Erik Ropers, Ph.D.

Biography

Erik Ropers is a historian of modern Japan. His first book, Voices of the Korean Minority in Postwar Japan, examines the ways in which Japanese-language scholars have understood and represented colonial Koreans subject to enforced labor and enforced military prostitution, as well as Korean victims of the atomic bombings in Japanese postwar historical writing. Current projects include a book manuscript looking at visual representations of wartime Japan in Japanese comic culture, partly drawing on past research, and a second book manuscript examining the legal history of the Hanaoka Incident, its appearance at the Yokohama War Crimes Tribunal, and concomitant local memories of the Chinese uprising in rural Akita Prefecture.

Beyond these projects, Dr. Ropers' research focuses broadly on the social and cultural history of twentieth-century Japan. Some of his other recent work has examined how Japanese wartime experiences have been visually and narratively represented in Japanese comics (manga), art, and literature; Japanese historical debates in the nineteen-nineties, and human rights issues stemming from Japan’s war in Asia. His teaching covers the Department’s introductory survey courses in East Asian history (premodern and modern), human rights, and Asian Studies; a research seminar focused on wartime memory and violence in Asia, and advanced courses in Japanese history from the age of the samurai to the end of the twentieth century. He is happy to help students develop undergraduate research projects. For History majors interested in writing a senior honors thesis (on any topic, not just Asia), Dr. Ropers serves as the honors coordinator for the Department. 

Dr. Ropers serves on the executive board for the Mid-Atlantic Region Association for Asian Studies.

Books

Voices of the Korean Minority in Postwar Japan (Routledge, 2019).

 

Selected Peer-Reviewed Articles & Chapters

“Narrating Against Dominance: Women and Organised Crime in Japanese Discourse and Popular Culture,” Contemporary Japan (Preprint)

“The Hanaoka Incident and Practices of Local History and Memory Making in Northern Japan.” In: Matilda Keynes et al., eds., Historical Justice and History Education (Palgrave: 2021): 87-106.

"Debating History and Memory: Examining the Controversy Surrounding Iris Chang's The Rape of Nanking," Humanity: An International Journal of Human Rights 8, no. 1 (2017): 77-99.

“Shōgen, torauma, geijutsu: sensō to sengo no katari no shūgō-tekina bunseki.” In: Yoshii Hiroaki, ed., Sensō shakaigaku, Meguro Akane, trans. (Tokyo: Akashi shoten, 2016).  (English title: “Testimony, Trauma, and Art: Collaborative Approaches to Narrating War and its Aftermath.”)

Selected Lectures and Presentations

“Layered Justice at Yokohama: Appeals and Clemency Proceedings of the Chusan Labor Camp Trial,” University of Pennsylvania

"Shōjo manga and Representations of War in 1970s Japan," Mid-Atlantic Region Association for Asian Studies, Dickinson College.

"The Hanaoka Incident and Practices of Local History and Memory Making in Northern Japan," Historical Justice and History Education Symposium, Umeå University, Sweden

Teaching

HIST 210: Urban Asia

HIST 300: History, Memory and Violence in Asia

HIST 319: Japan: 1830-1930