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Ikuko Asaka

Profile picture for Ikuko Asaka

Contact Information

419C Greg Hall
810 S. Wright St.
M/C 466
Urbana, IL 61801

Associate Professor

Research Interests

Nineteenth-centuty US; gender, race, and sexuality; US imperialism 

I am a historian of the nineteenth-century United States. My research takes transimperial, interimperial, and international approaches. My first book examines the intersections of settler colonialism and Black removal efforts (e.g. Liberian colonization) and illuminates the centrality of languages of climate, race, and gender to intellectual debates over geographies of Black freedom. 

I am currently working on two projects: one exploring early U.S. imperialism in the Pacific, and the other historicizing representations of Asianness and their relationship to gender binary. 

Education

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

 

Grants

Summer Stipend, National Endowment for the Humanities, 2020  

Franklin Research Grant, American Philosophical Society, 2020

Awards and Honors

Conrad Humanities Scholar, 2021-2026

Lincoln Excellence for Assistant Professors Award, 2016-18

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

Courses Taught

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

Additional Campus Affiliations

Associate Professor, History
Associate Professor, Gender and Women's Studies
Associate Professor, Center for East Asian and Pacific Studies
Associate Professor, Women & Gender in Global Perspectives

Honors & Awards

Conrad Humanities Scholar, 2021-2026

Lincoln Excellence for Assistant Professors Award, 2016-18

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

Highlighted Publications

Asaka, I. (2017). Tropical Freedom: Climate, Settler Colonialism, and Black Exclusion in the Age of Emancipation. Duke University Press. https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822372752

View all publications on Illinois Experts

Recent Publications

Asaka, I. (Accepted/In press). The endurance and expanse of settler colonial history. Settler Colonial Studies. https://doi.org/10.1080/2201473X.2024.2371485

Asaka, I. (2023). Guerilla Women and Men in Silk Dresses Diplomacy and Orientalism during the 1860 Japanese Mission. Journal of the Civil War Era, 13(4), 444-468. https://doi.org/10.1353/cwe.2023.a912397

Asaka, I. (2020). African-American Migration and the Climatic Language of Anglophone Settler Colonialism. In K. L. Hoganson, & J. Sexton (Eds.), Crossing Empires: Taking U.S. History into Transimperial Terrain (pp. 205-221). (American Encounters/Global Interactions). Duke University Press. https://doi.org/10.1215/9781478007432-010

Asaka, I. (2020, Oct 14). H-Diplo Roundtable XXII-8, “A Teaching Roundtable on Teaching Colonialism in History” (October 14, 2020). https://networks.h-net.org/node/28443/discussions/6565831/h-diplo-roundtable-xxii-8-teaching-colonialism-history

Asaka, I. (2019). Review: M.A. Schoeppner's Moral Contagion: Black Atlantic Sailors, Citizenship, and Diplomacy in Antebellum America by Michael A. Schoeppner. Journal of Southern History, 85(4), 906-907. https://doi.org/10.1353/soh.2019.0305

View all publications on Illinois Experts