Alexis Dudden, Professor of History at the University of Connecticut, will lecture on “Japan’s Controversial Territorial Claims Against China, Taiwan, Russia, and the Koreas.” 

On the one hand, there is nothing unusual about Japan’s territorial claims: They are a piece of an aspirational foreign and domestic vision for the nation’s future. On the other hand, Tokyo’s claims to three small islands that it disputes with its neighboring countries speaks to a challenge of a more complicated nature, and one that it is important for Washington’s policy planners not simply to brush away if only because it directly impacts American security assurances to Japan.

Alexis Dudden was recently a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center in Washington, DC (2021-2022). She holds degrees from Columbia (1991) and the University of Chicago (1998). Since 1985, Dudden has lived and studied for extended periods of time in Japan and South Korea and is the recipient of the Chosun Ilbo 2015 Manhae Peace Prize. She appears regularly on NPR and in The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Guardian. Her ongoing research concerns maritime Northeast Asia and focuses on the globally changing meaning of oceans and islands.

Sponsored by the Chinese and Japanese Department and co-sponsored by the Asian Studies Program, Political Science Department, History Department, Russian Studies Department, International Studies Program, and the Dean of the Faculty Office.