Casper Lecture

The annual Casper was inaugurated by the History Department in 1993 to honor Rev. Henry W. Casper, S. J., a long-time member of the history departments at Creighton University in Omaha and at Marquette University (he retired as Professor Emeritus from Marquette in 1974). He was an expert in nineteenth century European History and in American church history; his most important work was a three-volume history of the Catholic Church in Nebraska. The Casper Lecture, as well as several programs for graduate students in history, is funded by an endowment from Dr. and Mrs. Wayne L. Ryan of Omaha. Dr. Ryan was a student of Father Casper’s at Creighton.

21st Annual Rev. Henry W. Casper, S.J., Lecture

April 7, 2025 at 4:30 p.m. | Baumier Suites B&C, Raynor Library

"On Fascism: Lessons from Japan"

Dr. Robert Stolz
Corcoran Department of History, University of Virginia

A major Marxist thinker and critic in 1930s Japan, Tosaka Jun was among the world’s most incisive—yet underrecognized—theorists of capitalism, fascism, and ideology in the years before World War II. In his masterpiece, The Japanese Ideology, first published in 1935, Tosaka offers a ruthless philosophical critique of contemporary Japanese ideology that exposes liberalism’s deep complicity with fascism. Reckoning with The Japanese Ideology is essential for all those persuaded that deprovincializing the debate on fascism is an urgent intellectual and political task.

Robert StolzRobert Stolz is associate professor of history at the University of Virginia writing and teaching on Japanese political economy, environmental history, and social theory. He is coeditor of Tosaka Jun: A Critical Reader (2014) and author of Bad Water: Nature, Pollution, and Politics in Japan, 1870–1950 (2014).

 

Free and open to the public
Sponsored by the Marquette University Department of History
For more information, call 414.288.7217.

 

Previous Casper Lectures

2010 - 2024

2002 - 2009