FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY - Key Persons
Responsibilities: Advising for undergraduate and graduate students in History.
Professor Annika A. Culver is Professor of East Asian History at Florida State University, where she specializes in Japan and Northeast Asia-related topics, as one of the world's experts on imperial Japan and Manchuria/Manchukuo (Japanese-occupied northeast China). She received her doctorate from the University of Chicago and holds an A.M. degree in Regional Studies East Asia from Harvard University and a history degree from Vassar College. Since 2012, Dr. Culver has served as a scholar in the US-Japan Network for the Future, a group initiated by the late Ezra Vogel which connects academics to the foreign policy community. She is also an Editorial Board Member of the Texas National Security Review. Professor Culver's research and publications have focused on propaganda and advertising, cultural production in Manchuria/Manchukuo and the Japanese empire, the history of science in Japan, and more recently, the growth of Japanese consumer capitalism. She is currently writing her latest book American Daim yô: The Story of a Transoceanic Japanese American Noble Family (on contract with University of Hawaii Press). Previous publications include Glorify the Empire: Japanese Avant-Garde Propaganda in Manchukuo (2013), which won the Southeast Conference for the Association for Asian Studies 2015 Book Prize, the co-edited volume Manchukuo Perspectives: Transnational Approaches to Literary Production (2019), and Japan's Empire of Birds: Aristocrats, Anglo-Americans, and Transwar Ornithology (2022); her most recent book, Democratizing Luxury: Name Brands, Advertising, and Consumption in Modern Japan, will be published by University of Hawaii Press in 2023. The Japan Foundation, Association for Asian Studies, D. Kim Foundation for Science and Technology, and USIIE (Fulbright) and other grants have funded Dr. Culver's research. In addition, Professor Culver regularly gives media and television interviews on East Asian topics, most recently for Voice of America, New York Times, Al Jazeera, and Nikkei News, and regularly presents at national and international venues. Dr. Culver is proficient in Japanese, Mandarin Chinese, French, and German.
Professor Annika A. Culver is Professor of East Asian History at Florida State University, where she specializes in Japan and Northeast Asia-related topics. She received her doctorate from the University of Chicago, and also holds an MA in Regional Studies East Asia (RSEA) from Harvard University, and a history degree from Vassar College. Since 2012, Dr. Culver has served as a scholar in the US-Japan Network for the Future, which connects academics to the foreign policy community. She is also a Next Generation Fellow (2018-2021) affiliated with the International House-Japan. Previously, she taught at the University of North Carolina, Skidmore College, Beijing University, and the University of Chicago. Her research interests include propaganda/advertising, gender and consumption, history of science in modern Japan, Manchuria/Manchukuo, wartime politics and the arts in East Asia, Sino-Japanese relations, and US-Japan relations. As a historian of Japan and East Asia, she has resisted rigid nation-state boundaries with a transnational focus on questions of culture and the use of the arts as propaganda. Her current work examines how consumer capitalism developed in Japan, and her research on Japanese science delves deeply into questions of empire, and how the rise of the imperial US strengthened rather than destabilized Japanese elites and their society. She regularly gives media and television interviews on East Asian topics, including for Voice of America, New York Times, Al Jazeera, and Nikkei News. In addition, she also serves as a member of the Editorial Board of the Texas National Security Review (TNSR), a prestigious journal published by the University of Texas-Austin specializing in foreign policy and national security issues.
Professor Culver has led digitization projects of collections housed in the Institute on World War II and the Human Experience related to the Asia-Pacific War (1937-1945) and its aftermath, including archiving the Oliver L. Austin Photographic Collection, which features scenes of Japan under the Allied Occupation from the viewpoint of an ornithologist working for SCAP who circulated in aristocratic Japanese circles. As Curator of the Oliver L. Austin Photographic Collection, Dr. Culver worked with the National Shôwa Museum in Tokyo to set up the March-May 2018 exhibit "A Journey Towards Hope: Slides of Early Postwar Japan from the Florida State University Archives." More than 44,000 people visited the exhibit, the second largest number for 2018. For more information, see: https://www.showakan.go.jp/events/kikakuten/past/past180310.html.
Dr. Culver has received grants and fellowships from the Japan Foundation (Faculty Research Fellowship, Book Subvention), Association for Asian Studies (China and Inner Asia Council/Northeast Asia Council Research Grants, First Book Subvention), Institute for Advanced Study (Visitor Affiliation), D. Kim Foundation for the History of Science and Technology (Research Grant), Kajima Foundation (Book Subvention), and USIIE (Fulbright). In Fall 2019, she received a fully-funded sabbatical from Florida State University. In 2013, Dr. Culver was awarded the William F. Sibley Memorial Translation Prize for translating into English a Japanese leftwing writer's story about Korean independence activists in the 1920s. She regularly presents papers at international and national conferences and invited lectures, most recently at Sophia University (Tokyo), Virginia Military Institute (VMI) and Princeton University.
Her book, Glorify the Empire: Japanese Avant-Garde Propaganda in Manchukuo (University of British Columbia Press, 2013; University of Washington Press, 2014), won the Southeast Conference of the Association for Asian Studies (SECAAS) 2015 Book Prize. It explores how once anti-imperialist Japanese intellectuals produced modernist works celebrating the modernity of a fascist state in occupied China--reflecting a complicated picture of complicity with, and ambivalence towards, Japan's utopian project.
Dr. Culver recently co-edited a volume of transnational scholarship on the literary production of multi-ethnic writers in Japanese-occupied Northeast China: Manchukuo Perspectives: Transnational Approaches to Literary Production (University of Hong Kong Press, 2019) which emphasizes Manchukuo as a cultural and linguistic borderland, where transnationalism became a quotidian practice beyond the binaries of collaboration and resistance: https://hkupress.hku.hk/pro/1584.php.
Professor Culver's second monograph Japan's Empire of Birds: Aristocrats, Anglo-Americans, and Transwar Ornithology (Bloomsbury Press, SOAS Studies in Modern and Contemporary Japan Series, 2022) investigates Japanese contributions to transnational histories of science by examining the public politics and private lives of a disproportionately influential group of zoologists whose imperial and postwar global influence arose out of their unique cosmopolitan circumstances in research and travel within the Japanese and Anglo-American empires. For these scientists, the study of birds was a political act, and very much an important part of prewar empire-building and postwar peace: https://www.bloomsbury.com/us/japans-empire-of-birds-9781350184930/.
Her third monograph, Democratizing Luxury: Name Brands, Advertising, and Consumption in Modern Japan (University of Hawaii Press, forthcoming September 2023), examines how iconic Japanese companies at key historical and sociopolitical moments assigned symbolic capital, or "luxury", to mass-produced products as a business model. The book adds to the understanding of the development of capitalism and consumerism within a Japanese context, and reveals the unique and universal processes involved in market expansion.
Responsibilities: HR Dept. Rep, Graduate & Adjunct Support, Payroll Rep and Travel Rep.
Charles Upchurch received his Ph.D. in modern British history from Rutgers University (2003). His research focuses on nineteenth-century British gender, social, cultural, and political history, and his teaching fields include modern Britain, the British Empire, gender history, and the history of sexuality.
Prof. Upchurch's newest book, "Beyond the Law": The Politics Ending the Death Penalty for Sodomy in Britain (Temple University Press, 2021), documents the early nineteenth century debate in Britain over the ethics of punishing sex between men, culminating in votes in Parliament in 1835 and 1840-41. On each of these occasions, majorities in the House of Commons approved ending the death penalty for sodomy, even as the reform was blocked in the House of Lords. While the reform itself failed, the opinions preserved by the attempts provide a remarkable and previously unknown way to analyze cultural attitudes towards sex between men in the early nineteenth century. Rather than focus on what was not present in these debates (the modern homosexual identity category as defined in the late nineteenth century) this book focuses on the multiple ways various groups of individuals understood what sodomy was, and what constituted an ethical response to it. Arguments were made, in a variety of settings, as to why execution for private consensual sexual conduct was immoral. A leader in the movement to abolish slavery was prominent in these efforts, as were individuals who had family members who were subject to arrest under the laws against sodomy and attempted sodomy. Arguments stemming from utilitarian reform were a part of these debates, but so too were arguments for marital privacy, and the negative impact of the sodomy law on married couples. Jeffrey Weeks, author of the first landmark works of LGBTQ history for nineteenth century Britain, has called the book "a triumph of historical detective work… [that] is genuinely breaking new ground." A talk outlining this research, given as a part of the 2022 iMagine Belfast Festival, can be found here.
Prof. Upchurch's first book, Before Wilde: Sex Between Men in Britain's Age of Reform (University of California Press, 2009), explores the ways in which class influenced the interpretation of same-sex desire in the period when the British state first began to police sex between men on a regular basis. It is the first work to call attention to the widespread reporting of court cases related to sex between men in mainstream London newspapers between 1820 and 1870. It also places family reactions at the center of the narrative, in order to better understand how these acts were understood within the broader culture.
In addition to his work in the areas of gender and sexuality, Prof. Upchurch is also researching the ways in which working- and middle-class individuals appropriated aspects of the work of Adam Smith for socially progressive ends in the decades before Karl Marx published his most important works. He has previously written on cross-dressers and British society in the 1870s, on methodologies for using new digital tools to conduct historical research, and on the need for academics to reach out to non-academic audiences. His articles have appeared in The Journal of Social History, The Journal of the History of Sexuality, Gender and History, and other scholarly journals. Prof. Upchurch is currently the President of the Southern Conference on British Studies, and the Chair of the Advisory Board of the Women's Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program at Florida State. Since 2014 he has served as one of six Distinguished Academic Patrons of LGBT History Month in the United Kingdom. His full CV can be found by following this link.
Emily Lu is a Ph.D. candidate in History at Florida State University. Her main field is modern East Asian history, with minors in early modern Europe, world history, and ethnomusicology. She holds a B.F.A. in Dramatic Writing from NYU Tisch School of the Arts, and a M.A. in History from East Tennessee State University. Emily's doctoral dissertation, tentatively titled "Toward an East Asian Utopia: Illusion and Ambition in Japanese Military Music, 1868-1945," is a study of the intersection between music and politics manifested in the form of military music (gunka) that popularized in wartime Japan (1931-1945). Through examining military music with references to the colonial periphery (Northeast China/Manchuria, Taiwan, and Korea) and gunka musicians, her research examines the making of a Japanese imperial identity and colonial multiculturalism.
A trained actress, playwright, and filmmaker, Emily also has composed and directed film and stage productions in New York City. Since coming to FSU, she has partaken in performing arts projects, including her ten-minute play "Kokonron" at Tallahassee Fringe Festival.
Emily has presented research topics on gunka, shidaiqu, American roots music, and Jesuits in East Asia at annual conferences for the American Historical Association, the Association of Asian Studies, the Society of Ethnomusicology, as well as various graduate conferences. She is currently Associate Lecturer in Asian Studies at UMass Boston and a Fulbright-Hays DDRA principal candidate.
Katherine Mooney is interested in the cultural history of inequality in the United States--how it is imagined and made into political and legal discourse, how it plays out in people's daily lives. She primarily works on the history of slavery and its legacies. Her book, Race Horse Men, examines the generations of black men who worked with Thoroughbred horses from the colonial period to the 1920s. She is presently at work on two new projects, a biography of one of the first African-American sports heroes, Isaac Murphy, and a project about ideas of gender and how they map onto animals in the United States.
Jennifer Koslow is a scholar of Public Health, Public History, and Gender. She directs the department's Historical Administration and Public History program, which facilitates skills in collecting, preserving, and interpreting history with and for public audiences.
Prof. Koslow's most recent books are Exhibiting Health: Public Health Displays in the Progressive Era (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2020) and Public History: An Introduction From Theory to Application (Wiley: 2021). She is also the author of Cultivating Health: Los Angeles Women and Public Health Reform (New Brunswick, N.J.: University of Rutgers Press, 2009).
As a Public Historian, Koslow has worked on several consequential scholarly products of historical research that foster community engagement. These include a historical narrative for a Historic American Landscapes Survey of Smokey Hollow (National Park Service Program), a historical narrative for a National Register of Historic Places Nomination (National Park Service Program), and other Civil Rights commemorations in Tallahassee, including the Tallahassee-Leon County Civil Rights Heritage Walk.
Before taking a position at FSU, she worked at the Newberry Library in Chicago, IL to facilitate the use of its collections through exhibits, teacher programs, and scholarly works-in-progress seminars.
Her research has been supported by the National Library of Medicine/National Institutes of Health, the American Historical Society, The Rockefeller Archive Center, the Huntington library, the Historical Society of Southern California, and the New Jersey Historical Society.
Responsibilities: Administrative Specialist; HR Dept. Manager, Budget Account Manager, Faculty and Graduate Student support.
Job Titles:
- Associate Chair for Graduate Studies
Katherine Mooney is interested in the cultural history of inequality in the United States--how it is imagined and made into political and legal discourse, how it plays out in people's daily lives. She primarily works on the history of slavery and its legacies. Her book, Race Horse Men, examines the generations of black men who worked with Thoroughbred horses from the colonial period to the 1920s. She is presently at work on two new projects, a biography of one of the first African-American sports heroes, Isaac Murphy, and a project about ideas of gender and how they map onto animals in the United States.
Job Titles:
- Academic Program Associate
Responsibilities: Assists in management and coordination of History Graduate degree programs. Contact for information about History Graduate degree programs.
Job Titles:
- East Asia / Research Interests
Dr. Scholz received his B.A., M.A., M.Phil., and Ph.D. from Yale University. He won a Fulbright Grant for his research in Germany and held a Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Religious and Ethnic Diversity in Göttingen before coming to FSU. He has since won research grants from the American Philosophical Society (2022), DAAD (2021), and the Stiftung Preußischer Kulturbesitz (2020). His research appears in Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte - Archive for Reformation History, Migration and Society, Sixteenth Century Journal, and Journal of Urban History, and he has written book reviews for the Sixteenth Century Journal, German Studies Review, and Central European History.
Teaching: Dr. Scholz regularly teaches WOH2023 "The Modern World to 1815," EUH4144 "Reformation," and WOH3440 "History of Refugees" and WOH3930 "History of Catholicism 0-2000."
Professor Maxine Jones received her B.A. (1975), M.A. (1977), and Ph.D. (1982) from Florida State University, where she joined the faculty in 1982. She is the co-author of two books, African-Americans in Florida, with Kevin M. McCarthy (Pineapple, 1993), and Talladega College: The First Century, with Joe M. Richardson (Alabama, 1990). African-Americans in Florida received the Charlton W. Tebeau Book Prize from the Florida Historical Society in 1994. Professor Jones was the principal author of a report on "The Rosewood Incident" for the Florida Legislature in 1993.
Job Titles:
- Associate Professor
- Professor
Before joining the faculty at Florida State University in August 1999, Professor Michael Creswell was the Annenberg Visiting Assistant Professor of History at the University of Pennsylvania. He has also served as an adjunct professor of strategy for the U.S. Naval War College. A graduate of Indiana University and the University of Chicago, where he received his Ph.D. in 1997, Creswell has also studied at the Ecole Nationale d'Administration, the Institute International D'Administration Publique, and the Universite de Dijon.
A specialist on international politics, the Cold War, and military affairs, he has published "Between the Bear and the Phoenix: The United States and the European Defense Community," in L'échec de la CED: leçons pour demain?, ed. Michel Dumoulin (Peter Lang, 2000) and "How France Secured an Anglo-American Continental Commitment, 1945-54," in Cold War History. With Marc Trachtenberg, Creswell is the author of "France and the German Question, 1945-1955," which appeared in the Journal of Cold War Studies. He is the author of A Question of Balance: How France and the United States Created Cold War Europe (Harvard, 2006). His next book will examine how France rebuilt its army after the Second World War.
Paul Renfro studies the United States since 1945. He earned his PhD in history from the University of Iowa, where he was a Louis Pelzer Dissertation Fellow. Before arriving at Florida State University in 2018, he served as a Postdoctoral Fellow in the Center for Presidential History at Southern Methodist University in Dallas.
Renfro is the author of Stranger Danger: Family Values, Childhood, and the American Carceral State (Oxford University Press, 2020) and the coeditor of Growing Up America: Youth and Politics since 1945 (University of Georgia Press, 2019). He has also published in Feminist Studies and Disability Studies Quarterly. Renfro's public writing has appeared in TIME, the Washington Post, the New Republic, Slate, Dissent, Teen Vogue, Jacobin, and other outlets, and he has been interviewed for stories in ELLE, the New Yorker, Jezebel, The Appeal, Salon, and Mother Jones.
Renfro's next book, The Life and Death of Ryan White: AIDS, Inequality, and America, will be published by the University of North Carolina Press in 2024.
Teaching:
Spring 2024-The United States in the Twenty-First Century (AMH 3279-1); Senior Seminar: The US since 1979 (HIS 4935-1)