Christen T. Sasaki

Biography

Christen T. Sasaki received her doctorate in History from the University of California, Los Angeles. Prior to her appointment at UCSD, she was an assistant professor at San Francisco State University.

Sasaki’s research and published works focus on the politics of race and empire in the Pacific Island world. Her first book, Pacific Confluence: Fighting over the Nation in Nineteenth-Century Hawai‘i was published by the University of California Press in 2022. Her recent articles include “Making Sartorial Sense of Empire: Contested Meanings of Aloha Shirt Aesthetics,”  published in The Contemporary Pacific and “Emerging Nations, Emerging Empires: Citizenship and Sovereignty in 1893 Hawai‘i,” published in the Pacific Historical Review.

Research interests: Asian American Studies, Transnational U.S. History, Race and Empire, Militourism, Japanese American History, History and Memory, Militarism and Material Culture.

Selected Publications

“Making Sartorial Sense of Empire: Contested Meanings of Aloha Shirt Aesthetics,” The Contemporary Pacific (34:1), 31-61.

“Emerging Nations, Emerging Empires: Citizenship and Sovereignty in 1893 Hawai‘i,” Pacific Historical Review (2021) 90 (1): 28–56.

“How the Portuguese Became White: The Racial Politics of Pre-Annexation Hawai‘i,” in Pacific America: Histories of Transoceanic Crossings, ed. Lon Kurashige (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2017), 213-228.

“Threads of Empire: Militourism and the Aloha Wear Industry in Hawai‘i,” American Quarterly 68.3 (2016): 643-667.

“The Possibilities for Pacific Islander Studies in the Continental United States,” de Guzman, John-Paul R., Alfred Peredo Flores, Kristopher Kaupalolo, Christen Sasaki, Kēhaulani Vaughn, and Joyce Pualani Warren, in “Transoceanic Flows: Pacific Islander Interventions Across the American Empire,” ed. Keith L. Camacho, Amerasia Journal, no. 3 (2012):141-161.

Asian American History: Primary Documents of the Asian American Experience, ed. Jonathan H. X. Lee and Christen T. Sasaki. (Cognella Academic Publishing, 2015).