Naoko Shibusawa
Associate Professor:
Department of History & Department of American Studies
Phone: +1 401 863 1037
Naoko_Shibusawa@brown.edu
Naoko Shibusawa is a 20th C. U.S. cultural historian. She studies U.S.empire and political culture, as well as transnational Asian American history. She is interested in how commonplace ideas or ideologies in American culture have supported U.S. domestic and foreign policy and how nonstate actors have reproduced and reinforced state goals.
Biography
Born in Japan, Naoko Shibusawa moved to the United States as a preschooler and grew up in New York, Texas, and California. She received a B.A. in History from the University of California at Berkeley and her M.A. and Ph.D. in History from Northwestern University. She taught at the University of Hawai'i at Manoa for four years before joining Brown's History Department in 2004. She lives in Cranston, RI, with her husband and two daughters.
Interests
Her first book, America's Geisha Ally: Re-Imagining the Japanese Enemy (Harvard 2006), examines how Americans were able to accept the Japanese as valuable Cold War allies so quickly after a brutal and racialized war. Her current book project explores the orientalism in Cold War homophobia and seeks to understand why sexual practices became important to national security during this period.
Awards
Northeast Popular Cultural Association Peter C. Collins prize for best book, 2006.
Affiliations
American Historical Association (AHA), Organization of American Historians (OAH), Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations (SHAFR), American Studies Association (ASA), Association of Asian American Studies (AAAS)
Teaching
I teach courses in 20th century U.S. history, Cold War cultural history, and empires & cultures, as well as courses on the history of U.S. foreign relations/American empire from contact to the present. I mentor students from the freshmen to the graduate levels.
Funded Research
Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship/Andrew W. Mellon Career Enhancement Fellowship, 2007-2008
American Council of Learned Societies/Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship, 2004-2005
University of Hawai'i Research Relations Fund Award, 2002-2003
University of Hawai'i Arts & Sciences Faculty Award, 2002-2003
Japan-America Society, Chicago Chapter, Fellowship, 1996-1997
Center for International and Comparative Studies Graduate Grant, 1995
Northwestern University Fellowship, 1989-1990
Web Links
- Radio interview about _America's Geisha Ally_ on Focus 580 with David Inge, 1-4-07
- Book review in Asahi.com, 5-5-07
- Book review in Foreign Affairs, April/May 2007
