Department of History

Dr. Masatsugu’s research and teaching interests are in the history of Asian Americans, Asia-U.S. relations, immigration, religion, ethnicity, and race during the Twentieth Century. 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 Bonded by Reverence toward the Buddha: the Making of the Buddhist World in the Age of Decolonization, 1947-1980.

Selected Publications:

• "'Haiku on the Road’: Albert Saijo's contested historical legacy." Amerasia Journal 39:3 (Winter, 2013).
• “‘Bonded by Reverence toward the Buddha’: Asian Decolonization, Japanese Americans and the Making of the Buddhist World, 1947-1965.” Journal of Global History 8:1 (March, 2013), 142-64.
• “‘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, Arrington-Prucha Essay Prize, Western History Association

Book Reviews and Other Publications:

• Jim and Jap Crow: A Cultural History of 1940s Interracial America by Matthew M. Briones, Pacific Historical Review (Forthcoming)
• “Ronald Toshiyuki Takaki” in Xiaojian Zhao and Edward J.W. Park eds. Asian Americans: An Encyclopedia of Social, Cultural and Political History (Westport: Greenwood Press, November, 2013)
• Issei Buddhism in the Americas, Edited by Duncan Ryuken Williams and Tomoe Moriya, Pacific Historical Review 81:3 (August, 2012), 483-85.
• Concentration Camps on the Home Front: Japanese Americans in the House of Jim Crow, by John Howard Journal of World History 22:3 (September, 2011), 650-53.
• Teaching Mikadoism: The Attack on Japanese Language Schools in Hawaii, California, and Washington, 1919-1927 by Noriko Asato History of Education Quarterly 47:2 (May, 2007), 233-35.
  

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 377/562: Asian American History