Professor, Department Chair
History
Contact
(860) 832-2819
jonesm@ccsu.edu
Office
Ebenezer D. Bassett Hall
2161700
Biography

Mark Jones received his B.A. in history with high honors,magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa from Dartmouth College in 1991. He subsequently received his M.A. (1996) and Ph.D. (2001) in Japanese history at Columbia University. Dr. Jones joined the faculty at Central in 2002. Prior to his arrival at Central, he was a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University’s Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies.

His teaching interests include pre-modern and modern Japanese history, as well as modern world history. He is now working on a book-length manuscript tentatively titled “Feeling Modern: Love, Marriage, and the Middle Class in Early Twentieth Century Japan.”  His first book, entitled Children as Treasures: Childhood and the Middle Class in Early Twentieth Century Japan, was published in 2010 by Harvard University’s Asia Center.

Dr. Jones has lectured widely on modern Japanese history at places like University of California, Santa Barbara, Harvard University, Columbia University, Dartmouth College, and the University of Delaware; he has also regularly presented his research at the national meeting of the Association of Asian Studies. He has been actively involved in outreach to pre-college educators, whether through participating in the Expanding East Asian Studies initiative sponsored by the Freeman Foundation, speaking to high school teachers at a yearly seminar sponsored by the National Consortium for Teaching About Asia, or delivering the keynote address on how to teach world history at the 2009 National Council on Social Studies meeting.

Publications, Research & Presentations
  • Children as Treasures: Childhood and the Middle Class in Early Twentieth Century Japan (Harvard University Asia Center, 2010).
  • "An Outbreak of Emotion: Romantic Love and Middle-Class Identity in 1921 Japan," Journal of Japanese Studies (Summer 2019)
  • “Fusing Emotion and Rationality: The Birth of Rational Love in Early 20th Century Japan,” forthcoming in a special issue on the "History of the sensibilities in the 20th century" for the French review Vingtième siècle. (2014). 
  • “The Hidden Heritage of Mothers and Teachers in the Making of Japan’s Superior Students,” in Children, Childhood, and Cultural Heritage, eds. Kate Darian-Smith and Carla Pascoe (Routledge, 2013). 
  • “Social and Economic Change in Prewar Japan,” with Steven Ericson in paperback edition of A Companion to Japanese History, ed. William Tsutsui (Wiley-Blackwell Publishing Limited, 2009). 
  • “Aristocrat and Peasant in Heian Japan” published on the website of Columbia University’s Expanding East Asian Studies (EXEAS) Initiative (www.exeas.org). (2006)
  • “The Samurai in Japan and the World, c. 1900,” published on the website of Columbia University’s Expanding East Asian Studies (EXEAS) Initiative (www.exeas.org). (2005).
  • “Childhood and the Middle Class in Early 20th Century Japan,” Social Science Japan 15 (1999).