Joan Judge (History) is co-editor of a new book celebrating the scholarship of Joshua A. Fogel (History).
In (De Gruyter Oldenbourg 2024), leading and emerging scholars have contributed to rich clusters of essays on Historiography, Sino-Japanese Encounters, Law and Justice, Politics, Art, Literature and Translation. Each essay builds on the legacy of Joshua A. Fogel, whose scholarship defined the contours of the Sinosphere in the Western world and beyond. Topics examined in the essays range from the towering progenitors of Japanese Sinology to gendered, diplomatic, and cultural dimensions of Sino-Japanese encounters; from Sinitic poetry to legal culture and revolutionary life; from art commerce and levels of literary expression to the quandaries of translation. In addition to offering a broad range of case studies, the volume is testimony to the methodological importance of a dynamic intra- and transregional approach to the layered history of East Asia.
鈥淭his volume is an important demonstration of the vitality and critical importance of transnational, translingual and transcultural perspectives for understanding the East Asian region as a cultural entity from the early modern through the modern periods,鈥 said Judge.
Fogel鈥檚 former students, junior colleagues who he has mentored as well as close colleagues in Japan, Europe, the United Stated and Canada with whom he has worked over the years contributed the volume鈥檚 26 essays.
Two of Fogel鈥檚 colleagues who he has mentored and supported, Ori Sela (Tel Aviv University) and Joachim Kurtz (Heidelberg University) heard of Fogel鈥檚 retirement and committed themselves to putting together a festschrift in his honour鈥攖hey dubbed it 鈥淭he Joshcrift,鈥 said Judge. The duo approached Judge, who is familiar with his past and present students, and close colleagues. The three then secured the enthusiastic support of the book鈥檚 two other editors, Hugh Shaprio (University of Nevada) and Dan Shao (University of Illinois, Urbana Champagne), who is one of Fogel鈥檚 first graduate students. The editorial team solicited essays in May of 2023. After at least one round of revisions of the essays and two rounds of copyediting, the volume was, miraculously, ready by mid-June 2024, in time for a surprise event in Heidelberg where the volume was presented to Fogel.
Fogel is a specialist in cultural and intellectual relations between China and Japan. He has written, translated or edited seventy-one books. He undertook his undergraduate studies at the University of Chicago and graduate school at Columbia University and Kyoto University, and then went on to teach at Harvard University (1981鈥88) and University of California, Santa Barbara (1989鈥05), before joining the History Department at 91亚色 as a Canada Research Chair (2005鈥2019).
He has been a visiting professor at Kyoto University, Kansai University, Hebrew University, and the Institute for Advanced Study (2001鈥03), among other such places. He founded and edited the journal Sino-Japanese Studies for nearly thirty years. He has held grants from an assortment of agencies: Fulbright, Japanese Ministry of Education, Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation, National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Council of Learned Societies, the Japan Foundation, and SSHRC. Now retired from teaching, he remains engaged in research. He most recently hosted a workshop on 鈥淭ranslation within a World of Chinese Characters: China, Japan, Korea, Vietnam鈥 at YCAR in September 2024. He is presently working on an SSHRC-supported project on the history of the Esperanto movement in China and Japan, ca. 1895鈥1932.
YCAR supported the publication of The Joshcrift through its Publication Support Fund.
Attendees of a June 2024 event where Fogel was presented with the volume, Heidelberg, Germany. Photograph provided by J. Judge.