Dr Christopher Gerteis
BA (UC Santa Cruz) MA, PhD (Univ of Iowa)
Overview
Department of History
Lecturer in the History of Contemporary Japan
Japan Research Centre (JRC)
Member, Japan Research Centre
SOAS Food Studies Centre
Member, SOAS Food Studies Centre
Centre for Gender Studies
Member
- Name:
- Dr Christopher Gerteis
- Email address:
- cg24@soas.ac.uk
- Telephone:
- 020 7898 4093
- Fax:
- 020 7898 4699
- Address:
- SOAS, University of London
Thornhaugh Street, Russell Square, London WC1H 0XG - Building:
- Russell Square: College Buildings
- Office No:
- 304
- On Sabbatical:
- AY 2012-13
Biography
Christopher Gerteis specializes in the social and cultural history of Japan from 1600 to the present. He is especially interested in the intersection of consumer capitalism, visual media, and historical memory.
He has previously held research and teaching positions at Hosei University and Sophia University in Japan and Yale University in the United States. His current research investigates popular memories of Japan’s modern industrial heritage from the first passenger steamships to the last Japanese Formula One (F1) race car.
Dr Gerteis is Series Editor of the SOAS Studies in Modern and Contemporary Japan, a peer-reviewed series of well-edited, reasonably priced scholarly books published by Bloomsbury (www.bloomsbury.com). The first two books in the series will ship in autumn 2013.
He also regularly appears as a commentator for the BBC and has advised a variety of film and television productions. Most recently he was historical advisor to the Universal Pictures production '47 Ronin' starring Keanu Reeves, Hiroyuki Sanada and Ko Shibasaki, to be released worldwide in December 2013.
Teaching
Courses Taught
PhD Students supervised
- Martyn Smith, The Discourse on Nation in Postwar Japan: 1952-1972
Research
Dr Gerteis’ research interests traverse the history of twentieth century Japan. He is currently working on a book examining the extent to which for- and not-for-profit corporations have shaped popular longings for a reified past as a means to obfuscate less pleasant aspects of their institutional histories. The book argues that there has been a significant social cost, and potential fiduciary risk, to the ways in which executives of for- and not-for-profit corporations in Japan have chosen to contrive historical memories and nostalgic longings for so-called ‘golden eras’ of twentieth century history.
His first book, Gender Struggles: Wage-earning Women and Male Dominant Unions in Postwar Japan, examines the extent to which customary notions of work, gender and ethnicity influenced the formation of the socialist labor movement in postwar Japan. He also co-edited, with Timothy S. George, Japan Since 1945: from Postwar to Post-Bubble (Bloomsbury, 2012) and editor of Critical Readings on the History of Industrialization in Modern Japan (Brill, 2012).
Principal Grants
- 2009-2012 Nippon Foundation Grant to support the SOAS Translation Initiative in Japanese Studies, which oversaw the translation and publication of four books and twenty journal articles while offering advanced post-graduate training in scholarly translation for the humanities and social sciences.
- 2008-2009 Fulbright Faculty Research Grant, Senator J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board, for nine months of field research in Japan.
- 2005-2006 Postdoctoral Fellowship, Yale University, Council on East Asian Studies for one year in residence at the Yale University Council on East Asian Studies.
- 2004-2005 Postdoctoral Fellowship, Harvard University, Reischauer Institute for Japanese Studies. Declined to accept a tenure-track position at Coastal Carolina University.
- 2001-2002 Postdoctoral Fellowship, Social Science Research Council (SSRC) and Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (日本学術振興会) for one year in residence at the Ōhara Institute for Social Research at Hōsei University.
- 1997-1999 Graduate Student Research Fellowship, Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology (文部科学省) for eighteen months of research and study at Meiji University, Tokyo.
Awards and Honours
- 2011 2nd Prize Book Award, European Association for Japanese Studies for Gender Struggles: Wage-earning Women and Male-Dominated Unions in Postwar Japan (Harvard University Asia Center, 2009). This is a tri-annual award selected from all books published in Japanese Studies between 2009 and 2011.
Expertise
For help in contacting SOAS academics and advice on services to business and the community, please contact SOAS Enterprise on +44(0)20 7898 4837 or email enterprise@soas.ac.uk.
For all press and media enquiries please call +44 (0)20 7898 4956/4135 or email comms@soas.ac.uk
Available for
- Radio
- Press
- Briefings
- Special Study Programmes
- Short Term Consultancy
- Long Term Consultancy
Regional Expertise
- East Asia
Country Expertise
- Japan
Languages
Publications
Authored Books
Gerteis, Christopher (2009) Gender Struggles: Wage-earning Women and Male-Dominated Unions in Postwar Japan. Cambridge, Massachusetts and London, England: Harvard University Asia Center: Distributed by Harvard University Press. (Harvard East Asian Monographs)
Edited Books
Gerteis, Christopher and George, Timothy S., eds. (2012) Japan since 1945: from Postwar to Post-Bubble. London and New York: Bloomsbury.
Gerteis, Christopher, ed. (2012) Critical Readings on the History of Industrialization in Modern Japan (3 vols). Leiden and Boston: Brill.
Book Chapters
Gerteis, Christopher (2013) '「衰退してゆく労働組合員一戦後労働運動における階級とジェンダー」.' In: フリューシュトゥック, サビーネ and ウォルソール, アン and 長野, ひろ子, (eds.), 日本人の「男らしさ」 -サムライからオタクまで 「男性性」の変遷を追う. 東京: 明石書店, pp. 130-149.
Gerteis, Christopher (2012) 'Marketing History as Social Responsibility.' In: Gerteis, Christopher and George, Timothy S., (eds.), Japan since 1945: from Postwar to Post-Bubble. London and New York: Bloomsbury, pp. 223-241.
Gerteis, Christopher and George, Timothy S. (2012) 'Revisiting the History of Postwar Japan.' In: Gerteis, Christopher and George, Timothy S., (eds.), Japan since 1945: from Postwar to Post-Bubble. London and New York: Bloomsbury, 1-9, 67-68, 141-143, 205-207.
Gerteis, Christopher (2012) 'The Nexus of Economic and Social Change in Modern Japan.' In: Gerteis, Christopher, (ed.), Critical Readings on the History of Industrialization in Modern Japan (3 vols). Leiden and Boston: Brill, pp. 3-17.
Gerteis, Christopher (2012) 'Losing the Union Man: Class and Gender in the Postwar Japanese Labor Movement.' In: Gerteis, Christopher, (ed.), Critical Readings on the History of Industrialization in Modern Japan. Leiden and Boston: Brill, pp. 1155-1172.
Gerteis, Christopher (2011) 'Losing the Union Man: Gender and Class in the Postwar Labor Movement.' In: Frühstück, Sabine and Walthall, Anne, (eds.), Recreating Japanese Men. Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press, pp. 135-153.
Gerteis, Christopher (2008) 'Labor Unions in Japan.' In: Stearns, Peter N., (ed.), Oxford Encyclopedia of the Modern World. Oxford University Press, pp. 406-407.
Gerteis, Christopher (2008) 'Labor and the Labor Movement: Labor Relations in Japan.' In: Stearns, Peter N., (ed.), Oxford Encyclopedia of the Modern World. Oxford University Press, pp. 383-385.
Gerteis, Christopher (2008) 'Subjectivity lost: Labor and the Cold War in Occupied Japan.' In: Stromquist, Shelton, (ed.), Labor's Cold War: Local Politics in a Global Context. Urbana, Illinois, USA: University of Illinois Press, pp. 258-290. (The working class in American history)
Articles
Gerteis, Christopher (2013) 'Political Protest in Interwar Japan: Posters & Handbills from the Ohara Collection (1920s-1930s) - 2.' Visualizing Cultures: Image-Driven Scholarship . (Forthcoming)
Gerteis, Christopher (2013) 'Political Protest in Interwar Japan: Posters & Handbills from the Ohara Collection (1920s-1930s) - 1.' Visualizing Cultures: Image-Driven Scholarship .
Gerteis, Christopher (2008) '「大原社研アーカイブと社会史研究」.' 大原社会問題研究所雑誌=Journal of Ōhara Institute for Social Research (591). pp. 10-14.
Gerteis, Christopher (2007) 'The Erotic and the Vulgar: Visual Culture and Organized Labor's Critique of U.S. Hegemony in Occupied Japan.' Critical Asian Studies, 39 (1). pp. 3-34.
Gerteis, Christopher (2003) 'Labor’s Cold Warriors: The American Federation of Labor and ‘Free Trade Unionism’ in Cold War Japan.' The Journal of American-East Asian Relations, 12 (3). pp. 207-224.
Book Reviews
Gerteis, Christopher (2012) 'Review of The People’s Post Office: The History and Politics of the Japanese Postal System, 1871-2010.' The American Historical Review, 117 (5). pp. 1569-1570.
Gerteis, Christopher (2010) 'Review of 'The Proletarian Gamble: Korean Workers in Interwar Japan' by Ken C. Kawashima.' The American Historical Review, 115 (4). pp. 1462-1463.
Gerteis, Christopher (2010) 'Review of 'Women's History and Local Community in Postwar Japan'.' Social Science Japan Journal, 13 (1).
Gerteis, Christopher (2010) 'Review of 'Soft Power and Its Perils: U.S. Cultural Policy in Early Postwar Japan and Permanent Dependency'.' Journal of Asian Studies, 69 (3). pp. 909-912.
Gerteis, Christopher (2008) 'Review Essay and Selected Bibliography on Labor in Japan.' Labor History, 49 (2). pp. 253-255.
Gerteis, Christopher (2008) 'Religious Terrorism and Popular Culture: The Uses and Abuses of Aum Shinrikyō. A Review Essay.' Journal of Religion and Society (10). pp. 1-6.
Gerteis, Christopher (2008) 'Review of 'Gendering Modern Japanese History' edited by Barbara Molony and Kathleen Uno.' Journal of Asian Studies, 67 (1). pp. 326-328.
Gerteis, Christopher (2008) 'Review of 'War Memory and Social Politics in Japan, 1945-2005' by Franziska Seraphim.' Journal of Asian Studies, 67 (3). pp. 1098-1100.
Gerteis, Christopher (2008) 'Review of 'A Sociology of Work in Japan' by Ross Mouer and Hirosuke Kawanishi.' Labor History, 49 (2). pp. 260-261.
Gerteis, Christopher (2007) 'Review of 'Cooperation over Conflict: The Women's Movement and the State in Postwar Japan' by Miriam Murase.' Journal of Asian Studies, 66 (3). pp. 848-849.
Gerteis, Christopher (2005) 'Review of 'Divisions of Labor: Globality, Ideology, and War in the Shaping of the Japanese Labor Movement' by Lonny E. Carlile.' Journal of Asian Studies, 64 (4). pp. 1024-1025.
Other
Gerteis, Christopher and Anderson, Jennifer E. (2006) 'Instructor’s Manual and Test Bank to accompany Rhoads Murphey East Asia: A New History Fourth Edition.' New York: Pearson/Longman.
Gerteis, Christopher (2005) 'Gender and Sexuality in Modern Japanese Society.' ExEAS Syllabi .
Gerteis, Christopher (2005) 'Instructor’s Manual and Test Bank to accompany Rhoads Murphey History of Asia Fifth Edition.' New York: Pearson/Longman.
Gerteis, Christopher (2003) 'U.S. Credibility at Stake in Iraq.' History News Service .
Gerteis, Christopher (2003) 'Did We Fabricate the Pretext for War?' History News Network .
Gerteis, Christopher (2002) 'Dissenters Be Wary: The Nation’s at War.' The Seattle Times .
Gerteis, Christopher (2002) 'Training the 21st Century Yeoman Farmer.' The Overseas Democrat .
