Institute of History and Philology, Academia Sinica

Speaker: Prof. Julia Adeney Thomas (Department of History, University of Notre Dame)

Discussant: Prof. Paul Jobin (Associate Research Fellow, Institute of Sociology, Academia Sinica)

Host: Prof. Albert Wu (Associate Research Fellow and Deputy Director, Institute of History and Philology, Academia Sinica)

Time: May 7, 2026 (Thursday), 15:00–17:00

Venue: Room 703, 7th Floor, Research Building, Institute of History and Philology, Academia Sinica

Organizer: Academia Sinica Thematic Research Program “Religion and the Anthropocene in Taiwan: Towards a Global Environmental History”

Remarks:

1. Registration Link: https://forms.gle/HHFrD1L6MPdEKE5t5

2. Photography, video, and audio recording are prohibited without prior authorization.

3. The lecture will be conducted in English and will be held on-site only (no livestream provided).

Abstract:

This talk explores both what the Anthropocene is and what Japan might teach us as we navigate the coming decades of unprecedented disruption. Some have suggested that early modern Japan exemplified satisfactory stewardship of nature while others argue that even Tokugawa society pushed beyond environmental constraints. Today some hope that Japan’s current urban consolidation and population decline will allow nature to recover and stabilize, but others dispute this contention. In exploring these debates, this talk puts Japan’s history into conversation with Anthropocene science.

Further Reading: Thomas, Julia Adeney, ed. Altered Earth: Getting the Anthropocene Right. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022.

Bio:

Julia Adeney Thomas teaches history at the University of Notre Dame (USA) and researches the intellectual history of Japan, photography as a political practice, and the challenge of the Anthropocene to historical practice. She is the author of Reconfiguring Modernity: Concepts of Nature in Japanese Ideology; Strata and Three Stories (with Jan Zalasiewicz); and The Anthropocene: A Multidisciplinary Approach (with geologists Mark Williams and Jan Zalasiewicz). Among her edited volumes are Japan at Nature's Edge (with Ian J. Miller and Brett Walker), Visualizing Fascism: The Twentieth-Century Rise of the Global Right (with Geoff Eley) and Altered Earth: Getting the Anthropocene Right. She is currently working on The Historian’s Task in the Anthropocene. Thomas’s many articles bridge the divide between the humanities and the sciences to address our global environmental crisis. Although she lives in Chicago, her heart is in the Appalachian Mountains of Virginia.

Contact: Jonny Bo-Syun Guan (jonnyguan8805@gmail.com)