William Marotti

William Marotti teaches modern Japanese history, with an emphasis on everyday life and cultural-historical issues. He is also Chair of the East Asian Studies M.A. Interdepartmental Degree Program. He received his doctorate in 2001 from the University of Chicago’s Department of East Asian Civilizations and Cultures.

Prior to joining the UCLA faculty, William participated from 2001 to 2003 in the Project on the Cold War as Global Conflict at New York University’s International Center for Advanced Studies (as a Woodrow Wilson Postdoctoral Fellow), and from 2003 to 2004 in the Expanding East Asian Studies project (ExEAS) of the Weatherhead East Asian Institute at Columbia University. From 2004 to 2006, William taught as a Visiting Assistant Professor in the History department at UC Santa Cruz.

William's major research project to date culminated in his book, Money, Trains and Guillotines: Art and Revolution in 1960s Japan (Duke University Press, 2013)(UCLA press release here). The study addresses the politics of culture and everyday life in Japan in the early 1960s, explored through a focus upon transformations in avant-garde artistic production and performance. The book examines the advent of this art-based activism in Japan in the late 1950s and early 1960s in its complex relation with an internationalized art world, mass culture, domestic protest movements, and evolving forms of state practice, law, and surveillance. It reflects upon the significance of this history for understanding the 1960s as a global moment, and the particular role of art and performance in these transformations.

William's current project, “The Art of Revolution: Politics and Aesthetic Dissent in Japan’s 1968” (under contract, Duke University Press), follows this work with an expanded consideration of the politics of the 1960s in Japan, and their articulation with the global phenomena of the decade. This study includes an examination of late 1960s Japanese political mobilization, focused upon the politics of violence, the problem of political subjectivation, and the distinct forms of activism arising in this period; this part of the larger study appeared in an earlier form in the February 2009 issue of the American Historical Review for their forum on "The International 1968" (see publications below for copies of this and other materials). Marotti also presented portions of his research on the global and local aspects of 1968 in the American Historical Association convention of 2018 in the first of six linked panels on "Fifty Years After 1968" (available here in the C-SPAN archives). Other portions of this work have been unfolded in a variety of venues, including art catalogs, journals ranging from boundary 2 to theater and dance, and in edited volumes (see Selected Publications below). Having worked through these different, interrelated aspects of the problem of 1968 in Japan, Marotti is drawing this work together and reworking it for the book in progress.

William’s broader research interests include post-WWII Japan, global history, the 1960s, Cold War, comparability, critical theory, everyday life, art and politics, performance, law and legitimation, and protest movements. He also serves as director for the Japanese Arts and Globalizations (JAG) multi-campus research group, whose activities may be found here:
www.jag.ucla.edu