Department of History

Dr. Masatsugu’s research and teaching interests are in the history of Asian Americans, immigration, religion, ethnicity, and race during World War II and the Cold War years. He is currently working on two book-length projects: Reorienting the Pure Land: Ethnicity, Transnationalism and Orientalism in the making of Japanese American Buddhism, 1941-1965, and American Japanese in the World: Nisei Cosmopolitanism during the Early Cold War Years.

Selected Publications:

• “‘Bonded by Reverence to the Buddha’: Asian Decolonization, Japanese Americans and the Making of the Buddhist World, 1947-1965.” Journal of Global History 8:1 (March, 2013).
• “‘Beyond this world of transiency and impermanence’: Japanese Americans, Dharma Bums and the Making of American Buddhism in the Early Cold War Years.” Pacific Historical Review 77:3 (August, 2008), 423-51.

Winner of the Western History Association’s 2009 Arrington-Prucha Prize for best article on the History of Religion in the West.

• "'Haiku on the Road’: Albert Saijo's contested historical legacy." (Under review with Amerasia Journal.)

Courses Taught:

• History 146: History of the United States Since the Mid 19th Century
• History 300: Introduction to Historical Methods
• History 378/565: Migration and U.S. History
• History 482/590: Asian American History