Carol Gluck is the George Sansom Professor of History at Columbia University. She holds the B.A degree from Wellesley College, the M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from Columbia University, and also studied at the Universities of Munich and Tokyo. She was Visiting Professor of History at Harvard University (1991), at the Institute of Social Science, Tokyo University (1993), and l’École des Hautes Études en Science Sociales (1995, 1998); also, Visiting Research Associate at the Faculty of Law, Tokyo University in 1978-9, 1985-6, 1992; Fellow at the Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford in 1999-2000, and Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, 2005-06. She is a founding member and current chair of Columbia’s Committee on Global thought.
Her field is the history of modern Japan from the mid-nineteenth century to the present, with writings in modern social and cultural history, international relations, World War II, history-writing and public memory in Japan and the West.
Honors and awards include the Order of the Rising Sun, Gold Rays with Neck Ribbon, awarded by the Government of Japan in April, 2006; election to the American Philosophical Society, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences; the Fulbright 50th Anniversary Distinguished Scholar Award, the John King Fairbank Prize of the American Historical Association, the Lionel Trilling Award of Columbia University (both for “Japan’s Modern Myths”); the Mark van Doren Award and Great Teacher Award for teaching, Columbia University; the Alumnae Achievement Award, Wellesley College; Distinguished Lectureships of the Association for Asian Studies and the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science; Distinguished Visitor in the Program in U.S.-Japan Relations, Harvard University; Cleveringa Professor, Leiden University, the Netherlands, 2014-15.
She was president of the Association for Asian Studies, 1996-97, and a member of the Board, 1995-99. She served a seven-year term as a presidential appointee to the Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission, 1995-2002. She is currently a member of the Board of Directors of the Japan Society, Co-chair of the Trustees Emeriti of the Asia Society, the Board of Directors of the Weatherhead Foundation, elected Councillor of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, member of the Council on Foreign Relations. She is the recipient of Ford Foundation, Fulbright, Japan Foundation, and other grants.
Her books include Japan’s Modern Myths: Ideology in the Late Meiji Period, 1985; Showa: The Japan of Hirohito, Gluck and Graubard, 1992; Asia in Western and World History, Embree and Gluck, 1997;Toward Autonomy in US-Japan Relations [in Japanese], with Wada Haruki and Kang Sangjung, 2003; Sources of Japanese Tradition, Vol. 2, de Bary, Gluck and Tiedemann, 2005; Rekishi de kangaeru [Thinking about History], 2007;expanded paperback, 2021; Words in Motion, ed., Gluck and Tsing, 2009; Senso no kioku [War Memory], 2019. Forthcoming are Thinking with the Past: Japan and Modern History and Past Obsessions: World War Two in History and Memory. She writes for the Japanese and US press, lectures in the US and abroad, and is active in efforts to improve the teaching of Asia and history in the schools.