<meta charset="utf-8"><div style="text-align: center; border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; "><span style="font-family: 'times new roman', serif; font-size: large; "><font color="#660000"><b>STS Circle at Harvard</b></font></span></div>
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<div style="text-align: center; "><span style="font-size: large; "><b><font color="#000000">Ian Jared Miller<br></font></b></span></div><div style="text-align: center; "><i><font color="#000000">History, Harvard<br></font></i></div>
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<font color="#000000"> </font></div><div style="text-align: center; "><span style="font-size: large; "><b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); "><font color="#000000">Pandas in the Anthropocene: Japan’s “Panda Boom” and the End of Nature<br>
</font></span></b></span></div><div style="text-align: center; "><font color="#000000"> </font></div><div style="text-align: center; "><font color="#000000">Monday, November 15th</font></div><div style="text-align: center; ">
<font color="#000000">12:15-2:00 p.m.</font></div><div style="text-align: center; "><font color="#000000">124 Mt. Auburn Street, Suite 100, Room 106</font></div><div style="text-align: center; "><font color="#000000"><br>
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<font color="#000000">Lunch is provided if you RSVP.</font></div><div style="text-align: center; border-collapse: collapse; color: rgb(80, 0, 80); font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; "><font color="#000000">Please RSVP to </font><a href="mailto:sts@hks.harvard.edu" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(0, 101, 204); "><font color="#000000">sts@hks.harvard.edu</font></a><font color="#000000"> by Thursday, November 11th.</font></div>
<div style="text-align: left; border-collapse: collapse; color: rgb(80, 0, 80); font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; "><font color="#000000"> </font></div><div style="text-align: left; "><font style="border-collapse: collapse; font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; "><b>Abstract: </b></font><font class="Apple-style-span" face="arial, sans-serif"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse;">Two giant pandas arrived at Tokyo’s Ueno Zoological Gardens in October 1972 in celebration of diplomatic normalization between Japan and the People’s Republic of China. Former foes in a brutal fifteen-year colonial war that cost tens of millions of lives, the two nations were formally estranged for twenty-seven years following the collapse of the Japanese Empire in 1945. The arrival of Ran Ran and Kan Kan (as the pair were called) marked both a geopolitical watershed and an explosion in post- imperial fascination with all things Chinese. The resulting “panda boom” was the apex of animal commodification in postwar Japan. Fueled by a culture industry eager to extract maximum profit from the alluring Ailuropoda melanoleuca, Ueno Zoo attendance hit world-historical highs for over a decade. This hyper-consumerism coincided with a shift in environmental consciousness in the 1970s.</span></font></div>
<div style="text-align: left; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="arial, sans-serif"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse;"><br></span></font></div><div style="text-align: left; "><font class="Apple-style-span" face="arial, sans-serif"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse;">In wider society the contradictions between consumerism and conservationism often remain hidden, but the surprisingly complicated histories of Tokyo’s pandas—among the first in the world to bear artificially-conceived cubs and perhaps the most-viewed animals on the planet—throw modernity’s troubled relationship with nature (particularly endangered and exotic megafauna) into sharp relief. This talk uses the history of this mass-culture phenomenon to ask what it means to write the cultural history in an age of mass extinction and environmental crisis.</span></font></div>
<div style="text-align: left; border-collapse: collapse; color: rgb(80, 0, 80); font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; "><font color="#000000"> </font></div><div style="text-align: left; "><b style="border-collapse: collapse; color: rgb(80, 0, 80); font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; "><font color="#000000">Biography: </font></b><font class="Apple-style-span" face="arial, sans-serif"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="border-collapse: collapse; ">Ian Jared Miller is an Assistant Professor of History at Harvard University. His research </span></font><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; border-collapse: collapse; ">is primarily concerned with imperialism and the cultural dimensions of scientific, </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; border-collapse: collapse; ">medical, and especially environmental change in modern Japan. He earned his Ph.D. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; border-collapse: collapse; ">from Columbia University in 2005, arriving at Harvard in 2007. He has been a </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; border-collapse: collapse; ">postdoctoral fellow postdoctoral fellow in the Expanding East Asian Studies Program </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; border-collapse: collapse; ">(ExEAS) at Columbia's Weatherhead East Asian Institute and Assistant Professor of </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; border-collapse: collapse; ">History at Arizona State University. Professor Miller's first book manuscript, <i>The Nature </i></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; border-collapse: collapse; "><i>of the Beast: Tokyo’s Ueno Imperial Zoological Gardens and the Making of Modern </i></span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; border-collapse: collapse; "><i>Japan, 1882-1982</i>, introduces readers to the cultural and environmental history of East </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; border-collapse: collapse; ">Asia’s first zoo, opened in 1882. Other projects include <i>Japan at Nature’s Horizon</i>, a </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; border-collapse: collapse; ">co-edited collection of essays on Japan’s environmental history and <i>After the Quake</i>, </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; border-collapse: collapse; ">an exploration of ecological modernism and modernization in twentieth-century Tokyo. </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; border-collapse: collapse; ">He is also interested in the global history of tsunami and other natural disasters and the </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial, sans-serif; border-collapse: collapse; ">history of natural history in Asia.</span></div>
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<font color="#000000">A complete list of STS Circle at Harvard events can be found on our website:</font></div><div style="text-align: center; border-collapse: collapse; color: rgb(80, 0, 80); font-family: arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; ">
<a href="http://www.hks.harvard.edu/sts/events/sts_circle/" target="_blank" style="color: rgb(0, 101, 204); "><font color="#000000">http://www.hks.harvard.edu/sts/events/sts_circle/</font></a></div></div>