Ran Zwigenberg
Biographic Data
| ID | 279166 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Ran Zwigenberg |
| GIVEN NAMES | Ran |
| FAMILY NAME | Zwigenberg |
| SIGNATURE | ZWIGENBERG R |
| AFFILIATIONS | Pennsylvania State University |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-7384-0786 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 15 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 5 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 15 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2012 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2023 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
"Beyond the "Empire of Trauma
In 1945, researchers on a mission to Hiroshima with the United States Strategic Bombing Survey canvassed survivors of the nuclear attack. This marked the beginning of global efforts-by psychiatrists, psychologists, and other social scientists-to tackle the complex ways human minds were affected by the advent of the nuclear age. Nuclear Minds traces these efforts and the ways they were interpreted differently across communities of researchers and …
Men in Metal
Reviewed by: Men in Metal: A Topography of Public Bronze Statuary in Modern Japan by Sven Saaler Ran Zwigenberg (bio) Men in Metal: A Topography of Public Bronze Statuary in Modern Japan. By Sven Saaler. Brill, 2020. xii, 356 pages. €105.00, cloth; €105.00, E-book. Sven Saaler's Men in Metal came out in October 2020. For a work that focuses mostly on prewar and wartime Japan, the book was unexpectedly and dramatically relevant. Throughout the sum…
Modern Relics
In April 2017, a group of mannequins was removed during renovation of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum. The new exhibit instead focuses on objects left by the dead (ihin) as well as survivor testimonies, representing the latest change in a seventy-year controversy regarding museal representations of the devastation wrought by the atomic bomb. Controversies paralleled debates over Holocaust memorialization and the treatment of objects left by v…
Japan's Castles
Shuri Castle and Japanese Castles
In October 31, 2019, a massive fire tore through the UNESCO World Heritage site of Shuri Castle in Okinawa, sparking a global reaction and comparisons with another World Heritage site. As in the case of Notre Dame, government officials immedicately declared their intention to rebuild, and donations flooded in from Okinawa, throughout Japan, and other countries. Shuri Castle is widely recognized as the symbol of the former Ryukyu kingdom. This art…
Can the Frontier Write Back
vi Editors’ Introduction Nathan Hopson and Ran Zwigenberg Can the Frontier Write Back? This issue of Verge is about reclaiming one of the F- words of academia: frontier (Klein 1996). Sometimes a frontier is just a political border or a border zone (witness frontière in French and biānjiāng in Chinese, for example ), but the word frontier is often highly charged, used to describe the outermost limits of expansion and “progress.” Space is the “fin…
Wounds of the Heart
Wounds of the Heart”: Psychiatric Trauma and American Denial in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In 1962 a young Jewish-American psychiatrist by the name of Robert J. Lifton met Kubo Yoshitoshi, a Hiroshima based psychiatrist. Lifton was aiming to learn from Kubo about his research into A-bomb survivors’ psychological trauma. The meeting, however, was far from a success, with Lifton, who later became a leading researcher on war trauma, remarking, “I found…
The Atomic City
The Atomic City:Military Tourism and Urban Identity in Postwar Hiroshima Ran Zwigenberg (bio) When the first American troops entered Hiroshima in September 1945, they did so in full battle gear with drawn bayonets.1 Neither Americans nor Japanese knew what to expect from these first encounters in Hiroshima's nuclear wasteland. Residents feared Americans would rape and pillage their town. Women were told not to wear flashy clothes, men not to wear…
The most modern city in the world
During a 1951 press conference upon his arrival in Hiroshima, the Japanese–American artist Isamu Noguchi startled reporters with the comment “Hiroshima is probably the most modern city in the world”. Noguchi’s statement expressed the ambivalence many in Japan and beyond felt towards Hiroshima in the aftermath of the bomb. Hiroshima was an expression of a modern nightmare, a failure of the enlightenment narrative of science and progress, but Hiros…
Entangled Memories
In 1973, just months before the Yom Kippur War, Muki Tzur, an Israeli historian, wrote in the introduction of the German translation of "Siach Lokhamim" (A Warriors' Conversation), "[this book] was written by Jewish youths of the 20th century. This century was shaped by two colossal events, two earthquakes in modern civilization: Hiroshima and Auschwitz. It seems that there is no young man in this world who is free from relating to these two even…
Never Again
Ran Zwigenberg makes a case for revising the history of Hiroshima and its global connections and importance. Focusing on the little known episode of the 1962 Hiroshima-Auschwitz Peace March, he argues that the march was a unique point of convergence between multiple national narratives of victimization. The Peace March illustrates the emergence of a shared discourse of commemoration of WW II following the Eichmann trial and others, which agents l…
Hiroshima
In 1962, a Hiroshima peace delegation and an Auschwitz survivor's organization exchanged relics and testimonies, including the bones and ashes of Auschwitz victims. This symbolic encounter, in which the dead were literally conscripted in the service of the politics of the living, serves as a cornerstone of this volume, capturing how memory was utilized to rebuild and redefine a shattered world. This is a powerful study of the contentious history …
A Sacred Ground for Peace
“Each time I get near the Peace Park,” wrote Kenzaburō Ōe in 1963, “I get the strong odor of politics” (1996, 45). And indeed the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park in 1963 was a controversial and contested place. It is hard to believe it today, when the Peace Park, erected in 1955 to commemorate the site of the world's first use of a nuclear bomb, is largely a quiet and orderly memorial site frequented mostly by tourists and school groups, but in 196…
War and Peace
The Coming of a Second Sun
In November 2011 when asked about the Tokyo Electric Power Company's (TEPCO's) deteriorating finances, a Japanese official commented, "This is a war between humans and technology. While that war is being fought, we should not talk about bankruptcy." The unnamed official, perhaps inadvertently, alluded to something more than the financial issues here; the fact that technological fixes are no longer an option and that Japan, sixty-six years after t…
The Atomic City
The Atomic City:Military Tourism and Urban Identity in Postwar Hiroshima Ran Zwigenberg (bio) When the first American troops entered Hiroshima in September 1945, they did so in full battle gear with drawn bayonets.1 Neither Americans nor Japanese knew what to expect from these first encounters in Hiroshima's nuclear wasteland. Residents feared Americans would rape and pillage their town. Women were told not to wear flashy clothes, men not to wear…
The most modern city in the world
During a 1951 press conference upon his arrival in Hiroshima, the Japanese–American artist Isamu Noguchi startled reporters with the comment “Hiroshima is probably the most modern city in the world”. Noguchi’s statement expressed the ambivalence many in Japan and beyond felt towards Hiroshima in the aftermath of the bomb. Hiroshima was an expression of a modern nightmare, a failure of the enlightenment narrative of science and progress, but Hiros…
Never Again
Ran Zwigenberg makes a case for revising the history of Hiroshima and its global connections and importance. Focusing on the little known episode of the 1962 Hiroshima-Auschwitz Peace March, he argues that the march was a unique point of convergence between multiple national narratives of victimization. The Peace March illustrates the emergence of a shared discourse of commemoration of WW II following the Eichmann trial and others, which agents l…
A Sacred Ground for Peace
“Each time I get near the Peace Park,” wrote Kenzaburō Ōe in 1963, “I get the strong odor of politics” (1996, 45). And indeed the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park in 1963 was a controversial and contested place. It is hard to believe it today, when the Peace Park, erected in 1955 to commemorate the site of the world's first use of a nuclear bomb, is largely a quiet and orderly memorial site frequented mostly by tourists and school groups, but in 196…
War and Peace
The Coming of a Second Sun
In November 2011 when asked about the Tokyo Electric Power Company's (TEPCO's) deteriorating finances, a Japanese official commented, "This is a war between humans and technology. While that war is being fought, we should not talk about bankruptcy." The unnamed official, perhaps inadvertently, alluded to something more than the financial issues here; the fact that technological fixes are no longer an option and that Japan, sixty-six years after t…
Hiroshima
In 1962, a Hiroshima peace delegation and an Auschwitz survivor's organization exchanged relics and testimonies, including the bones and ashes of Auschwitz victims. This symbolic encounter, in which the dead were literally conscripted in the service of the politics of the living, serves as a cornerstone of this volume, capturing how memory was utilized to rebuild and redefine a shattered world. This is a powerful study of the contentious history …
The most modern city in the world
During a 1951 press conference upon his arrival in Hiroshima, the Japanese–American artist Isamu Noguchi startled reporters with the comment “Hiroshima is probably the most modern city in the world”. Noguchi’s statement expressed the ambivalence many in Japan and beyond felt towards Hiroshima in the aftermath of the bomb. Hiroshima was an expression of a modern nightmare, a failure of the enlightenment narrative of science and progress, but Hiros…
Entangled Memories
In 1973, just months before the Yom Kippur War, Muki Tzur, an Israeli historian, wrote in the introduction of the German translation of "Siach Lokhamim" (A Warriors' Conversation), "[this book] was written by Jewish youths of the 20th century. This century was shaped by two colossal events, two earthquakes in modern civilization: Hiroshima and Auschwitz. It seems that there is no young man in this world who is free from relating to these two even…
Never Again
Ran Zwigenberg makes a case for revising the history of Hiroshima and its global connections and importance. Focusing on the little known episode of the 1962 Hiroshima-Auschwitz Peace March, he argues that the march was a unique point of convergence between multiple national narratives of victimization. The Peace March illustrates the emergence of a shared discourse of commemoration of WW II following the Eichmann trial and others, which agents l…
The Atomic City
The Atomic City:Military Tourism and Urban Identity in Postwar Hiroshima Ran Zwigenberg (bio) When the first American troops entered Hiroshima in September 1945, they did so in full battle gear with drawn bayonets.1 Neither Americans nor Japanese knew what to expect from these first encounters in Hiroshima's nuclear wasteland. Residents feared Americans would rape and pillage their town. Women were told not to wear flashy clothes, men not to wear…
Wounds of the Heart
Wounds of the Heart”: Psychiatric Trauma and American Denial in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In 1962 a young Jewish-American psychiatrist by the name of Robert J. Lifton met Kubo Yoshitoshi, a Hiroshima based psychiatrist. Lifton was aiming to learn from Kubo about his research into A-bomb survivors’ psychological trauma. The meeting, however, was far from a success, with Lifton, who later became a leading researcher on war trauma, remarking, “I found…
Can the Frontier Write Back
vi Editors’ Introduction Nathan Hopson and Ran Zwigenberg Can the Frontier Write Back? This issue of Verge is about reclaiming one of the F- words of academia: frontier (Klein 1996). Sometimes a frontier is just a political border or a border zone (witness frontière in French and biānjiāng in Chinese, for example ), but the word frontier is often highly charged, used to describe the outermost limits of expansion and “progress.” Space is the “fin…
Japan's Castles
Shuri Castle and Japanese Castles
In October 31, 2019, a massive fire tore through the UNESCO World Heritage site of Shuri Castle in Okinawa, sparking a global reaction and comparisons with another World Heritage site. As in the case of Notre Dame, government officials immedicately declared their intention to rebuild, and donations flooded in from Okinawa, throughout Japan, and other countries. Shuri Castle is widely recognized as the symbol of the former Ryukyu kingdom. This art…
Modern Relics
In April 2017, a group of mannequins was removed during renovation of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum. The new exhibit instead focuses on objects left by the dead (ihin) as well as survivor testimonies, representing the latest change in a seventy-year controversy regarding museal representations of the devastation wrought by the atomic bomb. Controversies paralleled debates over Holocaust memorialization and the treatment of objects left by v…
Men in Metal
Reviewed by: Men in Metal: A Topography of Public Bronze Statuary in Modern Japan by Sven Saaler Ran Zwigenberg (bio) Men in Metal: A Topography of Public Bronze Statuary in Modern Japan. By Sven Saaler. Brill, 2020. xii, 356 pages. €105.00, cloth; €105.00, E-book. Sven Saaler's Men in Metal came out in October 2020. For a work that focuses mostly on prewar and wartime Japan, the book was unexpectedly and dramatically relevant. Throughout the sum…
"Beyond the "Empire of Trauma
In 1945, researchers on a mission to Hiroshima with the United States Strategic Bombing Survey canvassed survivors of the nuclear attack. This marked the beginning of global efforts-by psychiatrists, psychologists, and other social scientists-to tackle the complex ways human minds were affected by the advent of the nuclear age. Nuclear Minds traces these efforts and the ways they were interpreted differently across communities of researchers and …
Political science (13 works) · Law (11 works) · History (9 works) · Japanese History and Culture (9 works) · Art (7 works) · Nuclear weapon (6 works) · Politics (6 works) · Art history (5 works) · Sociology (5 works) · Ancient history (4 works)