What We're Doing: Overview Essay for Bodies and Structures

Bodies and Structures began as an attempt to do two things. One, to create a platform for spatial history that reflected the depth of scholarship emerging on the subject in the field of Japanese history and elsewhere. And two, to facilitate the collaborative scholarship that spatial history is particularly suited to - in fact, we argue, which it requires if it is to fulfill its methodological potential. Our thought was that by so doing, spatial history could reveal new questions, interpretations, and narratives about the past(s).

The essay that follows elaborates the project's methodology, its interventions, and its contributions. While it is possible to use this site without reading the essay, we believe that your encounter with Bodies and Structures will be richer if you begin with an understanding of the structural and conceptual choices that we have made and a sense of the historiographical interventions that we aim to achieve. The essay, like the site itself, is a work in progress. We look forward to hearing your feedback.