Conversations & Cocktails: "Samurai Superstars in Antebellum America" with Natalia Doan

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The Denbo Center for Humanities & the Arts Presents Conversations & Cocktails: "Samurai Superstars in Antebellum America" with Natalia Doan.

This virtual talk will explore how, in 1860, seventeen-year-old samurai Tateishi Onojirō and his rumored flirtations and popularity with American women during the first-ever Japanese diplomatic mission to the US sparked national controversy and questioning of antebellum ideas about race and culture.

Dr. Natalia Doan is an Assistant Professor of History at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, where she teaches the cultural and intellectual history of modern and early modern Japan. She received her doctorate in Asian Studies from the University of Oxford and is the author of Civil War Samurai: The 1860 Japanese Embassy and Tateishi Onojirō in Antebellum America (Leiden University Press, 2026).

This talk is part of the 2026-2027 Conversations & Cocktails series presented by the Denbo Center for Humanities & the Arts. Conversations & Cocktails is a free public lecture and discussion series that showcases the original research of our distinguished UT arts and humanities faculty. Join us as we feature groundbreaking work exploring a wide range of topics in the arts and in humanities fields such as philosophy, history, and literature studies.

Register for the virtual talk with the link below.