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
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
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