Fumiko SakashitaSakashita portrait

Areas of Interest

  • African American Studies
  • U.S. Cultural History
  • Critical Race Theory
  • Violence and Historical Memory

Biography

Fumiko Sakashita is a Ph.D. candidate (ABD) in American Studies. Her research interests include African American studies, U.S. cultural history, critical race theory, and violence and historical memory. Originally from Japan, she has completed her BA in American Literature from Kobe College and MA in American Studies from Doshisha University in Japan. Fumiko has taught on race and ethnicity in the U.S. at several Japanese universities before she came to MSU in 2004. Based on her research interests, she has published articles and book reviews both in Japanese and English in such journals as Yale-China Journal of American Studies, Rikkyo American Studies, Black Studies and American History, translated works of Eric E. Williams, Orlando Patterson, Hazel V. Carby and David W. Stowe into Japanese, and presented papers at conferences including American Studies Association, Organization of American Historians, American Literature Association, Association for the Study of African American Life and History, Japan Black Studies Association, and Japanese Association of American Studies. Fumiko is currently working on her dissertation entitled:"Building the Black Public Sphere: Lynching, Commemoration, and the Anti-Lynching Struggles in the United States." For the 2008-2009 academic year, she is serving as a research assistant for the Global Literary and Cultural Studies program.

Also, as a member of the "Project Disagree," an anti-military-base group in Okinawa, Japan, Fumiko has organized several events on this matter such as a roundtable discussion on the global anti-base struggles at the MSU Radicalism conference, film screenings of anti-base documentaries, and meetings with George Lipsitz at MSU and with Cornel West in Okinawa; and translated the group’s online statement into English with her colleague Darren Brown.