John W. Dower

John W. Dower (born June 21, 1938 in Providence, Rhode Island) is an American author and historian. His 1999 book '' Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II'' won the U.S. National Book Award for Nonfiction, National Book Foundation. Retrieved 2012-03-24.
(With acceptance speech by Dower.) the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction,. ''Past winners & finalists by category''. The Pulitzer Prizes. Retrieved 2012-03-24. the Bancroft Prize, the Los Angeles ''Times'' Book Prize, the Mark Lynton History Prize, and the John K. Fairbank Prize of the American Historical Association.

Career

Dower earned a bachelor's degree in American Studies from Amherst College in 1959, and a PhD in History and Far Eastern Languages from Harvard University in 1972, where he studied under Albert M. Craig. He expanded his doctoral dissertation, a biography of former Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Yoshida, into the book ''Empire and Aftermath''. His other books include a selection of writings by E. Herbert Norman and a study of mutual images during World War II entitled '' War Without Mercy''.

Dower was the executive producer of the Academy Award-nominated documentary '' Hellfire: A Journey from Hiroshima'', and was a member of the Committee of Concerned Asian Scholars, sitting on the editorial board of its journal with Noam Chomsky, and Herbert Bix. He has taught at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and the University of California, San Diego, and is a Ford International Professor of History, Emeritus, at MIT.

Visualizing Cultures

"Visualizing Cultures", a course that Dower has taught at MIT since 2003 with Shigeru Miyagawa, discusses how images shape American and Japanese societies. The Visualizing Cultures website features some 18 scholars in over 40 units based on digitized image sets from the visual record. The project was recognized by MIT with the "Class of 1960 Innovation in Education Award" in 2004 and in 2005, the National Endowment for the Humanities selected VC for inclusion on "EDSITEment" as an online resource for education in the humanities. The curriculum on the website for the Canton Trade unit won the 2011 "Franklin R. Buchanan prize from the Association of Asian Studies for best curricular materials concerning Asia."

The first Visualizing Cultures unit, "Black Ships & Samurai," written by John Dower, juxtaposed the visual record from the two sides of the 1853–1854 encounter when Commodore Matthew Perry of the United States arrived in Japan aboard the "Black Ships" (steam powered gunboats) to force that long-secluded country to open its borders to the outside world.

In April 2006, the OpenCourseWare website of "Visualizing Cultures" was announced on the main page of th
MIT website
causing a stir among some Chinese students at MIT that found the material offensive. The material included woodblock prints produced in Japan as propaganda during the Chinese-Japanese War of 1894–1895 that portrayed Japanese soldiers beheading "violent Chinese soldiers." The Japanese-born Miyagawa received death threats. In response, the authors temporarily removed the course from OpenCourseWare and released
statement
as did the MIT Administration. After a week, the course authors agreed to include additional context in controversial sections, and put the course back online.

Awards and honors

*1986 National Book Critics Circle Award, '' War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War''
*2000 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction, '' Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II''
*2000 L.L. Winship/PEN New England Award, '' Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II''
*2000 Bancroft Prize, Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II''
* Mellon Distinguished Achievement Award
*2007, elected to the American Philosophical Society

Selected works

Books

* ''Origins of the Modern Japanese State: Selected Writings of E.H. Norman '' (1975; Pantheon; )
* '' War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War'' (1986; Pantheon; )
* ''Empire and Aftermath: Yoshida Shigeru and the Japanese experience, 1878–1954'' (1988; Harvard University Press; )
* ''Japan in War and Peace: Selected Essays'' (1995; New Press; )
* "The Bombed: Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japanese Memory", '' Diplomatic History'' 19, no. 2 (Spring 1995)
* '' Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II'' (1999; W. W. Norton) — winner of the National Book Award, John K. Fairbank Prize of the American Historical Association, and Pulitzer Prize
* ''Cultures of War: Pearl Harbor, Hiroshima, 9-11, Iraq'' (New York: Norton : New Press, 2010 ).
* ''Ways of Forgetting, Ways of Remembering: Japan in the Modern World'' (The New Press, 2011)
* ''The Violent American Century: War and Terror Since World War II'' (Haymarket Books, 2017 ).

Interviews and presentations

*

References

External links

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Faculty website






Website created by Dower


by MIT CSSA


by Peter C. Perdue
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Dower, John W.
1938 births
Living people
Amherst College alumni
Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences alumni
Historians of Japan
Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction winners
University of California, San Diego faculty
University of Wisconsin–Madison faculty
Writers from Providence, Rhode Island
National Book Award winners
MIT School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences faculty
Historians of American foreign relations
20th-century American historians
American male non-fiction writers
21st-century American historians
Bancroft Prize winners
20th-century American male writers