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, p ...

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

Dartmouth College Dartmouth College ( ) is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in Hanover, New Hampshire, United States. Established in 1769 by Eleazar Wheelock, Dartmouth is one of the nine colonial colleges chartered before the America ...

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 Organiz ...

'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 university, private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States. Founded in 1636 and named for its first benefactor, the History of the Puritans in North America, Puritan clergyma ...

: 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 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 National Book Awar ...

. *

Pembroke College, Oxford University Pembroke College, a constituent college of the University of Oxford, is located on Pembroke Square, Oxford. The college was founded in 1624 by King James I of England and VI of Scotland, using in part the endowment of merchant Thomas Tesdale ...

: MA (August, 1979) *

Waseda University Waseda University (Japanese: ), abbreviated as or , is a private university, private research university in Shinjuku, Tokyo. Founded in 1882 as the Tōkyō Professional School by Ōkuma Shigenobu, the fifth Prime Minister of Japan, prime ministe ...

: Monbusho Fellow (October, 1983 to March, 1985) *

Yale University Yale University is a Private university, private Ivy League research university in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Founded in 1701, Yale is the List of Colonial Colleges, third-oldest institution of higher education in the United Stat ...

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

Edwin McClellan Edwin McClellan (24 October 1925 – 27 April 2009) was a British Japanologist, teacher, writer, translator and interpreter of Japanese literature and culture. Biography McClellan was born in Kobe, Japan in 1925 to a Japanese mother, Teruko Yo ...

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"), ''Hae'' ("A F ...

, 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 is a classic work of Japanese literature written by the noblewoman, poet, and lady-in-waiting Murasaki Shikibu around the peak of the Heian period, in the early 11th century. It is one of history's first novels, the first by a woman to have wo ...

'' (源氏物語, Genji monogatari) by

Murasaki Shikibu was a Japanese novelist, Japanese poetry#Age of Nyobo or court ladies, poet and lady-in-waiting at the Imperial Court in Kyoto, Imperial court in the Heian period. She was best known as the author of ''The Tale of Genji'', widely considered t ...

(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