I-House Ushiba Fellowship

James Clifford

I-House Ushiba Fellowship Public Lecture / I-House Academy

“Traditional Futures: New Indigenous Politics and the Question of Global History”

[An edited version of this lecture is available in the IHJ Bulletin, Vol.30, No.2, 2010.]

Speaker: James Clifford (Distinguished Professor, University of California, Santa Cruz; Ushiba Fellow)
Moderator: Ota Yoshinobu (Professor, University of Kyushu)
Date & Time: Wednesday, June 23, 2010, 7:00 pm-8:30 pm
Venue: Iwasaki Koyata Memorial Hall, International House of Japan
Admission: 1,000 yen (Students: 500 yen, IHJ Members: Free)
Language: English/Japanese (with simultaneous interpretation)

Dr. Clifford is currently engaged in a comparative study of contemporary “indigenous” resurgence. His lecture explores the dialectic of trans-national forces and local cultural politics, reflecting on how the survival and transformation of Native peoples forces us to revise established ways of thinking about “global history.” Where are we all going, together and separately, in the early 21st Century? The question imposes itself today with new urgency, and uncertainty.

James Clifford

James Clifford is a world-renowned cultural critic and “post-modern” anthropologist whose work has challenged conventional academic norms and methods, contributing to postcolonial critiques of Euro-centric epistemologies. He received his Ph.D. in history from Harvard University, and has taught since 1978 in the interdisciplinary History of Consciousness doctoral program at the University of California, Santa Cruz. He has also served as a visiting professor of anthropology at University College London and Yale University. Throughout his professional career, Dr. Clifford has published books and essays that are widely translated and frequently cited in many areas of the arts and culture. They include Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography (Co-edited with George Marcus, University of California Press, 1986), The Predicament of Culture: Twentieth Century Ethnography, Literature and Art (Harvard University Press, 1988), and Routes: Travel and Translation in the Late Twentieth Century (Harvard University Press, 1997).

Ota Yoshinobu

His areas of specialization include indigeneity and representation in Guatemala and the Ryukyu Islands, Japan. He is the author of several books on anthropological theories. Among them is Bourei toshiteno Rekishi [Ghost-Histories: Anthropology of Traces and Surprises] (Jimbun Shoin, 2008).

Another Program with James Clifford, under the “I-House Ushiba Fellowship,” in co-sponsorship with the I-House

“Repatriation and the Second Life of Heritage: Return of the Masks in Kodiak, Alaska”

Date & Time: Sat, June 26th, 2010, 2:00 pm-4:15 pm
Venue: Auditorium, National Museum of Ethnology (Osaka)
Admission: Free
Language: English/Japanese (with simultaneous interpretation)
Organizer & Contact: National Museum of Ethnology
Tel: 06-6878-8235 (International Cooperation Unit)
E-mail: clifford.min*idc.minpaku.ac.jp (Please replace * with @)

I-House Ushiba FellowshipI-House Ushiba Fellowship

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