My manuscript, Peripheral Visions: Imagining Hokkaido and Instituting Imperial Japan interrogates the ways Meiji-era (1868-1912) narratives naturalized Hokkaido as Japanese territory and cultivated “visions” of the island in the modern national imagination. This cultural-studies work examines how, from the earliest days of Meiji, long before the inception of Japan’s formal age of empire (1895-1945), colonial policies, military and settler recruitment campaigns, fictional representations, newspaper reportage, and popular opinions simultaneously defined the place “Hokkaido” (both what it was and its place in the nation) and “Japan” as a modern nation-state. Part of my time during the one-year fellowship will be devoted to beginning research on my second project, which addresses how scientific, journalistic, political, and cultural texts explicated, promoted, and questioned “peaceful” nuclear technology amidst great anxiety over the “Atomic Age” in the immediate postwar period.