Lori Watt

Lori Watt

​Associate Professor of History and of Global Studies
PhD, Columbia University
MA, Ochanomizu University, Tokyo
BA, Reed College

contact info:

office hours:

  • Fall 2024:
    Wednesdays 1:30-3:00pm and by appointment
Get Directions

mailing address:

  • MSC 1062-107-114
    Washington University
    One Brookings Drive
    St. Louis, MO 63130-4899

​Professor Watt specializes in Japanese history. In a current book project, she seeks to gain a better understanding of the Allied-managed population transfers throughout East Asia at the end of the World War II.

 

PhD Students

Dr. Watt welcomes applications from prospective PhD students with an insterest in the political and social history of 20th centruy Japan, especially on the themes of empire, decolonization, and internationalsim. Please contact her by email in advance of submitting an application to discuss whether the program at WUSTL would be a good fit for you.

Books

When Empire Comes Home:  Repatriation and Reintegration in Postwar Japan.  Cambridge, MA:  Harvard University Asia Center, 2009

Articles

"Embracing Defeat, Eliding Empire in Post-colonial Seoul, Autumn 1945." Journal of Asian Studies February 2015

"A 'Great East Asian Meal' in Post-colonial Seoul, Autumn 1945." In Food and War in Mid-Twentieth-Century East Asia, ed. Katarzyna J. Cwiertka, 149-164.  Aldershot: Ashgate, 2013

"Imperial Remnants:  the Repatriates in Postwar Japan," in Caroline Elkins and Susan Pedersen, eds., Settler Colonialism in the Twentieth Century:  Projects, Practices, Legacies.  New York:  Taylor and Francis, 2005, 243-255

"Tôhoku Dôhô:  Haisengo Manshû ni okeru Nihonjin no sekai (The World of Japanese Refugees in Postwar Manchuria)."  Higashi Ajia Kindaishi March 2003, 87-97

Book Projects

A study of the American-led dismantling of Japan’s settler colonial project, Decolonizing Japan: American Occupation and Humanitarianism after World War II shows how a range of reform and humanitarian efforts under Occupation generated a vocabulary of self-determination, sovereignty, and human rights, one that helped ease Japan's transition away from empire and into an ethno-national state. Under review at Oxford University Press.

A life history of Japan’s most famous diplomat, Sadako Ogata: Ambassador to the World analyzes how Ogata's education and professional contributions, especially as the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees from 1991-2000, exemplify Japan’s national history from war, Occupation, and the US-Japan Alliance to prominence in international organizations and economic development initiatives in Asia, from the mid-twentieth century into the twenty-first.