This event now concluded.
- Speaker: Yasushi WATANABE (Professor, Faculty of Environment and Information Studies,
Keio University ; Director, International House of Japan) - Date: Tuesday, October 29, 2024, 6:30-8:30 pm (including reception)
- Venue: Iwasaki Koyata Memorial Hall
- Language: Japanese (without interpretation)
- Admission: 5,000 yen/person (registration required, drinks and light meal will be provided.)
*This event is exclusively for I-House members.
*On the day of the event, please present your membership card at the reception desk in front of the venue.
*Members may be accompanied by a spouse or partner.
I-House regularly holds members-only events to which a distinguished member is invited as a guest.The Special Lecture Series for Members in October will feature Yasushi Watanabe, a leading expert in the field of US studies and a frequent media commentator on the November presidential election. After the lecture, there will be a reception, where participants will have an opportunity to meet with the speaker and fellow members.
The outcome of the election in the world’s biggest military and economic power will have a major impact not only on domestic policy but also on the world order and Japan-US relations.
How will the new president deal with the increasingly volatile situation in the Middle East, Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine, America’s competition with China, a potential contingency in Taiwan, and an increasingly divided and inward-looking US society?
Will there be a shift in America’s global role as the guardian of such fundamental democratic values as free trade, the rule of law, and human rights?
As a longtime observer of US society, Watanabe will discuss the potential impact of the presidential election on world history.
After graduating from Sophia University, Professor Watanabe earned a Ph.D. in social anthropology from Harvard University. After conducting post-doctoral research at the Universities of Cambridge and Oxford, he joined Keio University’s Shonan Fujisawa Campus (SFC). He has also held research and/or teaching positions at Harvard and Peking Universities and the Institut d’Etudes Politiques de Paris（Sciences Po). Areas of specialization include American studies, cultural policy, public diplomacy, and cultural anthropology. He won the Suntory Prize for Social Sciences and Humanities for Afuta Amerika: Bosutonian no kiseki to “bunka no seijigaku” (After America: Trajectories of the Bostonians and the Politics of Culture, Keio University Press, 2004) based on interviews with white Americans. He conducts multilayered research and offers policy proposals on cultural and diplomatic issues, drawing on observations gleaned from interviews with people living in the community and examining the possibilities of public diplomacy in an increasingly diverse and globalized society.He is the author of Bunka to gaiko: Paburikku dipuromashi no jidai (Culture and Diplomacy: The Age of Public Diplomacy, Chuokoron-Shinsha, 2011), Bunka o toraenaosu: Karuchuraru sekyuriti no hasso (Rethinking of “Culture”: On the Concept of Cultural Security, Iwanami Shoten, 2015) and other books. Hakujin nashonarizumu: Amerika o yurugasu “bunkateki hando” (White Nationalism: The Cultural Backlash that Rocked America, Chuokoron-Shinsha, 2020). His most recent publication is Amerika towa nanika jigazou to sekaikan wo meguru soukoku (Iwanami-Shinsho, 2022).