The new dean of Dedman College of Humanities and Sciences is a specialist in modern Japanese business and economic history whose books examine topics ranging from banking policy to the film icon Godzilla.
William M. Tsutsui
William M. Tsutsui will join SMU July 1 from the University of Kansas, where he is associate dean for international studies in the College of Arts and Sciences and professor of history. Tsutsui also is director of the Kansas Consortium for Teaching About Asia in the KU Center for East Asian Studies and was former chair of KU’s Department of History. “The college has a world-class faculty, talented students, dedicated staff and a broad base of support in the Dallas community,” Tsutsui says. “I look forward
to working with all these constituencies, and with President Turner and Provost Ludden, to enhance Dedman College’s achievements in teaching, research and public engagement.“
Tsutsui received a Ph.D. in history in 1995 and a Master of Arts in history in 1990 from Princeton University. He received a Master of Letters in modern Japanese history from Oxford University’s Corpus Christi College in 1988 and graduated summa cum laude from Harvard University with a Bachelor of Arts in East Asian studies in 1985.
He received the 1997 Newcomen Society Award for Excellence in Business History Research and Writing, the 2000 John Whitney Hall Prize from the Association of Asian Studies for best book on Japan or Korea, and the 2005 William Rockhill Nelson Award for non-fiction.
Before assuming his current duties at KU, Tsutsui was acting director of the university’s Center for East Asian Studies and executive director of its Confucius Institute. He has been named faculty fellow at KU’s Center for Teaching Excellence, received a William T. Kemper Fellowship for Teaching Excellence in 2001 and won KU’s Steeples Service to Kansas Award in 2001.
He is married to Marjorie Swann, director of the Museum Studies Program and the Conger-Gabel Teaching Professor in the Department of English at the University of Kansas. She will be joining SMU’s Department of English.
Dedman College is home to the humanities, social sciences, and natural and mathematical sciences as well as the general education curriculum that all students take. Tsutsui will take the lead in implementing a new general education program approved by the SMU faculty March 19.
William M. Tsutsui, the new dean of Dedman College of Humanities and Sciences, is a specialist in modern Japanese business and economic history whose books examine topics ranging from banking policy to the film icon Godzilla.