan Modern: Periodization and the Nation

Viren Murthy (University of Madison-Wisconsin / Fellow Berlin) Hegelian Master Narratives and Periodizing East Asian Modernity

Edward Wang (Rowan University / Fellow Göttingen) Why were 1840 and 1949 not Turning Points in Modern Chinese Historiography? A Tentative Thesis

Barbara Mittler (University of Heidelberg) Rethinking Renaissance: History as Shared Heritage