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The Japan Foundation IPS Grant constitutes a major contribution to our efforts to continue to grow, increase our impact on the Japan studies field through interventions in cultural studies, and increase the level of direct interactions with leading Japanese scholars. Through the addition of a Japan historian to our group and a three-year series of summer institutes, visiting professorships, faculty fellows, graduate student and East Asia Library support, we pursue three goals:

(1) Make a theoretical statement about the necessity to bridge and put into fruitful tension with one another the study of the cultural, the political and the social throughout history.

(2) Make a methodological statement about the necessity to insert cultural studies at the center of the interplay of the political and the social throughout history at a time when nationwide political and economic forces corrode the possibilities for broad training and research that intellectually engages the cultural and humanistic.

(3) Build on our core strengths, the willingness and capability of our Japan faculty to study Japanese culture in an interdisciplinary manner.
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