CV

CURRENT

California State University, Monterey Bay, 2018-Present

Chair, Department of World Languages and Cultures (2023-)

Associate Professor of Japanese Culture and Language (2022-)

Associate Director, Okinawa Memories Initiative

PREVIOUS

California State University, Monterey Bay, Assistant Professor of Japanese Culture and Language, 2018-2022

Research Fellow (2022-2023), Rikkyo Research Center for Cooperative Civil Societies

Connecticut College, Visiting Assistant Professor of Japanese History, 2017-2018

University of California, Santa Cruz, Lecturer, Department of History, 2015-2017

Soka University of America, Lecturer in International Studies, 2009

University of San Diego, Lecturer in Political Science and International Relations, 2007-2009

EDUCATION

University of California, Santa Cruz

PhD, History, 2015

Dissertation Title: “The Sunagawa Struggle: A Century of Anti-Base Protest in a Tokyo Suburb”

Committee: Alan Christy (History), Noriko Aso (History), Alice Yang (History)

• 2014 Completed Graduate Student Leadership Certification Program
• 2013-2014 UCSC Graduate Division Outstanding Teaching Assistant Award

MA, History, 2011

• Thesis: “Spade Work in Okinawa: The 1969 Antennae Construction Plan.” Chair, Alan Christy

Waseda University, Tokyo, Japan

Visiting Researcher, January 2013 to January 2014

• Conducted dissertation research and participated in Umemori Naoyuki‘s and Sawai Keiichi’s seminars on modern Japanese political thought and history.

San Diego State University

MA, Asian Studies, 2006

• Thesis: “Political Atrocity: The Role of the Nanjing Massacre in Contemporary   Sino-Japanese Relations.” Chair, Michael Weiner

Northern Arizona University

BA, International Affairs (minor in Japanese), 2002

TEACHING

California State University, Monterey Bay, 2018-Present 

• The Making of Modern East Asian History
• Manga, Anime, and Modern Japan
• Japanese Visual Cultures
• Introduction to Japanese Cultures and Civilizations
• Pacific Food Empires (Ethnic Studies)
• First Year Seminar: Realities and Myths of Asia
• Quakes and Nukes: (Un)Natural Japanese Environments (upper-division natural sciences course)
• Social Issues in Japan (graduation writing requirement)
• Senior Capstone

Connecticut College

Visiting Assistant Professor of Japanese History, 2017-2018

• Quakes & Nukes: (Un)Natural Japanese History
• Protest and U.S. Imperialism in Asia (Senior Seminar)
• The Making of Modern East Asia
• Art and Invention in Early Japan
• Food Empires of Asia and the Pacific

University of California, Santa Cruz

Lecturer, Department of History, 2015-2017

• Modern Japan
• Imperial Japanese History, 1868-1945
• Ancient Japan
• History and Memory of the Okinawan Islands
• Food Empires of Asia and the Pacific
• Imagining Justice (Cowell College Freshman Seminar)
• Social Movements and U.S. Military Bases in Asia (Senior Seminar)
• The Making of Modern East Asia

Teaching Assistant, 2010-2015

University of San Diego

Lecturer, Political Science and International Relations, 2007-2009 (two semesters)

• Twice invited to design and teach upper division Japan-U.S Relations course.

Soka University of America, Aliso Viejo, California 

Lecturer, International Relations, Spring 2009

• Invited to design and teach Introduction to International Relations and Introduction to Latin American Studies courses.

PUBLICATIONS

• Protest Nation: Anti-Military Base Struggle and the Fight for Peace in Modern Japan, 1945-2021 (manuscript under preparation, Stanford University Press)

Peer Reviewed

• With Lex McClellan-Ufugusuku, Drew Richardson: The 50th Anniversary of the Koza Uprising. In: Public History Weekly 9 (2021) 6, DOI: dx.doi.org/10.1515/phw-2021-18602.
• “Your Local Chinese Place Has a ‘Shelter-in-Place Dinner Special‘”. Gastronomica 1 August 2020; 20 (3): 30–32. doi:
• “From Tokyo to Wounded Knee: Two Afterlives of the Sunagawa Struggle,” The Sixties: A Journal of History, Politics, and Culture, Issue 10, Volume 2, Winter 2017
• ‘Impasse At MCAS Futenma‘, Critical Asian Studies, 42:3, 457 – 468. (September 2010)
• “普天間の袋小路はワシントンでつくられている (The impasse at Futenma is created in Washington).” Sekai, (Iwanami Shoten: January/February 2010). Sugita Hiroki, translator.
• “Inserting America into Japanese History Woes.” The Japan Policy Research Institute (www.jpri.org), JPRI Working Paper 112 (August 2007)

Review

• Review of Mobilizing Japanese Youth: The Cold War and the Making of the Sixties Generation, by Christopher Gerteis. Monumenta Nipponica 77, no. 2 (2022): 364-369.
• Review of Siniawer, Eiko Maruko, Waste: Consuming Postwar Japan. H-Envirohealth, H-Net Reviews. October, 2022.
• Reviewer, H-Diplo Roundtable XXI-45 on Kapur, Nick. Japan at the Crossroads: Conflict and Compromise after Anpo. June, 2020.
• Review of Padoongpatt, Mark; Flavors of Empire: Food and the Making of Thai America. Journal of American Ethnic History 38, no. 2 (2019): 103-04. 2019.
• Review of Schieder, Chelsea Szendi, “To Catch a Tiger by Its Toe: The U.S.-Japan Security Treaty, Moral Re-Armament, and Cold War Orientalism.” H-Diplo, H-Net Reviews. March, 2018.
• Review of Hashimoto, Akiko, The Long Defeat: Cultural Trauma, Memory, and Identity in Japan. H-War, H-Net Reviews. November, 2015.

Digital Projects

• “The Okinawa Memories Initiative” in Bodies and Structures 1.0: Deep-Mapping Modern East Asian History by David Ambaras and Kate McDonald. Open-access, peer-reviewed, and great site for teachers and students.
• Food for Thought: Oral Histories of California’s Asia-Pacific Foodways, created in collaboration with students in my course, Pacific Food Empires.

Popular Writing

• “Let Obama’s Hiroshima visit open up debate in the U.S. about the nuclear attacks.” The Japan Times. May 25, 2016. (Republished at the Japan Policy Research Institute, JPRI Critique Vol. XXII No. 7. May 2016)
• “‘Sunagawa Struggle’ ignited anti-U.S. base resistance across Japan.” The Japan Times. May 3, 2015.
• “Yes, You Too Can ‘Win in China’: An Interview with Filmmaker Ole Schell,” The China Beat (www.thechinabeat.org), October 15, 2009. (Republished at the Japan Policy Research Institute, JPRI Critique Vol. XV, No. 5. November 2009)
• “Higher Education in Old Macau,” Sign-In Macau, August/September 2009.
• “Rolling the Dice in Macau,” The China Beat (www.thechinabeat.org), August 11, 2009

Other

• Spadework in Okinawa: The 1969 Antennae Construction Plan. UC Santa Cruz master’s thesis (April 2011)
• Political Atrocity: The Role of the Nanjing Massacre in 21^st Century Sino-Japanese Relations. San Diego State University master’s thesis, Montezuma Press, San Diego, (2006)

MEDIA APPEARANCES

• KSQD Community Radio, “UCSC Humanities Connects Using Language Culture, and History.” November 22, 2021.
• The Academic Minute, November 27, 2017.
• Appearance on Rising Up With Sonali to discuss the historical significance of President Obama’s visit to Hiroshima. May 26, 2016.
• Interviewed by The Tokyo Shimbun regarding my research into the Sunagawa Struggle. November 6, 2015.

FUNDING AND RECOGNITION

• 2020 Northeast Asia Council of the Association for Asian Studies, Research Grant for Travel to Japan
• CSUMB Undergraduate Research Opportunity Center, CURE (Course Based Research Experience) Fellow
• 2017-2018 Faculty-Student Engagement Fund, Connecticut College
• 2014 UCSC Graduate Division Outstanding Teaching Assistant Award
• 2014 UCSC Institute for Humanities Research Summer Dissertation Fellowship
• 2013 Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad Fellowship (UCSC announcement)
• 2012 Institute of Humanities Research, travel funding to Seminar on Experimental Critical Theory seminar in Beirut, Lebanon (see Conferences/Training)
• 2012 Summer Research Funding, UC Santa Cruz Department of History
• 2011-2012 Japan Foundation, Language Program for Specialists in Cultural and Academic Fields, Osaka
• 2011 Alumni Development Grant, Critical Language Scholarship, U.S. State Department
• 2011Travel Grant, UC Santa Cruz Institute for Humanities Research
• 2011 Summer Pre-Dissertation Fellowship Award, UC Santa Cruz Department of History
• 2010 Critical Language Scholarship, U.S. State Department (Doshisha University, Kyoto)
• 2010 Research Travel Grant, UC Santa Cruz Department of History
• 2009 Regent’s Fellowship, UC Santa Cruz
• 2005 Diversity Fellowship, San Diego State University
• First Place, Best Graduate Student Paper, 2006 Phi Alpha Theta Historical Honor Society Southern California Conference, CSU Fullerton

CONFERENCES

• Organizer/Presenter, “‘Towards a Space of Reflection’: A Porous History of Futenma” in the panel “The More Things Change: Limits and Legacies of Okinawa’s ‘Reversion’.” Association for Asian Studies Annual Conference, Honolulu, March 2022.
• “‘No New Base!’: Anti-Base Struggle in Twenty-first Century Japan,” Israeli Association for Japanese Studies, Hebrew University of Jerusalem. December 10, 2019
• Chair/Discussant, “Social Dynamics in Modern Japan,” Western Conference for the Association for Asian Studies, Soka University of America, October 20, 2018.
• Presenter, ““Local Struggles and Global Militarisms: A Lost Moment in 1968 Okinawa” in the panel “Japan Deals with WWII: Legacies of the Pacific War,”Western Conference for the Association for Asian Studies, Soka University of America, October 20, 2018.
• Presenter, “The Okinawa Memory Initiative (formerly The Gail Project)” in the panel “Bodies and Structures: Deep-Mapping the Spaces of Japanese History,” Association for Asian Studies, Washington D.C., March 24, 2018.
• Presenter, “From Tokyo to Wounded Knee: Two Afterlives of the Sunagawa Struggle,” Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations Annual Conference, Washington D.C. June 24, 2017
• Presenter, “Activism in the Courts: Popular Challenges to the Legality of Military Bases in Japan” in the panel, “Contentious Legal Boundaries: East and Southeast Asian Sovereignty,” Association for Asian Studies, Seattle, March 31-April 3, 2016
• Panel Organizer/Presenter, “Militarization As Urbanization: Anti-Base Struggle In A Changing Tokyo,” in the panel, “The Meanings of Peace in Modern Japan: The Tenacity of War and Protest in a ‘Pacifist’ State.” Association for Asian Studies, Chicago. March 26-29, 2015
• Presenter, “Dispossession and Anti-Base Struggle in Cold War Tachikawa,” UC Berkeley Center for Japanese Studies Graduate Conference on Ecology and Space, May 2-3, 2014.
• Presenter, “’You can stake our land but you can’t stake our spirits’: Producing militarized space and the struggle for the right to landscape in western Tokyo.” Columbia Graduate Student Conference on East Asia, Columbia University. February 14, 2014.
• Presenter, “The Boundaries of Empire and Consumption: Consumption in Okinawa,” on panel “Military Consumption and Occupation in Asia and the Pacific Islands.” Association for Asian American Studies Conference, New Orleans, LA, May 19, 2011.
• Presenter, “Textbooks Are History: A Look At The Recent Historical Quarrel Between China and Japan.” Pacific Coast Branch/American Historical Association Conference. Stanford University. August 2006.
• Presenter, “Textbooks Are History: A Look At The Recent Historical Quarrel Between China and Japan.” Phi Alpha Theta Historical Honor Society Southern California Conference. California State University Fullerton. April 2006. Awarded First Place, Best Graduate Student Paper.

WORKSHOPS

• “Bodies and Structures: Deep-Mapping the Spaces of Japanese History.” University of California, Santa Barbara. June 8-11, 2017.
• New Topics, Technologies and New Times: Japan Ahead. Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, Center for Japanese Studies, Berkeley. February 24-25, 2017.
• “Shifting Terrains of Struggle in Japan and Japanese Studies.” Triangle Center for Japanese Studies, North Carolina. April 11-13, 2014.
• Social Science Research Council and Association for Asian Studies Dissertation Workshop, “Dispossession, Capital, and the State.” Philadelphia. March 30-April 2, 2014.
• “Spaces of Resistance.” University of California Humanities Research Institute’s Seminar on Experimental Critical Theory VIII, American University in Beirut, Lebanon. July 29-August 8, 2012.

LANGUAGE TRAINING

• Advanced Japanese: Japan Foundation, “Language Program for Specialists in Cultural and Academic Fields,” Japan Foundation Kansai Center, Osaka. September 2011-March 2012.
• U.S. Department of State Critical Language Scholarship Program, Doshisha University, Kyoto, Japan. Summer 2010.
• Japanese language training. KCP Japanese Language School, Tokyo, Japan. Summer 2001.

INVITED LECTURES/TALKS

• “Japan’s Shifting Defense Policy and the United States,” World Affairs Council of the Monterey Bay Area, January 16, 2023.
•  “Protest Nation: Anti-U.S. Base Struggle in Post-War Japan,” Lytton Center for History and the Public Good, Ohlone College, April 29, 2021.
• “Postwar Protests against U.S. Military Bases” in Modern Japanese History, UC Santa Cruz, May 22, 2014. Noriko Aso.
• “U.S. Bases in Japan,” World War II Memories in Japan and the U.S., UC Santa Cruz, March 5, 2014.
• 「土地に杭は打たれても、心に杭は打たれない」―50年代の西東京における基地反対運動と風景の権利.“ 立教大学共生社会研究センター . “’You can stake our land but you can’t stake our spirits’: Resisting militarism and fighting for the right to landscape in 1950s western Tokyo.” Rikkyō University Research Center for Cooperative Civil Studies. December 6, 2013 (Japanese).
• “’You can stake our land but you can’t stake our spirits’: Resisting militarism and fighting for the right to landscape in 1950s western Tokyo.” Waseda Modern Japan History Workshop, Waseda University, Tokyo. November 15, 2013.
• “U.S. Bases in Japan (and the American Empire)”. Invited talk at Keiō University, “Introduction to Sociology,” Professor Shiobara Yoshikazu and Professor Takenoshita Hirohisa. April 18, 2013.
• “U.S. bases in Japan,” World War II Memories in Japan and the U.S., UC Santa Cruz, May 7, 2010. Alan Christy and Alice Yang.
• “Japan’s Self-Defense Forces.” Dr. John Stoessinger’s “Crisis Areas in the World.” University of San Diego. November 2007.
• “The Economic and Political Foundations of Modern Japan.” Guest Lecture, Department of Asia-Pacific Studies, San Diego State University. San Diego, CA. February 2007.
• “The Historical Antecedents to Modern Japan.” Department of Asia-Pacific Studies. San Diego State University. San Diego, CA. October 2006.
• “Tokugawa Identities.” Department of Asia-Pacific Studies, San Diego State University. San Diego, CA. March 2006.

PUBLIC OUTREACH

• Judge, Salinas Union High School District Japanese Karaoke Contest. October 5, 2018.
• Guest Speaker, “Kagoshima in the World,” at exhibition opening gala, “Gambatte Kimashita: Japanese Flower Growers of the Salinas Valley,” CSUMB Salinas Center (The John Steinbeck Center). September 7, 2018.
• Organizer for museum visits and guide for tour of military bases and communities in Tokyo for UCSC and Yokohama International University students involved in hands-on historical research and collaboration. December 2013 and September 2011.
• Chaperone and guide for Salinas public high school student trip around Japan (Tokyo, Hakone, Kyoto, Osaka), April 2012.
• “Introduction to Japan” for high school students taking Japanese language, Everett Alvarez High School, Salinas, California, March 28, 2012.
• “U.S. Bases in Japan: The View from the US.” Gathering of concerned residents opposed to US base expansion into the Atagoyama neighborhood, Iwakuni, Japan. March 1, 2012. (Japanese)
• “Base History, Base Spaces.” Invited talk at Asia Society (アジアの会) in Osaka, Japan. February 10, 2012 (Japanese)
• Panelist at invited talk on the topic of language study in Japan. Critical Language Scholarship Alumni Panel, U.S. Department of State, Washington, DC. June 9-11, 2011.
• Panelist at invited talk about U.S. bases in Okinawa. Osaka Community Center, Japan. August 18, 2010. (Japanese)
• “How America Sees its Bases in Japan.” Invited talk at gathering of concerned lawyers/activists in Osaka, Japan. June 30, 2010. (Japanese)

 LANGUAGE

Japanese (fluent)

MEMBERSHIPS

Association for Asian Studies

Modern Japan History Association

American Historical Association 

OTHER EXPERIENCE

Program Assistant, Project Concern International (now Global Communities) 2006-2009

• Served as main programmatic assistant for large international health and development NGO headquartered in San Diego, California.

English Teacher, NOVA Group May 2003-May 2004

• Taught English to Japanese students of all ages. Yamanashi, Japan.