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Laura Hein

The Harold H. and Virginia Anderson Professor of History

Ph.D., University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1986
Curriculum Vitae

Interests

Geographic Field(s):  Asian History

Thematic Field(s):  Political and Policy History; Urban History; Economic and Labor History; War and Empire in History

Principal Research Interest(s):  Japan, Transnational, War and its Aftermath

Biography

Laura Hein (Ph.D., Wisconsin, 1986), the Harold H. and Virginia Anderson Professor of History, specializes in the history of Japan in the 20th century, its international relations, and the effects of WWII and the Cold War. Her most recent book, Post-Fascist Japan, explores the efforts of her historical subjects to repair the damage done by what they described as fascism.  One of her research streams focuses on debates over economic policy and the implications of various economic theories. She also has a strong interest in problems of remembrance and public memory, resulting in five co-edited books. A recent lecture at Harvard University’s Weatherhead Program on U.S.-Japan Relations on visual artist Tomiyama Taeko is viewable here. Laura Hein is active as an editor and serves on the boards of several journals. Her current main editorial project is to oversee a new edition of The New Cambridge History of Japan. She has won NEH, SSRC, ACLS, Japan Foundation, and three Fulbright research awards.

 

Publications

  • Books

General Editor of the 3-volume The New Cambridge History of Japan and Editor of vol. 3; The Modern Japanese Nation and Empire: c 1868 to the Twenty-First Century, and author of “Introduction: Placing Modern Japanese History in the Twenty-First Century,” pp. 1-58. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, vol 3 2023, vol 2, Early Modern Japan in Asia and the World, 2024, vol 1 Premodern Japan: A Millenium of Evolving Themes, scheduled for 2026.

Post-Fascist Japan: Political Culture in Kamakura after World War II, Bloomsbury Press and a Weatherhead Institute Imprint book, 2018. A Japanese translation with Jinbun Shoin Press,『ポスム・ファシストの日本――戦後鎌倉の政治文化』, appeared in 2023.

Reasonable Men, Powerful Words: Political Culture and Expertise in 20th Century Japan, 2004 explores various ways in which economic expertise intersected with politics through a study of the lives of a tight-knit group of Japanese intellectuals. It was published in Japanese by Iwanami Press as 理性ある人びと 力ある言葉 ―― 大内兵衛グループの思想と行動 in 2007.

Fueling Growth: the Energy Revolution and Economic Policy in Postwar Japan, 1990, which began life as a dissertation at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, was recently republished by Brill. 

Imagination Without Borders: Visual Artist Tomiyama Taeko and Social Responsibility, Co-edited (with Rebecca Jennison) Center for Japanese Studies, The University of Michigan, October 2010 is centered on the work of a contemporary Japanese visual artist. This book was selected for permanent free on-line status in October 2019 by the University of Michigan Press through the Humanities Open Book project, funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Imagination Without Borders is accompanied by a trilingual website created by the Northwestern University Library Digital Scholarship Services,

Online review of Imagination Without Borders

Co-edited (with Daizaburō Yui) Crossed Memories: Perspectives on 9/11 and American Power, Center for Pacific and American Studies, The University of Tokyo, 2003. Wrote chapter: “Citizens, Foreigners, and the State: Japan-U.S. relations in the context of 9.11.”

Co-edited (with Mark Selden) Islands of Discontent: Okinawan Responses to Japanese and American Power, Rowman & Littlefield, April 2003. Wrote introduction, “Culture, Power, and Identity in Contemporary Okinawa."

Online review of Islands of Discontent

Co-edited (with Mark Selden) Censoring History: Citizenship and Memory in Japan, Germany, and the United States, M.E. Sharpe, 2000. Wrote introduction, "The Lessons of War, Global Power, and Social Change." Korean edition in 2009. Chinese edition 2012.

Co-edited (with Mark Selden) Living with the Bomb: American and Japanese Cultural Conflicts in the Nuclear Age, M.E. Sharpe, 1997. Wrote introduction and last chapter. Also available as an ebook.

  • Selected Recent Articles

“Trauma, Reconciliation, Social Justice, and Artistic Commentary: Tomiyama Taeko’s strategies for repair through her visual art,” in Jeff Kingston and Tina Burrett, eds. Commemorating and Contesting Trauma in East Asia, Routledge, 2023.

“Okinawa Studies Today,” in Hein and Grunow, eds. Okinawa Studies 50 Years After Reversion: History, Culture, Diaspora, and Identity, special issue of Critical Asian Studies, 54.4 (2022 December): 495-512.

 

Teaching Interests

Undergraduate Teaching

  • Hein teaches several courses centered on modern Japan in its international context, such as The Modern Japanese City, The World of Japan’s Empire, and Okinawa: Histories, Cultures, Identities, as well as World War II in Asia. She also teaches a senior seminar on The Atomic Bomb, which focuses on both Japanese and American perspectives.

Graduate Teaching

Recent Awards and Honors

  • 2023 Northwestern University Provost Award for Exemplary Faculty Service for expanding studies of the non-Western world at the university.
  • 2021-2022 Associated Student Government Faculty & Administrator Honor Roll for teaching.
  • 2015-2016 Centenary Fellow, SOAS, University of London.
  • 2014-2017 Osaka University Specially Appointed Professor of Research
  • 2013 Northwestern Panhellenic Association Faculty Appreciation Award.