Yuichiro Onishi

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I am an African Americanist trained as a historian of modern America. I write the history of the African American-led unfinished struggle for democracy in the twentieth century, as it relates to Japan and Okinawa. I also continue to investigate the genesis of occupied Okinawa. This long-range research explores the genealogy of U.S. colonialism toward Okinawa during the early Cold War years. I began my academic career in the Center for Ethnic Studies at the Borough of Manhattan Community College of The City University of New York (CUNY).

Educational Background & Specialties

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Educational Background

Ph.D.: History, University of Minnesota, , 2004 -
B.A.: History, Macalester College, , 1995 -
M.A.: History, University of Minnesota, , 1999 -

Specialties

Black radicalism and internationalism
African American intellectual history
Asian American studies
Transnational American studies

Publications

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Publications

Onishi, Yuichiro. "Yoriko Nakajima and Robert F. Williams: Reasoning with the Long Movement Thesis." Transpacific Correspondence: Dispatches from Japan’s Black Studies (2019): 183-202.
Onishi, Yuichiro. "The New Negro of the Pacific: How African Americans Forged Cross-Racial Solidarity with Japan, 1917-1922." The Journal of African American History 92:2 (2007): 191-213.
Onishi, Yuichiro, Onishi, Yuichiro, and Tia-Simone Gardner. "Abbey Lincoln and Kazuko Shiraishi’s Art-Making as Spiritual Labor." Two Haiku and a Microphone: Traveling Texts and the Work of Afro-Japanese Cultural Production (2015): 57-75.
Onishi, Yuichiro, Onishi, Yuichiro, and Toru Shinoda. "The Paradigm of Refusal: W. E. B. Du Bois’s Transpacific Political Imagination in the 1930s." Citizen of the World: The Late Career and Legacy of W. E. B. Du Bois (2019): 13-35.
Onishi, Yuichiro. "The Presence of (Black) Liberation in Okinawan Freedom: Transnational Moments, 1968-1972." Extending the Diaspora: New Histories of Black People (2009): 178-202.
Onishi, Yuichiro. "The New Negro of the Pacific: How African Americans Forged Cross-Racial Solidarity with Japan [reprint with a new introduction]." Escape from New York: The New Negro Renaissance beyond Harlem (2013).
Onishi, Yuichiro. "Occupied Okinawa on the Edge: On Being Okinawan in Hawai'i and U.S. Colonialism toward Okinawa." American Quarterly 64 (December 2012): 741-766.
Onishi, Yuichiro. "Gerald Horne's Japan." Black Perspectives (June 2017).
Onishi, Yuichiro, Onishi, Yuichiro, and Fumiko Sakashita. Transpacific Correspondence: Dispatches from Japan’s Black Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, 2019.
Onishi, Yuichiro. Transpacific Antiracism: Afro-Asian Solidarity in 20th-Century Black America, Japan, and Okinawa. NYU Press, 2013.
Onishi, Yuichiro, Onishi, Yuichiro, and Fumiko Sakashita. "Introduction." Transpacific Correspondence: Dispatches from Japan’s Black Studies (2019): 1-20.
Onishi, Yuichiro. ""A View from Beale Street" ." Modern American History 3 (2020): 99-102.
Onishi, Yuichiro. "A Politics of Our Time: Reworking Afro-Asian Solidarity in the Wake of George Floyd’s Killing." Unmargin (June 2020).
Onishi, Yuichiro. "Afro-Asian Solidarity Through Time and Space: Roads Taken and Not Taken." Routledge Handbook of Asian American Studies (2017): 342-354.
Onishi, Yuichiro, Onishi, Yuichiro, and Fumiko Sakashita. "Studies in ‘Japanese Dream’: A Transpacific Inquiry into Afrodiasporic Feminist Thought." Transpacific Correspondence: Dispatches from Japan’s Black Studies (2019): 23-55.

Activities

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Activities

Creative

Courage and Compassion: Our Shared Story of the Japanese American WWII Experience: Public History Exhibit. June 30, 2018 - September 3, 2018
The Reading Room - Honoring Pullman Porters' Struggles in Saint Paul: Model Cities' Public History Project. 2013 - 2017

Research

Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters in St. Paul and Minneapolis, 1925-1945
Japanese American History in Minnesota

Professional

Visiting Scholar: Waseda University, Tokyo, Japan.

Awards

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Awards

Mentor Recognition Award, Borough of Manhattan Community College, The City University of New York, May 2006
Insitute for Advanced Study Residential Fellowship, University of Minnesota, Spring 2010
Institute for Advanced Study Collaborative Fellowship, Minneapolis, MN, 2017 - 2019
UMN College of Liberal Arts Talle Faculty Research Award, 2017 - 2019
American Studies Association Community Partnership Grant, 2015 - 2016
College of Liberal Arts "Red" Motley Teaching Award, University of Minnesota, 2015 - 2016
Interdisciplinary Collaborative Workshop Award, University of Minnesota, 2018 - 2019

Courses Taught

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Courses Taught

Social and Intellectual Movements in the African Diaspora (AFRO 3120/5120)
Comparative Race and Ethnicity in U.S. History (AAS/HIST 3875W)
Ways of Knowing in Africa and the African Diaspora (AFRO 4105)
War and Empire: Asian American Perspectives (AAS 3601W)