Synopsis of talk: More than sixty-five years after the end of World War II, the war remains a contested issue in history and memory in many countries   How do views of the war in Europe, Asia, and North America reveal how public memory works and what challenge the present preoccupation with memory poses to what we used to call history?

Professor Gluck is a prize-winning historian whose most recent book is Words in Motion: Toward a Global Lexicon, coedited with Anna Tsing (Duke University Press, 2009). Thinking with the Past: Modern Japan and History is soon available from the University of California Press. Her most recent article is "The End of Elsewhere: Writing Modernity Now," American Historical Review (June 2011).

In 2006 she received the Order of the Rising Sun, Gold Rays with Neck Ribbon, from the government of Japan and in 2002 was honored with the Japan-United States Fulbright Program 50th Anniversary Distinguished Scholar Award. She is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the American Philosophical Society. Current activities include the National Coalition on Asian and International Studies in the Schools, the board of trustees of Asia Society, the board of directors of the Japan Society, elected member of the Council of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and others.

Supported by The Association for Asian Studies North East Asia Distinguished Speakers Bureau; the Japan Studies Program, and the Department of History.