The Barnard Hewitt Award Committee of the American Society for Theatre Research (ASTR) has named Josephine Lee's The Japan of Pure Invention: Gilbert and Sullivan's The Mikado as a runner-up for its 2011 prize. Lee will receive the award at the annual ASTR meeting in Montreal.

Long before Sofia Coppola’s Lost in Translation and Puccini’s Madame Butterfly, Gilbert and Sullivan’s The Mikado presented its own distinctive version of Japan. Tracing the history of The Mikado’s performances from Victorian times to the present, Josephine Lee reveals the continuing viability of the play’s surprisingly complex racial dynamics as they have been adapted to different times and settings.