The New Dean at SMU's Dedman College Is Also the World's Foremost Godzilla Expert

A Friend of Unfair Park points out that William M. Tsutsui started his new gig yesterday as the dean of SMU's Dedman College. OK, then. But then I read the release and discovered that the Princeton-, Harvard- and Oxford-educated Tsutsui is "a specialist in the business, environmental and cultural history...

By Robert Wilonsky

July 2, 2010

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A Friend of Unfair Park points out that William M. Tsutsui started his new gig yesterday as the dean of SMU's Dedman College. OK, then. But then I read the release and discovered that the Princeton-, Harvard- and Oxford-educated Tsutsui is "a specialist in the business, environmental and cultural history of 20th-century Japan" -- and, more to the point, perhaps the world's biggest and baddest authority on Godzilla, having penned a handful of books on the subject including Godzilla on My Mind: Fifty Years of the King of Monsters.

In fact, the former University of Kansas history prof and associate dean is such a big deal that next week, Tsutsui will join original Gojira star Akira Takarada as one of the special guests at G-Fest in Chicago -- otherwise known as the world's biggest Godzilla hootenanny in the history of unjolly green giants. Tsutsui's also got a new book forthcoming: Japanese Popular Culture and Globalization. I smell a cover story.

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