Dr. Tze Loo

Assistant Professor of History
326 Ryland Hall
Office: (804) 289-8334
Fax: (804) 287-1992

Research:
Modern East Asia, Japanese intellectual history, cultural heritage preservation, colonial and post colonial theory, war and memory in Japan, anarchism in Japan and China, historiography, museum studies, historical anthropology, architectural history, cultural studies

Education:
Ph.D., Cornell

Academic and Professional Activities:

My dissertation "Treasures of the Nation: Cultural Heritage Preservation and the Making of Shuri Castle in Prewar Japan" studies the role that a particular castle plays in the history of Japan. I trace the ways the Shuri Castle, the political and sacerdotal center of the once independent Ryukyu Kingdom, was included into narratives of Japanese cultural heritage in an attempt to understand how practices of heritage preservation intersect with the agendas of the prewar Japanese nation state as it imagined and produced its empire. Central to this inquiry is the question of heritage preservation as a mode of historical production.

I am currently working on an article that discusses Japan's role in world heritage preservation today. In particular, I explore the ways in which the language of globalism that underlies the notion of humanity's shared heritage is a site in which Japan's own ideas of cultural authenticity are being reworked.