April 7, 2000
National Book Award Winner John W. Dower
to Give Lecture on April 21
Event is Free and Open to the Public
MIDDLEBURY, Vt.-Award-winning author John W. Dower, the Elting E. Morison
Professor of History at M.I.T., will give a lecture titled “Imperial
Democracy in Postwar Japan: The American Decision to Retain the Emperor”
at 4:30 p.m. on Friday, April 21. The talk will take place in the Robert
A. Jones Seminar Room of Geonomics House on Hillcrest Road off College Street
(Route 125). The event is free and open to the public.
Dower is an expert on modern Japanese history and U.S.-Japanese relations.
He has broken new ground in these subject areas through his scholarly use
of visual materials and other expressions of popular culture. He received
his doctorate in history and Far Eastern languages from Harvard University
in 1972.
Dower has written numerous books, many of which have won awards. His most
recent book was “Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II,”
which won the 1999 National Book Award for nonfiction. His book “War
Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War” won the 1986 National
Book Critics’ Circle Award for general nonfiction and was hailed by The
New Republic as “the most important study of the Pacific War ever published.”
Additional works include “Empire and Aftermath” (1989), a study
of the life and times of the diplomat and later prime minister Yoshida Shigeru,
and “Japan in War and Peace: Selected Essays” (1995).
He was also the executive producer of a documentary film titled “Hellfire:
A Journey from Hiroshima,” which was nominated in 1987 for an Academy
Award.
Dower’s visit to Middlebury College is part of the Middlebury College International
Studies Scholar-in-Residence program. While on campus, the author will
also meet with students from international studies and history classes to
discuss topics that include Japanese memories of World War II.
For more information, contact Charlotte Tate of the Geonomics Center for
International Studies at Middlebury College at 802-443-5795 or tate@middlebury.edu.
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