Year in Program: Fourth
Fields: Pre-modern and modern Japan; samurai and bushidō; memory and commemoration; death, suicide, and sacrifice in Japan
Advisor: Dr. Ethan Segal
Committee: Dr. Ethan Segal, Dr. Aminda Smith, Dr. Ronen Steinberg, Dr. Sidney Lu
Research Languages: Japanese; Mandarin Chinese (some)
Educational Background: B.A. in History, B.A. in Asian Studies, Bowling Green State University, 2013; M.A. in Asian Studies, University of Hawai’i at Mānoa, 2017
Email: coldrend@msu.edu
I am an historian of East Asian history, with a specific focus on Japan. I have a wide variety of interests but am primarily focused on the ways in which war and warriors have been portrayed and remembered throughout Japanese history. My B.A. was dedicated to a short overview of the evolution of the “warrior ideal” of the samurai as portrayed in selected historical literature from the Kamakura period to the Shōwa period while my M.A. thesis consisted of a comparative analysis of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial complex and Yasukuni Shrine as they relate to Japanese memory of World War II. My dissertation focuses on the ways in which war death and sacrifice were remembered during both the Meiji and the post-WWII periods.
I’m also a huge fan of pop culture and love talking about that as well!
TA appointments:
ISS 210 – History and Theory of Genocide (Fall 2020)