简介

Intellectual and cultural history of Tokugawa and Meiji Japan, medicine and the body, gender and women's history, law and gender. My work focuses on Japan's long nineteenth century, the period from the late Tokugawa period to the end of Meiji. My first book, Before the Nation, examines the Kokugaku discourse of the late Tokugawa period and explored how Japan was constituted as a form of cultural and social identity by nativist scholars. My second project, still in progress, explores the medical culture of the nineteenth century and analyzes the impact of the rise of "Western medicine" and public health upon conceptions of the body and subjecthood. Recently, I have turned to explore the intersection of medical and legal discourse in the formation of modern conceptions of gender. In a series of conference papers, I have taken up issues such as abortion, sexual violence, and the formation of family law.