GEORGE, Timothy S. 1955-

PERSONAL: Born August 16, 1955, in St. Paul, MN; son of Neil S. and Doris T. (maiden name, Holien; present surname, Guss) George; married Jane Ellen Conlan, July 20, 1985; children: Emily R., Sarah Ann. Education: Stanford University, A.B. (history), 1977; University of Hawaii—Manoa, M.A. (history), 1984; Harvard University, A.M. (history), 1993, Ph.D. (history), 1996.

ADDRESSES: Offıce—Department of History, University of Rhode Island, 80 Upper College Rd., Suite 3, Kingston, RI 02881.

CAREER: Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, lecturer in East Asian languages and civilizations, 1997-98; University of Rhode Island, Kingston, assistant professor, then associate professor of history, 1998—.

MEMBER: American Historical Association, Association for Asian Studies, Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies (associate in research), Phi Beta Kappa.

WRITINGS:

(With John W. Dower) Japanese History and Culture from Ancient to Modern Times: Seven Basic Bibliographies, 2nd edition, Markus Wiener, 1995.

Minamata: Pollution and the Struggle for Democracy in Postwar Japan, Harvard University Press (Cambridge, MA), 2001.

Contributor to books, including Public Spheres, Private Lives in Modern Japan, 1600-1950: Essays in Honor of Albert Craig (tentative title), Asia Center, Harvard University (Cambridge, MA), in press.

WORK IN PROGRESS: Translator (with Tsushima Sachie) and editor of Minamata Disease, by Harada Masazumi; research on postwar Japanese history.

SIDELIGHTS: Timothy S. George told CA: "My most important research project has been a study of the implications for Japan's postwar democracy of the mercury poisoning in Minamata, which became the symbol of both the dark side of high growth and the flowering of the citizens' group movement. This began as my doctoral thesis and led to the book Minamata: Pollution and the Struggle for Democracy in Postwar Japan. The book contributes to the field of modern Japanese history by showing the socially defined nature of postwar politics, by arguing that Japan's postwar democracy is ad hoc and always dependent on definition and redefinition by citizens, by stressing the crucial importance of the period from the late 1950s to the early 1970s and of issues other than economic growth, and by telling the stories of non-elite individuals. It also demonstrates the importance of interviews, films, photographs, and other sources historians are not often trained to use."