Education
Ph.D., University of California, Irvine, 2004
Michael Masatsugu, Ph.D.
Professor of History and Director of Global Humanities (M.A.)
Contact Info
Email:
Hours:
Tuesday: 12:30pm - 1:30pm
Thursday: 12:30pm - 1:30pm
Other Hours Available by Appointment
Thursday: 12:30pm - 1:30pm
Other Hours Available by Appointment
Areas of Expertise
Modern Buddhism, Cold War Diplomacy, Asian American History
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
- Reorienting the Pure Land: Nisei Buddhism in the Transwar Years, 1943-1965 (Honolulu: University of Hawai`i Press, 2023).
- “Memorial 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, “Japanese American Buddhism,” Jon Butler ed., Oxford Research Encyclopedia of American History (New York: Oxford University Press, August, 2021).
Recent Presentations
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“Buddhist Revival and U.S. Religious Footholds in Asia, 1947-1955,” Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations (SHAFR), Arlington, VA, June, 2025
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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), Towson University, Faculty Development and Research Committee Grant ($6000), 2023
- Scholars Advisory Council, “Sutra and Bible” Exhibition, Japanese American National Museum, Los Angeles, California, 2020-22 https://www.janm.org/exhibits/sutra-and-bible
- College of Liberal Arts Faculty Research Grant, Towson University ($2500), 2019
- Nominee, Towson 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