Statements on Visualizing Cultures from MIT and Professors Dower
and Miyagawa

MIT Visualizing Cultures

BACKGROUND
Visualizing Cultures illuminates history through the images of the time. Founded in 2002 by MIT Professors Shigeru Miyagawa and John W. Dower, the project uses new technology to blend images, video and text into innovative interactive units.

Six original units have been authored by Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Dower and are available online through MIT OpenCourseWare.

Beginning with Commodore Matthew Perry’s 1853 mission to open the long-secluded country of Japan, the units offer a visual insight into Japan’s evolving role in the modern world.

OUTREACH AND TECHNOLOGY Collaborations with prominent institutions are a fundamental aspect of Visualizing Cultures.

The Visualizing Cultures Image Database (VCID) features an original federated search tool that reaches multiple partner collections and annotated content, enabling students to research images from the units and explore further on their own.  

A model curriculum for the Black Ships and Samurai unit is now available. The curriculum, targeting K-12, offers a full complement of standards compliant lessons and will soon be available for all of the Visualizing Cultures units. The lessons provide teachers and students a pathway to becoming active historians and knowledgeable readers of images.

 

VCTV  
Visualizing Cultures has created an online channel called VCTV with a growing repository of short clips related to the units.


EXHIBIT
An exhibition based on the Black Ships and Samurai unit has toured extensively in the US and Japan marking the 150th anniversary of US-Japan relations. Highlights included stops at the National Archives where the exhibit’s interactive kiosk, the Black Ship Scroll, was added to the permanent collection. Imagery from the exhibition was also featured as part of a Broadway performance of Stephen Sondheim’s Pacific Overtures.

STAR FESTIVAL
The newest offering from Visualizing Cultures is the online re-release of the ground-breaking CD-ROM, “\Star Festival,” by Shigeru Miyagawa and team. This award-winning interactive documentary follows Professor Miyagawa, who moved to the US at the age of eight, as he returns to Japan nearly 30 years later. Anyone who has ever lived across cultures will find a kindred spirit in the professor as his journey unfolds.



For more information about Visualizing Cultures please download the MIT Visualizing Cultures brochure in PDF format. (675 Kb)