RESCHEDULED: East Asia by the Book! CEAS Author Talks: Scott W. Aalgaard - "Homesick Blues"

**This event has been rescheduled from an earlier date and WILL BE TAKING PLACE on May 14th.**

Scott W. Aalgard will discuss Homesick Blues: Politics, Protest, and Musical Storytelling in Modern Japan. A Q&A and signing will follow the discussion.

Presented in partnership with the University of Chicago Center for East Asian Studies.

At the Co-op

RSVP HERE (Please note that your RSVP is requested but not required.)

About the Book: Homesick Blues explores how artists, fans, amateur practitioners, and others have used music to tell stories of everyday life in Japan from the late 1940s to 2018, a practice that the book calls 'musical storytelling.' At its core, musical storytelling is a political practice, presenting potent—if ambiguous—world-producing potentials as social actors generate and share stories of themselves and others in ways that intersect with and inform social and political life. In Homesick Blues, author Scott Aalgaard assembles a diverse ensemble of voices, some of whom are now appearing in English-language scholarship for the very first time, including industry stakeholders, rock stars, fans, newscasters, Kyoto-based “protest folk” singers, jazz singers, karaoke enthusiasts and even US military personnel. An equally diverse selection of scholarship and methodology, from ethnomusicology to literary studies, from philosophy to history, creates a richly interdisciplinary and accessible analysis of musical modes of politics.

About the Author: Scott W. Aalgaard teaches in the College of East Asian Studies at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut. Originally from Vancouver Island, Canada, he’s a lifelong music fan and a longtime resident of Japan, having lived and worked in Hokkaido, Osaka, Kyoto, Fukushima, Yokohama, and Tokyo, where he was a staff member for a time with a music industry production office. In addition to popular music, Aalgaard’s research and teaching focus on modern and contemporary Japanese literature, history, political economy, fascism, and Area Studies methodologies. He earned his PhD in East Asian Languages and Civilizations from the University of Chicago in 2017.