Shang (Kaho) Yasuda

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Ph.D. Student

Shang Yasuda is a fourth year PhD candidate working on the Japanese and U.S. empires in the mid-twentieth century, from the build-up to World War II through the global "Cold War" and decolonization. She received her B.A. in History and East Asian Studies from Oberlin College. She is interested in themes of race, migration, diaspora, war, and imperial violence. Her first year paper examined Taiwanese national identity and memory through oral histories of Taiwanese soldiers in the Japanese Imperial Army during World War II. Currently, her project examines the trajectories of colonial Taiwanese servicemen through and across the Japanese and U.S. empires from the 1930s to the 1970s. 

 

Shang served as co-president of Clio, the history department’s graduate student organization, in the 2020-2021 academic year. She was on the board of the Pan-Asian American Graduate Student Association for two years and was an Academic & Intellectual Programs Fellow at the Grad Center for the 2021-2022 academic year. Her research has been supported by the Association of Asian Studies, Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations, the Hoover Institution, and various centers at Penn. She is currently a Turner Schulman Fellow at Penn's Center for the Study of Ethnicity, Race, and Immigration. 

 

Advisor: Eiichiro Azuma 

Education

B.A., History (with Honors) and East Asian Studies, Oberlin College, 2018

Research Interests

U.S. Imperialism, empire and decolonization, imperialism and war in Asia, race, diaspora, migration, twentieth century U.S. and modern East Asia, Asian American history

Affiliations

Association of Asian Studies 

Association of Asian American Studies 

The Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations