Dr. Hiroaki Matsusaka

Hiroaki Matsusaka is a transnational historian of East Asia and the United States in the twentieth century. His research explores questions of empire and colonialism, migration and race relations, social movements, and intellectual and cultural formations. After completing his BA and MA in Political Science at Waseda University, he received an MA and PhD in History from the University of Michigan.

 His doctoral dissertation was entitled “Border Crossings: Anti-Imperialism and Race-Making in Transpacific Movements, 1910-1951.” It examined how a group of Japanese and Korean migrant activists developed anti-imperialist political thought and cultures in Tokyo, Seoul, Chicago, and New York, where they imagined or practiced solidarity with other Asians, African Americans, and migrant whites. Using multi-sited archival research, this study traced the paths of six individuals who shaped their revolutionary politics and cultural expression from their intersectional experiences as migrant men and women, racialized workers, imperial and colonial subjects, overseas students, and exiled intellectuals.

 Matsusaka is currently revising his dissertation into a book manuscript that incorporates case studies of southern California, while also drafting journal articles on global socialist cultures in the interwar period. He has previously taught classes in world history and US history, and in the Winter Quarter 2020, he will be teaching a course that discusses modern Japan in transpacific contexts. His projects have been supported by the American Council of Learned Societies, the Social Science Research Council, the Korea Foundation, and the Japan-Korea Cultural Foundation, and he was a visiting scholar at the Institute of Korean Studies, Yonsei University.