John W. Dower

Co-founder of the MIT Visualizing Cultures project in 2002. A leading scholar on Japan during and after World War II, Dower received multiple awards for his 1999 book Embracing Defeat: Japan in the Wake of World War II including the Pulitzer Prize, US National Book Award for Nonfiction, Bancroft Prize, Los Angeles Times Book Prize, Mark Lynton History Prize, and John K. Fairbank Prize of the American Historical Association. His book, War Without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War, was a groundbreaking study that accessed history through the visual record, comparing images of the other by the US and Japan during World War II.