Workshop:

“Rethinking the Aerial Destruction of Cities in East Asia, 1932-45”

Organizer: Sheldon Garon, History and East Asian Studies Depts, Princeton University

Dates: Friday, March 6, 2020, 1:30-5:30 p.m.

Saturday, March 7, 9:15 a.m.-5:20 p.m.

This international workshop brainstorms about the recent wave of scholarship on the bombing wars experienced in Japan and China from 1932 to 1945.  Joining the several East Asia specialists will be two scholars, Paul Saint-Amour and Dietmar Süss, whose books on bombing in Europe have inspired many of the participants.  The workshop seeks to foster interdisciplinary approaches, bringing together scholars of urban geography, environmental history, architecture and urban planning, art history, comparative literature, military history, and transnational and comparative history.  We also aim to integrate the Japanese and Chinese stories into a more global history of World War II than is currently available in the generally Eurocentric accounts.  The Japanese and Chinese were both takers and makers of emerging global ideas and practices about attacking and defending cities.  

List of Participants (in order of presentation):

• Paul Saint-Amour (University of Pennsylvania)
• Gennifer Weisenfeld (Duke University)
• Aaron William Moore (University of Edinburgh)
• Sheldon Garon (Princeton University)
• Trevor Albertson (Lassen Community College)
• Nicholas Risteen (Princeton University)
• Katja Schmidtpott (Ruhr-University Bochum)
• Cary Karacas (College of Staten Island, CUNY)
• David Fedman (University of California, Irvine)
• John B. Thompson (Columbia University)
• Rotem Kowner (University of Haifa)

See schedule here.program_revised_rethinking_aerial_destruction_workshop.pdf