Background
I am excited to join the community of scholars in Ethnic Studies at UH. I am especially looking forward to sharing in the interdisciplinary and comparative analysis of race and power in different contexts across the Asia-Pacific region. While trained as a historian, classes and scholarly works in Ethnic Studies have been crucial to my understanding of the relationship between race, capitalism, empire, and science in the modern world and I am excited to continue these conversations with students and new colleagues at UH. I come from a mixed-race background and am a fifth-generation Okinawan on my mother’s side. She grew up in Honolulu and I am excited to reconnect with that part of my family story. Previous to joining Ethnic Studies at UH, I taught Japanese history at the University of Utah and held a postdoctoral fellowship at Keio University in Tokyo.
Education
- PhD, History, University of California, San Diego, 2014
- MA, CPhil, History, University of California, San Diego, 2011
- BA, History, Reed College, 2003
Specializations
Science, Empire, Power, Social Domination, Race, Capitalism, Community, Japan, Labor, Gender, the Body.
Research
I am broadly interested in how scientific forms of knowledge about human life relate to the emergence of new types of socioeconomic systems, including capitalism and empire. I started to examine these questions in my first book, Selling the Future: Community, Hope, and Crisis in the Early History of Japanese Life Insurance (2024 Cornell UP). In this text, I looked at how private Japanese life insurance companies and the state-run life insurance system used life insurance as a commodified form of “community” to suture the myriad social problems produced under capitalism and empire.
I am currently developing a new research project focused on the science of ability over the span of the 20th century in Japan. This new project includes labor science, college entrance examinations, and vocational guidance programs from the 1920s through the recessionary 1990s.
Community Engagement
I look forward to working with students and community groups advocating for racial and environmental justice and food sovereignty.