Dennis Washburn (born July 30, 1954) is an

American American(s) may refer to: * American, something of, from, or related to the United States of America, commonly known as the "United States" or "America" ** Americans, citizens and nationals of the United States of America ** American ancestry, pe ...

academic and translator. He's the Jane and Raphael Bernstein Professor of Asian Studies at

Dartmouth College Dartmouth College (; ) is a private research university in Hanover, New Hampshire. Established in 1769 by Eleazar Wheelock, it is one of the nine colonial colleges chartered before the American Revolution. Although founded to educate Native A ...

where he has taught since 1992. He has served as chair of the Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Languages and Literatures and is currently chair of the Comparative Literature Program. Washburn has published extensively on Japanese literature and culture and is an active translator of both modern and classical Japanese fiction. In 2004 he received the

Japanese Foreign Ministry The is an executive department of the Government of Japan, and is responsible for the country's foreign policy and international relations. The ministry was established by the second term of the third article of the National Government Organi ...

's citation for contributions to cross-cultural understanding, and in 2008 he received the Japan-US Friendship Commission Translation Prize for translating Tsutomu Mizukami's '' The Temple of the Wild Geese'' and '' Bamboo Dolls of Echizen''.

Education

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...

: BA (June, 1976) – While at Harvard University, Dennis studied with some notable figures in American literature, such as

Elizabeth Bishop Elizabeth Bishop (February 8, 1911 – October 6, 1979) was an American people, American poet and short-story writer. She was Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress from 1949 to 1950, the Pulitzer Prize winner for Poetry in 1956, the N ...

. * Pembroke College, Oxford University: MA (August, 1979) * Waseda University: Monbusho Fellow (October, 1983 to March, 1985) *

Yale University Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the wo ...

: Ph.D. (June, 1991) – Along with Alan Tansman, Dennis earned his Ph.D under the tutelage of Edwin McClellan.

Selected works

Academic studies

* ''Translating Mount Fuji: Modern Japanese Fiction and the Ethics of Identity'', New York: Columbia University Press, 2006. * ''The Dilemma of the Modern in Japanese Fiction'', New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995.

As editor

* ''Converting Cultures: Ideology, Religion, and Transformations of Modernity'' (Editor with A. Kevin Reinhart), Leiden: Brill, 2007. * ''Word and Image in Japanese Cinema'' (Editor with Carole Cavanaugh), New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000.

Translations from Japanese

* ''Shanghai'' (上海, Shanhai) by

Riichi Yokomitsu was an experimental, modernist Japanese writer. Yokomitsu began publishing in dōjinshi such as ''Machi'' ("Street") and ''Tō'' ("Tower") after entering Waseda University in 1916. In 1923, he published ''Nichirin'' ("The Sun"), '' ...

, Ann Arbor: Center for Japanese Studies, University of Michigan, 2001. * '' The Temple of the Wild Geese'' (雁の寺, Gan no tera) and '' Bamboo Dolls of Echizen'' (越前竹人形, Echizen takeningyō), two novellas by Tsutomu Mizukami, Dalkey Archive Press, 2008. * ''Laughing Wolf'' (笑い狼, Warai okami) by

Yūko Tsushima Satoko Tsushima (30 March 1947 – 18 February 2016), known by her pen name Yūko Tsushima (津島佑子 ''Tsushima Yūko''), was a Japanese fiction writer, essayist and critic. Tsushima won many of Japan's top literary prizes in her career, i ...

, Ann Arbor: Center for Japanese Studies, University of Michigan, 2011. * '' The Tale of Genji'' (源氏物語, Genji monogatari) by

Murasaki Shikibu was a Japanese novelist, poet and lady-in-waiting at the Imperial court in the Heian period. She is best known as the author of '' The Tale of Genji,'' widely considered to be one of the world's first novels, written in Japanese between abou ...

(unabridged with annotations and with an introduction), New York: W. W. Norton & Co., 2015.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Washburn, Dennis 1954 births Dartmouth College faculty Yale University alumni Harvard University alumni Alumni of the University of Oxford Japanese–English translators Living people American Japanologists