Today is quite momentous! After teaching my last class of Godzilla to Hello Kitty: Japanese Pop Culture, I boarded a red-eye flight bound for Washington D.C… A lengthy bus ride and a few Metro stops later, I am sitting in a little Panera-esque coffee shop waiting for my appointment at the Smithsonian Institution’s Dibner Library of the History of Science and Technology. I begin my one-month term as a Baird Society Resident Scholar at 11am. I have the entire month of August to work with a host of early explorer texts, natural history texts, and the World’s Fair Collection. Traveling is always a test of patience, but I cannot think of a cooler way to spend a month!
This academic year is shaping up to be incredibly productive, as I recently was accepted as a research student at Hokkaido University in Sapporo, Japan. So many exciting things in the works for 2013-2014! More details forthcoming about the Japan leg of my journey.