People > Faculty

Kären WigenKaren Wigen

Professor
Director, Center for East Asian Studies

E-mail: kwigen@stanford.edu

Full Contact Information

At Stanford Since 2002

PhD, University of California at Berkeley (Geography), 1990; MA, UC-Berkeley, 1985; BA, University of Michigan (Japanese Lit.), 1980

Research Interests

  • Historical geography of East Asia
  • Early modernity in Japan
  • Regional economies and rhetorics
  • Geographies of the imagination
  • World History

Courses Taught

Seminars

  • Maps, Borders, and Conflict in East Asia
  • Japan's Nineteenth Century
  • Directions in Asian Studies
  • Modernizing Japanese Women
  • Cultures of Japanese Imperialism
  • Maps in the Early Modern World
  • Tokugawa Historical Geography
  • Geographical Perspectives in History: Mediterranean & Atlantic Worlds
  • Geographical Perspectives in History: Asian/Pacific Worlds
  • Introduction to Historical Methodologies
  • Japan in the World: Readings in Japanese History
  • Decentering the Cultural Map: Boundaries as Counter-Cores
  • World History Colloquium

Lecture Courses

  • Old World Encounters (Introduction to the Humanities), with Martin Lewis
  • Roots of Modern East Asia (with Matthew Sommer)
  • Japan in the Age of the Samurai
  • Modern Japan
  • Japan: Population, Resources, and Development

Publications

Books

  • A Malleable Map: Geographies of Restoration in Central Japan, 1600-1912 (2010)
  • The Making of a Japanese Periphery (1995)
  • The Myth of Continents: A Critique of Metageography (co-author with Martin Lewis), (1997)
  • Seascapes, Littoral Cultures, and Trans-oceanic Exchanges. Co-editor with Jerry H. Bentley and Renate Bridenthal. University of Hawai'i Press (for the series, "Perspectives on the Global Past"), (2008)

Published Translations

  • 1985 "Bad Company" (short story) by Shotaro Yasuoka. In Van C. Gesseland Tomone Matsumoto, eds., The Showa Anthology. New York: Kodansha International.
  • 1984 A View by the Sea (five short stories and a novella) by Shotaro Yasuoka. New York: Columbia University Press. (Japan-US Friendship Society Translation Award.) (Paperback issued 1993.)

Peer-Reviewed Articles and Book Chapters

  • 2008 "Seascapes: An Introduction." In Jerry Bentley, Renate Bridenthal, and Kären Wigen, eds., Seascapes, Littoral Cultures, and Trans-Oceanic Exchanges (University of Hawaii, 2008).
  • 2006 “Bunka, kenryoku, chiiki: Higashi Ajia chiikishugi no aratana tenbō.”  Iida-shi Rekishi Kenkyūjō Nenpō No. 4, 100-118.
  • 2006  “Introduction: Oceans of History.” American Historical Review 111(3), June 2006, 717-721.
  • 2005 "Moving Mountains: Creating the modern Japanese Alps." Journal of Japanese Studies 31(1), Winter 2005, 1-26.
  • 2005 "Maps as metaphors: Charting approaches to inter-area history." In Hanna Schissler and Yasemin Soysal, eds., The Nation, Europe, the World: Testbooks and Curricula in Transition (New York: St. Martin's Press), 211-227. Reprinted as "Cartographies of Connection: Ocean maps as metaphors for inter-area history." In Jerry H. Bentley, Renate Bridenthal, and Anand A. Yang, eds., Interactions: Transregional Perspectives on World History (Hawaii), 150-166.
  • 2005 "Senzen Shinano no kyodo kyoiku" [Native-place education in prewar Shinano.] In Kawanishi Hidemichi, Namikawa Kenji, and William Steele, eds., Rokaru Hisutorii kara gurobaru hisutorii e-tabunka no rekishigaku to chiikishi [From local history to global history: pluralism in historical and regional scholarship] (Tokyo: Iwata Shoin), 195-206.
  • 2000 "Teaching about home: Geography at work in the prewar Japanese classroom." Journal of Asian Studies 59(3), 550-574.
  • 1999 "Culture, power, and place: The new landscapes of regionalism in East Asia." American Historical Review 10(4), October 1999, 1183-1201.
  • 1997 "Constructing Shinano: The invention of a neo-traditional region." In Stephen Vlastos, ed., Mirror of Modernity: Japan's Invented Traditions (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press) 229-242.
  • 1995 "Politics and piety in Japanese native-place studies: The rhetoric of solidarity in Shinano." Positions: East Asia Cultures Critique 4(3), winter 1996, 491-518.
  • 1995 "Mapping early modernity: Geographical meditations on a comparative concept." Early Modern Japan Newsletter 5(2), 1-13.
  • 1992 "The geographic imagination in early modern Japanese history: Retrospect and Prospect." Journal of Asian Studies 51(1), 3-29.

Awards

  • National Humanities Center Fellow, 1998
  • Bass Fellow, Duke University, 1999-2002
  • Fairbank Prize, AHA, 1995
  • Japan-US Friendship Commission Translation Award, 1982
  • Phi Beta Kappa, 1980
  • Major grants from Ford Foundation, Japan Foundation, Fulbright-Hays

Professional Affiliations

  • American Historical Association
  • Association for Asian Studies
  • Association for World History