My first book, Territorial Natures: The Limits of Imperial Japan in Inner Mongolia (forthcoming Fall 2024 from the University of Chicago Press) examines how Japanese-led ethnic cleansing and environmental planning demarcated Inner Mongolia as an autonomous province in the 1930s. This study offers an alternate understanding to the beginnings of the multiethnic framework of the People’s Republic of China. Instead of only seeing the foundations of Communist rule as forged in the fires of war against imperialism, it points to the significance of the Japanese occupation in shaping the ethnic and ecological bounds of modern China.
My research has been supported by the American Council for Learned Societies, Fulbright Commission, Mellon Foundation, National Endowment for the Humanities, Social Science Research Council, and Japan Foundation.
Sakura Christmas
Associate Professor of History and Asian Studies
I am a historian of modern Japan. My research concerns the history of borderlands, environment, and imperialism in the twentieth century. I have spent over a decade total living, studying, and working in Japan, China, and Mongolia, including a year each as a Princeton-in-Asia fellow in Xinjiang and as a Fulbright researcher in Inner Mongolia. Having received my Ph.D. in History from Harvard University, I joined the faculty at Bowdoin in 2015.
Education
- PhD, History, Harvard University, 2016
- AB, History, Harvard University, 2008