Dr. Jessamyn Abel is an Associate Professor of Asian Studies and History at Penn State. Her lecture presents her book Dream Super-Express: A Cultural History of the World's First Bullet Train as a part of the 2025 History Workshop in the Department of History. The 2024 Modern Japan History Association Book Prize winner explores 1960s Japan through the window of the bullet train, showing how infrastructure operates beyond its intended use to perform cultural and sociological functions.