Twentieth-Century Japan Research Awards for 2012-2013

The Nathan and Jeanette Miller Center for Historical Studies will be offering the Twentieth-Century Japan Research Awards during the 2012-2013 academic year. Please click here for more details

Twentieth-Century Japan Research Awards

The Nathan and Jeanette Miller Center for Historical Studies and McKeldin Library, University of Maryland, invite applications for a $1,500 grant to support research in the library's Prange Collection and East Asia Collection on topics related to the period of the Allied Occupation of Japan and its aftermath, 1945-1960. Holders of the Ph.D. or an equivalent degree are eligible to apply, as are graduate students who have completed all requirements for the doctorate except the dissertation. The competition is open to scholars in all parts of the world and from any discipline, but historical topics are preferred. University of Maryland faculty, staff, and students may not apply.

Materials in the Prange Collection include virtually all Japanese-language newspapers, news agency releases, magazines, pamphlets, and books dating from the period of Allied censorship, 1945-1949, in addition to over 10,000 newspaper photos. There are also materials published by Chinese and Korean residents, most of which are written in Japanese. Related collections in English include the personal papers of Charles Kades and Justin Williams. Office correspondence documenting policies and decisions of the Publications, Pictorial, and Broadcast Division, Civil Censorship Detachment, Supreme Commander for the Allied Powers, Japan, are complementary to official Occupation records housed at the National Archives, College Park. Japanese newspapers and magazines from the Prange Collection are available for research on microform in the East Asia Collection. Other Prange materials are made available for research in the Prange Collection reading area after consultation with the Prange Curator or Manager. The East Asia Collection contains Japanese-language books published during the wartime period, scholarly monographs on Occupied Japan, and a wide variety of reference works.

For further information about the collections, consult the following websites:
The Gordon W. Prange Collection
The East Asia Collection

The application deadline is November 16, 2012. Successful applicants will be notified and the grants must be used by October 31, 2013. Grant funds will be disbursed in the form of reimbursement for travel, lodging, meals, photoduplication, and related research expenses. Such costs as computers or software are not eligible. Reimbursement will require submission of receipts for processing by the University.

A one-page summary of research findings is required at the conclusion of the grant period.

To apply, send a curriculum vitae and a two- to three-page description of the research project to umdhistorycenter@gmail.com. Applications from graduate students must be accompanied by a letter from the principal faculty advisor attesting to the significance of the dissertation project and to the student's completion of all other degree requirements.

Previous Twentieth Century Japan Research Award Recipients

2004-2005

Vera Mackie, "A Cultural History of the Body in Modern Japan"

Lee Pennington, "Wartorn Japan: Disabled Veterans and Society, 1931-1952"

Julia Adeney Thomas, "Photography and Democracy: Between History and Sex in Occupied Japan"

2005-2006

Takashi Nishiyama, "Former Military Scientists and Engineers, 1919-1964," and "Labor Activism in the Japan National Railways, 1945-1955"

Alicia Volk, "Democratizing Japanese Art, 1945-1960"

2006-2007

Kyoko Omori, "The Culture of Japanese Vernacular Modernism, 1920-1950"

Maki Umemura, "The Pharmaceutical Industry in Japan since 1945"

2007-2008

Anne Sherif, "The Influence of Progressive, Leftist Religious and Regional Publishers on Art, Activism and Academia, 1945-1970 "

Erik Esselstrom, "The Politics of Thought Crime in Wartime Occupied Japan "

2008-2009

Franziska Seraphim, "Public Responses to the Allied War Crimes Program and SCAP's Purge"

Aiko Takeuchi, "Social Discussions over Female Reproduction in Postwar Japan"

2010-2011

Justin Jesty, "Art and Social Movements in Postwar Japan, 1945-1960"

2011-2012

Charlotte Eubanks, "Archival Memory: The Marukis and the Politics of Visual Culture in Trans-War Japan"

Ryan Holmberg, "Ten Cent Manga: American Comics and the Rise of Gekiga"

Jolyon Thomas, "Japan's Preoccupation with Religious Freedom, 1890-1947"

Richard T. Farrell Dissertation Award

The Richard T. Farrell Dissertation Award for the best dissertation completed in the University of Maryland's Department of History in 2009 was Nicholas Schlosser (“The Berlin Radio War: Broadcasting in Cold War Berlin and the Shaping of Political Culture in Divided Germany 1945-1961”).

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