Seth Jacobowitz wins international prize for new book on Meiji Japan

Seth Jacobowitz, assistant professor in the Department of East Asian Languages & Literatures, won the 2017 annual humanities book prize awarded by the International Convention of Asia Scholars (ICAS) for his recently released “Writing Technology in Meiji Japan: A Media History of Modern Japanese Literature and Visual Culture.”

The prize was presented to Jacobowitz at the biannual ICAS conference in Chiang Mai, Thailand, and his book was selected from a field of 93 contenders from all regions and disciplines within humanistic Asian Studies. His book won for its use of a “sophisticated analytical prism to examine the interlocked transformations of literature, language, and visual culture during an historical epoch known for its increasing efforts toward standardization,” according to a statement from the ICAS, which continues: “The result is a highly original media history that rethinks and re-conceptualizes the emergence of modern Japanese literature and culture.”

Jacobowitz teaches courses in both the Department of East Asian Languages & Literatures and the Department of Spanish & Portuguese at Yale. He is currently doing research for a book on the prewar Japanese immigration to Brazil and the literature of Japanese overseas expansion, and co-authoring another with Professor Aaron W. Moore, the Handa Chair of Japanese-Chinese Relations at the University of Edinburgh, about science and science fiction in prewar Japan.