From the opening of trade with Britain in the 1850s, Japan occupied a unique and contradictory place in the Victorian imagination, regarded as both a rival empire and a cradle of exquisite beauty. In Quaint, Exquisite (Princeton, 2019), Grace Lavery (English) explores the enduring impact of this dramatic encounter, showing how the rise of Japan led to a major transformation of Western aesthetics at the dawn of globalization.

Lavery is joined by Judith Butler (Comparative Literature).