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March 22, 2007
 Dr. Greg Guelcher, associate professor of history and political science at Morningside College, will present “Selling the New Paradise” on Wednesday, April 4, at 11:45 a.m. in the UPS Auditorium of the Lincoln Center, 3627 Peters Avenue, on the college campus.
The free event, which is sponsored by Morningside’s Academic and Cultural Arts Series (ACAS) is open to the public.
Guelcher’s presentation will focus on a project launched by the Japanese governement in the mid-1930s that was designed to settle one million Japanese farming families as colonists in Manchuria, China. To assist and encourage participation from reluctant settlers, the Japanese government organized a well-orchestrated publicity campaign that included the use of picture postcards. Guelcher will make use of several of these original period picture postcards to illustrate the campain’s prominent themes and concerns. The postcards are part of Guelcher’s personal collection.
“Not only did this campaign represent the last ‘great gasp’ of modern imperialism, but Japan’s attempts to conquer and incorporate Manchuria arguably led Japan and the West down the road to World War II,” said Guelcher.
Guelcher, who has been at Morningside since 1996, specializes in Asian and Middle Eastern history and culture. He has studied in Tokyo, Yokohama, and Hong Kong and served as a visiting research scholar at the University of Tokyo’s Institute of Oriental Culture and as a guest lecturer at the Toyama City International Center’s International Speech Academy in Japan. He received his master’s degree and doctorate from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and his bachelor’s degree from the College of Wooster, Ohio.
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