jschlachet

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Schlachet 2024
jschlachet@arizona.edu
Phone
(520) 626-3476
Office
Learning Services Building 126
Schlachet, Joshua
Assistant Professor

Joshua Schlachet is a historian of early modern and modern Japan, specializing in the cultural history of food and nourishment in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. His current book project, Nourishing Life: Cultures of Diet in Early Modern Japan, examines the emergence of a dietary common knowledge as new practical guidebooks circulating among ordinary readers expanded the concept of a well-nourished body to encompass economic productivity, status hierarchy, and moral cultivation. Schlachet is co-editor of Interdisciplinary Edo: Towards an Integrated Approach to Early Modern Japan (Routledge, 2024), a collected volume of innovative humanistic research from across the methodological spectrum. Schlachet's research and commentary have appeared in publications such as Asian Medicine, Verge: Studies in Global Asias, and Monumenta Nipponica. His research interests include global and comparative food studies, histories of science and health, material culture and artisanship, and Dutch-Japanese exchange.

At the University of Arizona, Schlachet teaches courses on Japanese and East Asian history, dietary cultures, material and consumer culture, and everyday life. He received his Ph.D. in East Asian Languages and Cultures from Columbia University and holds degrees from Cornell University (History), the University of Michigan (Japanese Studies), and the Culinary Institute of America (Culinary Arts).

Currently Teaching

EAS 491 – Preceptorship

Specialized work on an individual basis, consisting of instruction and practice in actual service in a department, program, or discipline. Requires faculty member approval, preceptor application on file with department.

JPN 362A – The Culture of Food and Health in Japan

How do we know what is good for us, who gets to decide, and how does "healthy" change over time? This seminar explores these basic questions through the lens of Japanese food culture: the dietary trends, choices, and ideas of proper consumption that help shape the relationship between people's bodies and the world around them. We will discuss how and why "eating right" became such an important issue in Japan from the seventeenth century to the present and ask what the everyday experience of eating can tell us about the core themes, concepts, and events in Japanese and East Asian history. By putting Japanese foodways in conversation with global gastronomy, we will investigate what makes food cultural and what makes it historical. This course welcomes undergraduates of all interests and majors, and no prior knowledge of Japanese language or history is required. Additional materials in East Asian languages will be made available upon request.