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.



— end —