David C. Atherton has been appointed Thorley D. Briggs 1953 Associate Professor of the Humanities. Professor Atherton is a scholar of literature, focusing primarily on Japan’s early modern period (also known as the Edo or Tokugawa period, ca. 1600-1867). He is concerned with understanding how the intrinsic, literary dynamics of early modern texts interacted with and shaped the social, cultural, and political worlds beyond the page. 

His first book, Writing Violence: The Politics of Form in Early Modern Japanese Literature (Columbia University Press, 2023), which won a 2024 Choice Outstanding Academic Title by the American Library Association, offers a new approach to understanding the challenging formal features of Edo-period popular literature.

Prior to joining Harvard, Professor Atherton taught at the University of Colorado, Boulder. He received his Ph.D. in Japanese literature from Columbia University (2013), M.A. in classical Thai literature from the University of Wisconsin-Madison (2006), and A.B. from Harvard (2000).