Joseph Henning
Associate Professor
Joseph Henning
Associate Professor
Education
BA, Colorado College; MIA, Columbia University; Ph.D., American University
Bio
Dr. Henning's teaching and research interests focus on the history of US foreign relations and modern Japan. His course topics include US-Japanese relations, early and modern US foreign relations, terrorism and war, and Japanese fiction and film. His most recent work, Interpreting the Mikado's Empire, brings together for the first time the best writings of William Elliot Griffis, an authority on Meiji Japan.
Dr. Henning’s book Outposts of Civilization, on early US-Japanese relations, won the Stuart L. Bernath Book Prize awarded by the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations and was published also in a Japanese translation. In 2019, Dr. Henning published “‘Very Beautiful Heathenism’: The Light of Asia in Gilded Age America” in the Journal of American-East Asian Relations.
After spending his undergraduate junior year at Waseda University (Tokyo), Dr. Henning earned his bachelor’s degree in sociology from Colorado College. While studying for his master’s degree in international affairs from Columbia University, he worked as a production assistant during a summer internship at CNN’s Tokyo Bureau. After completing his master's, he worked in the US House of Representatives as a legislative assistant. He earned his doctorate in history from American University, studying under Dr. Robert L. Beisner and Dr. Anna K. Nelson.
Before joining RIT's Department of History in 2004, Dr. Henning taught at Saint Vincent College (Latrobe, PA) and served as a Fulbright Scholar on the Faculty of Arts and Letters and the Faculty of Law at Tohoku University (Sendai, Japan).
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Currently Teaching
In the News
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April 7, 2021
RIT’s College of Liberal Arts adds two new bachelor’s degrees in history and English
Two new degree programs within RIT’s College of Liberal Arts were approved by the New York State Department of Education and will be accepting students this fall. The Bachelor of Science degrees in history and English will be open to new students as well as existing RIT students who want a new or double major.
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March 18, 2021
Henning publishes book on William Elliot Griffis