History

Events

The 49th Annual Arthur L. Throckmorton Memorial Lecture

Date: February 27 2012 3:30pm Location: Templeton Campus Center - Council Chamber

For the 49th Annual Arthur L. Throckmorton Memorial Lecture in History, Mary Elizabeth Berry, chair of the Department of History and a Dean’s Professor of East Asian History at the University of California, Berkeley will give a talk entitled, “Catechisms of Consumption for the Material Girl in Early Modern Japan.”  Japan achieved a largely successful and deeply surprising conversion to a market economy in the seventeenth century.  Crucial to the change was the religion of profit, which exhorted hard work, smart work, and ruthless frugality. This talk explores the “problem” of consumption (was it legitimate? in what forms?) through the abundant advice manuals aimed at young women.

The Throckmorton lecture was established in 1963 to commemorate the life and work of Arthur L. Throckmorton, a professor of history at Lewis & Clark who died unexpectedly in 1962. Each year the series brings a distinguished historian to campus to lecture and to meet with faculty and students.