Kaho Yasuda is a PhD Candidate in History, 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. Her dissertation traces the trajectories of Taiwanese people as they traversed three empires over their lifetimes. Through a focus on processes of racialization, (labor) migration, imperial violence, and militarization, the dissertation ties the “prewar” and “postwar” into a cohesive storyline, to explore how different structures of militarization and colonialism converged to impact the everyday choices of people on the ground. In doing so, it explores the pervasiveness of colonial structures that do not simply disappear when empires “withdraw” or are defeated and dismantled. More broadly, she seeks to place the story of Taiwan within the contexts of (settler) colonialism and decolonization, U.S. empire, transpacific migration, and development (aid) history.
Advisor: Eiichiro Azuma
U.S. imperialism, imperialism and war in the Asia-Pacific, race, migration, Asian American history, settler colonialism, development, war and militarization, Japanese empire, World War II, global Cold War, decolonization, modern Taiwan