PRC Coordinator Has Background in History and Japan
Tanya Maus’ academic background in history and as a Japan specialist, along with her interest in peace and social justice, dovetails well with the mission of the Peace Resource Center.
Wilmington College named Maus as the Peace Resource Center’s new coordinator effective earlier this month.
Maus holds both a Master of Arts degree in history and Ph.D. from the University of Chicago (2007), where she specialized in the history of childhood, poverty and religious activism within modern Japanese history. She subsequently taught East Asian history at Wittenberg University through 2013, which included courses on the history of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
As the Peace Resource Center’s coordinator, Maus seeks to further enhance its visibility to the campus by using PRC resources to offer teaching and program support for faculty and by making the Center “a warm and friendly meeting place” for various student-initiated programs on campus.
She also is looking forward to envisioning new avenues for the PRC to become further involved with the campus and local community.
“I hope that the Peace Resource Center will become a comfortable home for faculty and students to study and discuss issues of national and global peace, as well as the social justice issues that directly impact their lives so that they can become a springboard of action in the world,” she said.
The Center houses the largest depository of Japanese-language materials on the atomic bombings outside of Japan.
“In the last weeks, we have already had inquiries from several scholars at universities throughout the country who would like to use these historically valuable materials,” she added, noting that maintaining the archives and facilitating research also are key components of the Center’s operations. “I’m excited that the Center continues to attract key scholars to its holdings.”
Maus said the Peace Resource Center has a both peace and social justice mission—embodied in the lifelong Quaker peace activism of the Center’s founder Barbara Reynolds—and an internationally famous historical archive of Hiroshima and Nagasaki documents.
“As a strong woman and Quaker activist, Barbara Reynolds imparts a powerful, unifying identity to the Peace Resource Center,” she said. “She reveals how personal conviction leads to political and global action and awareness. She represents ‘hands-on living’ to the fullest. I hope that students at Wilmington will be inspired by Barbara’s life and activism through the Peace Resource Center.”
The Center’s hours are Monday, Wednesday and Friday from 9:30 a.m. to 5:30 p.m. It is located at the corner of College and Main streets on the northwest corner of the Wilmington College campus.