The History Associates in partnership with the UCSB Affiliates are excited to present April’s Profs at the Pub! History Professor Kate McDonald shares her favorite rickshaw stories from twentieth-century Japan. Invented in 1869, the rickshaw quickly came to define Japan’s urban modernity. Though it declined in popularity in the 1930s and 1940s, the rickshaw was quickly reinvented as a popular – and flexible – cultural symbol.
Kate McDonald is Associate Professor of Modern Japanese History at the University of California, Santa Barbara and co-director of the Bodies and Structures: Deep-Mapping Modern East Asian History project. She is the author of Placing Empire: Travel and the Social Imagination in Imperial Japan (California, 2017). She has a new research article on the social and intellectual history of transportation forthcoming in The American History Review and a new coedited special forum on digital humanities forthcoming in the Journal of Asian Studies. McDonald currently serves as the Associate Editor for Japan at the Journal of Asian Studies and coeditor of the monograph series Johns Hopkins Studies in the History of Technology.
The UCSB History Associates was created with the dual purpose of bringing members of the community interested in history together with UC Santa Barbara faculty through an annual program of lunches and lectures, while raising money to support graduate training in UCSB’s Department of History.
Learn more at communityrelations.ucsb.edu/ucsb-history-associates
The UCSB Affiliates is led by a volunteer board of community members and campus representatives passionate about creating innovative and community- centered programming. The goal of the UCSB Affiliates is to build and celebrate connections between UC Santa Barbara and the greater Santa Barbara community. We provide a pathway for community members to learn more about UC Santa Barbara and participate in campus activities. Through our events and newsletters, we highlight exciting campus-community partnerships and initiatives.
Learn more at communityrelations.ucsb.edu/ucsb-affiliates