Ikuko Asaka

US imperialism; race's relationship to gender and sexuality; climate

My research takes transimperial, interimperial, and international approaches. In my first book I examined the intersections of settler colonialism and Black removal efforts (e.g. Liberian colonization), illuminating the centrality of languages of climate, race, and gender to intellectual debates over geographies of Black freedom.

My other works include peer-reviewed articles on the U.S. opening of Japan and how it generated imaginings of difference and affinity that unsettled the Black-white dichotomy and the binarized correspondence of gender and sexuality dominating popular discourse in the U.S. East. 

I am currently working on a book manuscript on U.S. imperialism in the Pacific up to the end of the Philippine-American War.  

PhD, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Gender and Women's History Program, 2010

Conrad Humanities Scholar, 2021-2026

Lincoln Excellence for Assistant Professors Award, 2016-18

New Faculty Fellowship, American Council of Learned Societies, 2012-13

Summer Stipend, National Endowment for the Humanities, 2020  

Franklin Research Grant, American Philosophical Society, 2020

HIST171 U.S. History to 1877
HIST285 U.S. Gender History to 1877
HIST316 Global Histories of Gender         HIST317 Birth of U.S.Empire                                                              

419C Greg Hall
810 S. Wright St.
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