Kären Wigen
Kären Wigen | |
|---|---|
| Born | Kären Esther Wigen December 29, 1958 East Lansing, Michigan, United States |
| Nationality | United States |
| Occupation(s) | historian, geographer, author, educator, academic |
| Notable work | The Making of a Japanese Periphery, 1750-1920 (1995) |
| Spouse | Martin W. Lewis |
| Awards | John K. Fairbank Prize (1992) |
| Years active | 1990—present |
| Known for | studying Japanese history and the history of cartography |
| Title | Frances and Charles Field Professor of history |
| Academic background | |
| Education | Japanese literature degree (University of Michigan, 1980), PhD in Geography (University of California at Berkeley, 1990) |
| Alma mater | University of California at Berkeley |
Kären Esther Wigen (born December 29, 1958)[citation needed] is an American historian, geographer, author and educator. She is the Frances and Charles Field Professor of history at Stanford University.[1]
Early life and education
Wigen was born in East Lansing, Michigan and grew up in Ohio. Her father was a physicist. When she was thirteen, Wigen's father was invited to work for six months in Japan. The family moved with him and stayed in Kobe. Wigen and her two sisters started studying Japanese at a local Canadian school. At the age of sixteen, she moved back to Japan during her senior year of high school.[2] Her final year of secondary education was spent at Seikyo Gakuin High School in the city of Kawachinagano in western Japan. She graduated from the University of Michigan in 1980, where she studied Japanese literature. Her undergraduate thesis, a translation of Shotaro Yasuoka's "A View by the Sea," was published by Columbia University Press in 1984 and won the Japan-US Friendship Society Translation Award.[2] Wigen earned her doctorate at the University of California at Berkeley in geography in 1990.[1]
Career
Wigen taught at Duke University beginning in 1990.[2] As of 2023, she is Frances and Charles Field Professor of History, Stanford University.[1][3] She specializes in East Asia, and she teaches Japanese history and history of cartography.
Works
Wigen's first book, The Making of a Japanese Periphery, 1750-1920 (1995), explores southern Nagano Prefecture in Japan and how the silk industry transformed it. The Making of Japanese Periphery, 1750-1920 won the 1992 John K. Fairbank Prize of the American Historical Association.
She studied the same locality in her second book, A Malleable Map: Geographies of Restoration in Central Japan, 1600-1912 (2010), exploring the roles of cartography, chorography, and regionalism. A Malleable Map, wrote one reviewer, examines how "protoindustrial enterprises" such as sericulture and papercraft appeared on maps and reflected larger economic and political changes over roughly four centuries from the Tokugawa period through the Meiji period. Wigen focuses on how the relationship between regional and national identities "played an integral role in the creation of modern Japan".[4] She argues that the pictorial and nonpictorial ways in which the geographical location of Shinano was shown redefined the ways in which people conceived of the place. These ways were "malleable" because they changed according to the needs and priorities of Tokugawa shoguns, merchants, Meiji officials, travelers, and scholars.[5]
Her third book, The Myth of Continents: A Critique of Metageography (1997), co-authored with Martin Lewis, explains why the present system of classifying certain landmasses as "continents" is comparatively recent and derived more from historical accident and political concerns than from natural geographical features.
In April 2015, she delivered the Edwin O. Reischauer Lectures at Harvard University on the topic "Where in the World? Mapmaking at the Asia-Pacific Margin, 1600-1900."[3]
Wigen's latest project is another collaboration, Cartographic Japan: A History in Maps, with co-editors Sugimoto Fumiko and Cary Karacas (forthcoming 2016).[1]
List of major publications
- —— (1995). The Making of a Japanese Periphery, 1750-1920. Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press.
- ——; Lewis, Martin W. (1997). The Myth of Continents : A Critique of Metageography. Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN 0520207424.
- ——; Bentley, Jerry H.; Bridenthal, Renate (2007). Seascapes: Maritime Histories, Littoral Cultures, and Transoceanic Exchanges. Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press. ISBN 9780824830274.
- —— (2010). A Malleable Map: Geographies of Restoration in Central Japan, 1600-1912. Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN 9780520259188.
- ——; Sugimoto, Fumiko; Karacas, Cary (2016). Cartographic Japan: A History in Maps. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ISBN 9780226073057.
Personal life
Wigen married Martin W. Lewis on August 13, 1983.[citation needed] They collaborated on the 1997 book, The Myth of Continents[6] among other endeavors.
References
- ^ a b c d "Kären Wigen". Department of History, Stanford University. 2015. Retrieved December 8, 2016.
- ^ a b c Stolte, Carolien (August 2015). "Map-Making in World History - an Interview with Kären Wigen". Itinerario. 39 (2): 203–214. doi:10.1017/S0165115315000431. ISSN 0165-1153.
- ^ a b "Where in the World? Mapmaking at the Asia-Pacific Margin, 1600-1900". Fairbank Center for Chinese Studies, Harvard University. Archived from the original on April 2, 2015. Retrieved December 8, 2016.
- ^ Wigen, Kären (2010). A Malleable Map: Geographies of Restoration in Central Japan, 1600-1912. Berkeley: University of California Press. p. 19. ISBN 9780520259188.
- ^ Chervin, Reed H. (2013). "Review" (PDF). Studies on Asia. 3. Illinois State University: 87–90. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2015-04-04. Retrieved 2015-04-02.
- ^ Wigen, Kären; Lewis, Martin W. (1997). The Myth of Continents : A Critique of Metageography. Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN 0520207424.
External links
- Wigen, Kären 1958- WorldCat Authority Page.
