The Working Group on Trans/Anti-Imperialism began in fall 2021 as an experiment in collaborative scholarship between graduate students and faculty in the History/History of Art and Architecture Departments at the University of Pittsburgh. In the 2021-2022 academic year, we focused on the US, German, and Japanese empires in 19th and 20th centuries in our readings and discussions, focusing on the role of nationalism and the rise of nation states in studying modern empires. The working group continued through the 2022-2023 academic year.
The highlight of the group's activities in 2021 featured a workshop with Dr. Satoshi Mizutani, historian of the British and Japanese empires at Doshisha University in Kyoto, Japan. In our workshop, Dr. Mizutani shared his working paper, “Indians and Koreans in Crosscolonial Solidarity” (Part one can be found here on the Transimperial History Blog). This discussion underlined the role of the anti-imperial in transimperial networks and approaches and served as a basis for a critical discussion of the concept of transimperial and the many implications and connotations the term carries.
In the spring of 2022, the working group had the opportunity to connect with the newly commenced Center for Transimperial History @ Doshisha University and its network of scholars in Japan, Canada, Germany, and the United States.
The highlight of the working group's activities in 2022-2023 was a workshop held in November 2022 with three doctoral students from the Swiss Institute of Technology who co-edited a special issue of the journal Comparativ. Learning about their experience working together proved inspiring and enriching to the graduate students in the group, who then decided to organize a roundtable on archive methodologies to share their research experiences in February 2023. This roundtable was well attended by faculty, graduate students, and alumni, and it was followed up with another conversation with Dr. Raja Adal from the Department of History in March 2023.
In November, 2023, members of the working group published an article about transimperialism in the American Historical Association’s newsmagazine Perspectives on History. Read more about it here!