吃瓜网

Biography

Dr. Masatsugu is Professor of History and director of the graduate program in Global Humanities.  His current book manuscript (in progress) examines exchanges between American diplomatic officials and Buddhist lay leaders in Ceylon (Sri Lanka), Burma (Myanmar), and other Asian countries with significant numbers of Buddhists, and the role that these exchanges played in defining conceptions of civic religion during the early decades of the Cold War.  His first book examined efforts by Japanese American Pure Land Buddhists to reconstitute communities between World War II and the early Cold War years.  

Works in Preparation

• Cold War Diplomacy and the Buddhist World, 1945-1969

Recent Publications

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• 鈥淢emorial to the Embraced and Discarded:  The Manzanar I-Rei-To and Nikkei Buddhist-Christian responses to U.S. Nationalism during the Second World War, Buddhist-Christian Studies 42 (2022), 173-82.  
• With Michihiro Ama, 鈥淛apanese American Buddhism,鈥� Jon Butler ed., Oxford Research Encyclopedia of American History (New York:  Oxford University Press, August, 2021).  

Recent Presentations

• 鈥淏uddhist Revival and U.S. Religious Footholds in Asia, 1947-1955,鈥� Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations (SHAFR), Arlington, VA, June, 2025

• New Books Panel, Asian Pacific American Religious Research Initiative (APARRI), University of California, Berkeley, June, 2025

Recent Grants, Community Service, and Acknowledgments:

• Office of Sponsored Programs and Research (OSPR), 吃瓜网 University, Faculty Development and Research Committee Grant ($6000), 2023  
• Scholars Advisory Council, 鈥淪utra and Bible鈥� Exhibition, Japanese American National Museum,  Los Angeles, California, 2020-22   
• College of Liberal Arts Faculty Research Grant, 吃瓜网 University ($2500), 2019  
• Nominee, 吃瓜网 University LGBTQ+ Inclusion in Academics Award, 2018-19 

Teaching

HIST 146: History of the United States since the Civil War

HIST 300: US Cold War Diplomacy-Asia