Spectacle, Development, and Modern Japan
Schedule
Thu, 20 Nov, 2025 at 03:00 pm
UTC-05:00Location
David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library | Durham, NC
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Speaker: Angus Lockyer (Rhode Island School of Design)Location: Carpenter Conference Room (249), Rubenstein Library, Duke West Campus
About the talk:
This year brought Expo 2025 to a reclaimed island in Osaka Bay, the city’s third and the country’s sixth international exhibition since its famous predecessor in 1970. Yet these are only the most prominent of over 1,000 industrial, colonial, and regional expos that have been held in the archipelago since the late 19th century.
Expos have served as incubators for the wider exhibition industry, ranging from museums to professional sport; as catalysts for economic development, spawning infrastructure, tourism, and demand; and as stages on which national and local governments can parade their claims. They are also easy to attack, both as archetypes of spectacle, reducing us to fodder for the attention economy, and as showcases for state and capital, so that they might have their way with society and the environment.
This talk will draw on a recently-published book, which suggests that the Japanese experience of them shows expos to be more complex than such attacks allow. Their history might encourage us to rewrite our stories about spectacle, development, and nation, too, so as to acknowledge the negotiation, concession, and indeterminacy by which they are also marked.
About the speaker:
Angus Lockyer was educated in Dorset, Cambridge, Seattle, and California, and has taught Japanese, East Asian, and global history in North Carolina and London. “Exhibitionist Japan: The Spectacle of Modern Development” was published by Cambridge University Press earlier this year.
“Japan: A History in Objects,” based on the collection of the British Museum, will come out in early 2026. He currently lives in Rhode Island and teaches at RISD.
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Where is it happening?
David M. Rubenstein Rare Book & Manuscript Library, 411 Chapel Dr, Durham, NC 27708-9984, United StatesEvent Location & Nearby Stays:
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