From the opening of trade with Britain in the 1850s, Japan occupied a unique and contradictory place in the Victorian imagination, regarded as both a rival empire and a cradle of exquisite beauty. In Quaint, Exquisite (Princeton, 2019), Grace Lavery (Dept. of English, UC Berkeley)explores the enduring impact of this dramatic encounter, showing how the rise of Japan led to a major transformation of Western aesthetics at the dawn of globalization.

Lavery is joined by Judith Butler (Dept. of Comparative Literature).

Read the transcript https://townsendcenter.berkeley.edu/sites/default/files/2020-03/Grace%20Lavery%2C%20Podcast%2C%202019_0.pdf.