Historian. Teacher. Writer
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I'm a first-generation college graduate and an Assistant Professor of 20th-century United States history at Santa Clara University. I'm interested in comparative race and ethnic relations; gender and intimacy; migration and diaspora; and social movements. My first book project, Picture Bride, War Bride: The Role of Marriage in Shaping Japanese America (Forthcoming), grew out of a desire to understand my sense of (un)belonging in the US. As the granddaughter of a Japanese war bride, I examine how the institution of marriage has historically created pockets of legal and social inclusion for Japanese women. My analysis begins with the first wave of Japanese women's migration (picture brides) facilitated by the Gentlemen's Agreement of 1908 and ends with the second mass migration of Japanese women (war brides) after World War II. I earned a B.A. from the University of California, Berkeley and a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago. In my last year of dissertation writing, I was a Pre-doctoral Fellow at the MIT with a joint appointment in the department of History and the department of Global Studies and Languages. After MIT, I was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Mahindra Humanities Center at Harvard University. I joined Santa Clara University in the Fall 2020. I began my intellectual journey at Antelope Valley College, a community college in Lancaster, CA where I grew up. I took classes part-time for several years while working as a licensed esthetician and raising a family. In 2008, I completed an Associate of Arts degree, becoming the first in my family to earn a college degree. I transferred to the University of California, Berkeley soon after. I am still a skin care and makeup enthusiast and maintain my esthetician's license! |
Japanese War Brides in Post-WWII America, Japanese American Service Committee, Chicago, Illinois in July 2018. View on Chicago CAN TV here.
Photo from the War Brides Symposium sponsored by the Japanese American National Museum and USC Shinso Ito Center for Japanese Religions and Culture. View on C-SPAN here.
Interracial Intimacies Symposium, University of Chicago, April 2018. Full program can be found here.