Amy Stanley is an American historian of early modern Japan. In 2007, Stanley began teaching in the Department of History at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, where she teaches undergraduate and graduate courses on Japanese history, global history, and women's/gender history. She is best known for her most recent book '' Stranger in the Shogun's City: A Japanese Woman and Her World'', which received the National Book Critics Circle Award and the

PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award The PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award is awarded by the PEN America (formerly PEN American Center) to honor a "distinguished biography possessing notable literary merit which has been published in the United States during the previous calendar year." ...

for biography, and was a finalist for both the Baillie Gifford Prize and

Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography The Pulitzer Prize for Biography is one of the seven American Pulitzer Prizes that are annually awarded for Letters, Drama, and Music. It has been presented since 1917 for a distinguished biography, autobiography or memoir by an American author o ...

Academic career

Stanley received her BA from Harvard University in East Asian Studies in 1999 and her PhD in East Asian Languages and Civilizations from Harvard in 2007. In 2007, she became the Wayne V. Jones II Research Professor in History at Northwestern University.

Harassment and controversy

She has received harassment from Japanese internet right-wing communities (commonly known as ''netto uyoku ネット右翼'', or ''neto uyo'' ネトウヨ for short) and Japanese and Korean right-wing scholars due to her criticism on how the controversial issue of Korean comfort women of WWII has been written about by academics. Alongside Hannah Shepherd of Cambridge University, Sayaka Chatani of

National University of Singapore The National University of Singapore (NUS) is a national public research university in Singapore. Founded in 1905 as the Straits Settlements and Federated Malay States Government Medical School, NUS is the oldest autonomous university in the c ...

, David Ambaras of

North Carolina State University North Carolina State University (NC State) is a public land-grant research university in Raleigh, North Carolina. Founded in 1887 and part of the University of North Carolina system, it is the largest university in the Carolinas. The universit ...

, and Chelsea Szendi Schieder of Aoyama Gakuin University, Stanley was one of five Japanese Studies scholars who posted a critical rebuttal against

J. Mark Ramseyer John Mark Ramseyer (born 1954) is the Mitsubishi professor of Japanese Legal Studies at Harvard Law School. He is the author of over 10 books and 50 articles in scholarly journals. He is co-author of one of the leading corporations casebooks, Klei ...

’s claims in ''The Asia Pacific Journal'' entitled “'Contracting for Sex in the Pacific War': The Case for Retraction on Grounds of Academic Misconduct." As a result Stanley has also stated that she was the subject of “oblique threats.”

Personal life

Stanley’s interest in Japan was first sparked when she interacted with Japanese post-doctoral students who worked alongside her father at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland. Stanley did not start learning Japanese until she began her post-secondary education at Harvard University. Under the guidance of her advisor Harold Bolitho she was encouraged to pursue her research in early modern Japan. Stanley currently lives in Evanston, Illinois with her husband, two sons, and dog. Her hobbies include pottery, reading, and learning about historical figures from the nineteenth-century.

Publications

All publication can be accessed through Stanley's CV on the Northwestern University websit
here

Books

* *

Journal articles

* “‘Contracting for Sex in the Pacific War’: The Case for Retraction on the Grounds of Academic Misconduct,” with Hannah Shepherd, Sayaka Chatani, David Ambaras, and Chelsea Szendi Scheider. ''The Asia-Pacific Journal'' (March 2021). * “Maidservants’ Tales: Narrating Domestic and Global History, 1600-1900.” ''The American Historical Review'' Vol. 121, No. 2 (April 2016): 437-460. * “Enlightenment Geisha: The Sex Trade, Education, and Feminine Ideals in Early Meiji Japan.” ''The Journal of Asian Studies'' Vol. 72, No. 3 (2013): 539-562. * “Adultery, Punishment, and Reconciliation in Tokugawa Japan,” ''The Journal of Japanese Studies'' Vol. 3, No. 2 (2007): 309-335.

Periodicals

* “Writing the History of Sexual Assault in the #MeToo Era,” ''Perspectives on History: The Newsmagazine of the American Historical Association'' (November 2018): 18-20. ** *Republished in Slate 10/1/1

Podcasts and interviews

* Baillie Gifford Podcast
Episode 5

Asian Review of Books Podcast

Meiji at 150 Podcast

New Books in East Asian Studies Podcast

Awards and accolades

* NEH Faculty Fellowship, 2015-16. * WCAS Distinguished Teaching Award. 2012. * For ''Stranger in the Shogun's City: A Japanese Woman and Her World'': ** Winner of the National Book Critics’ Circle Award in Biography, 2021 ** Winner of the PEN/Jacqueline Bograd Weld Award for Biography, 2021 ** Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in Biography, 2021 ** Shortlisted for the Baillie Gifford Prize, 2020

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Stanley, Amy Living people 21st-century American biographers 21st-century American women writers Historians of Japan American Japanologists American women historians American women non-fiction writers Harvard University alumni Northwestern University faculty Year of birth missing (living people)