• Matt K. Matsuda
  • Matt K. Matsuda
  • Professor of History; and Faculty Director of the Lloyd C. Gardner Fellowship Program
  • Degree: Ph.D., Department of History, UCLA (1993)
  • Rutgers : At Rutgers Since 1993
  • Specialty: Histories of the Pacific; Modern France; Modern Europe
  • Office: 210 Van Dyck Hall, 16 Seminary Place

 

 

RESEARCH INTERESTS

Pacific Islands global and comparative histories and Asia-Pacific. Memory and historical consciousness, historiography, European empire and colonialism. Modern Europe, France, Nineteenth Century cultural and intellectual histories. Histories of genomics, decolonization, and science especially in Oceania.

COURSES REGULARLY TAUGHT

Undergraduate

  • Histories of the Pacific
  • Paris and Tokyo 1700-present
  • History and the Genome
  • Responsibilities and Rights (for the Gardner Fellows Program)
  • Seminar: History and Memory
  • Modern Europe II 1715-present
  • Europe in the Nineteenth Century
  • Modern European Intellectual History
  • History of Modern France, 1789-1996
  • Patterns in Civilization: Europe and Japan: Love
  • Asian American Immigration: Living Histories

Graduate

  • Graduate Colloquium: Constructing Modernity
  • Graduate Colloquium: Theorizing Modern France
  • Modern European Problems and Directed Readings
  • Modern European Research Seminar
  • Weekly Seminar of the Rutgers Center for Historical Analysis (1999-2001) "Utopia, Violence, Resistance: Remaking and Unmaking Humanity.

PUBLICATIONS

Books

AUTHORED

  • Genetic Drift: Genealogies, Genomes, and Histories in the Pacific (Palgrave Press, in contract, 2023)
  • A Primer for Teaching Pacific Histories, Antoinette Burton, series editor (Duke University Press, 2020), pp. 184
  • Pacific Worlds: A History of Seas, Peoples, and Cultures (Cambridge University Press, 2012) , pp. x11, 436
  • Empire of Love: Histories of France and the Pacific (Oxford University Press, 2005),  pp. vi, 232
  • The Memory of the Modern (Oxford University Press, 1996), pp. vi, 255

EDITED

  • With Ryan T. Jones, co-editor and Paul D’Arcy, General Editor, Cambridge History of the Pacific Ocean. Volume 1, the Pacific to 1800 (2017-2023)
  • Palgrave Studies in Pacific History: A Monograph Series, Palgrave Macmillan Press, 7 volumes (2013- ). Founding Editor and Series Editor. From 2015 with Series Co-Editor, Bronwen Douglas:
    • Dario DiRosa, Frustrated Modernity in Post-Independence Papua New Guinea: An Indigenous History from Below (2023, in-process)
    • Daniel Simpson, The Royal Navy in Indigenous Australia: Collecting, Encounter, and Exchange on a Coastal Frontier, 1795-1855 (2021)
    • Meha Priyadarshini, Chinese Porcelain in Colonial Mexico (2018)
    • Paul Turnbull, To What Strange Uses: The Theft and Scientific Investigation of Aboriginal Australian Body Remains (2017)
    • Helen Gardner and Patrick McConvell, Southern Anthropology: A History of Fison and Howitt’s Kamilaroi and Kurnai (2015)
    • Bronwen Douglas, Science, Voyages, and Encounters in Oceania, 1511-1850 (2014)
    • Rainer Buschmann, Iberian Visions of The Pacific Ocean, 1507-1899, (2014)

Selected Articles and Chapters 

  • “The Pacific to 1800,” introduction for Vol. 1, Cambridge History of the Pacific Ocean (2023)
  • “Papaya Archives: Tin Roofs and Marble Arches,” in Brij Lal, ed., Serendipity: Autobiographical Reflections from Pacific Historians, (2023)
  • “About Ancestors: Origin Debates Connecting Oceania and Asia,” Journal of Pacific History (2021)
  • “Memory: Politics and Power in the Nineteenth Century” for A Cultural History of Memory, Susan Crane, ed. (2021)
  • “Postface,” for Pacific Insularity: Imaginary Geography of Insular Spaces in the Pacific, Thomas Schwarz and Michael Heitkemper-Yates, eds., Rikkyo University (2020)
  • “Afterword: A History of Germans in the Pacific” for Hartmut Berghoff, Frank Biess, Ulrike Strasser, et al., Explorations and Entanglements: Germans in Pacific Words from the Early Modern Period to World War I (2019)
  • “Genetic Drift: Pacific Pasts and Futures,” in Warwick Anderson, et al, eds., Pacific Futures, University of Hawai‘i Press (2018)
  • “Mobilities and Mobilizations: Pacific Histories,” in Georgine Clarsen, ed. Transfers, a journal of ideas and movements. (2016)
  • “Of Queens and Kinship: Politics and Legacies in the Colonial Pacific,” in Jared Poley, ed., Kinship and Community (2012)
  • “Nostalgia in French History: Passions and Purposes,” special Issue of Historical Reflections/Réflections Historiques, edited by Patrick Hutton (2012)
  • Emotional Latitudes: Special Issue of Historical Reflections/Réflections Historiques, Vol. 34, no.1 (Spring 2008) Co-edited with Alice Bullard
  • “Speaking of China, Speaking of Europe Across Cultures” Taiwan Journal of East Asian Studies (Fall 2007)
  • “This Territory Was Not Empty: Pacific Possibilities” Geographical Review, Special Issue, Vol. 97, no.2 (April 2007)
  • “Ocean-Based Histories—The Pacific” American Historical Review, Vol. 111. no. 3 (June 2006)
  • “Does Empire Have Memory?” Ab Imperio Forum (Fall 2004)
  • “Representing Landscape: the Place of History,” History and Theory, May (2004)
  • “Idols of the Emperor” in Jeffrey Olick, ed.,  States of Memory (University of Michigan Press, 2003)
  • "East of No West: The Posthistorie of Postwar France and Japan" in Douglas Slaymaker, ed., Confluences: Postwar France and Japan (University of Michigan Press, Fall 2002)
  • "Empire of Love: Pierre Loti and Juliette Adam", Raritan, Spring/ Summer (2002)
  • "Idols of the Emperor" from The Memory of the Modern (forthcoming in Jeffrey Olick, ed., History and National Memory, 2002)
  • "Plays Without People" in Lynda Jessup, ed., Policing the Boundaries of Modernism and Antimodernism (Toronto University Press, 2001), pp. 192-205
  • "Geopolitics of Desire: The French in Panama" in Proceedings of the Western Society for French History, Vol. 27, (2001) pp. 272-280
  • "The Tears of Madame Chrysanthème," French Cultural Studies, (February 2000), pp. 31-51
  • "In the Revolutionary Garden: Recreating Savages and Civilization," Historical Reflections/Réflexions Historiques (Fall 1996), pp. 303-319
  • "Doctor, Judge, Vagabond: Identity, Identification, and Other Memories of the State," History and Memory,Vol. 6, no. 1. 1994, pp. 73-94
  • "The Body of the Philosopher: Memory, Mythology, and the Modern," Strategies, Vol. 4/5 1991, pp. 134-150

UNIVERSITY ROLES

  • Director, Lloyd C. Gardner Fellowship Program in Public Policy (2022-25)
  • Founding Academic Dean and Dean-in-Residence, Honors College-New Brunswick (2015-2021)
  • Dean, School of Arts and Sciences Honors Program (2010-14)
  • College Avenue Campus Dean (2007-14)
  • Vice-Chair for Undergraduate Education, History Department (2003-6)

AWARDS

  • Community/ University Research Partnership Grant with Intersect Fund (2012)
  • International Service Learning Grant with GREEN (Renewable Energy NGO) (2012)
  • Bildner Intercultural Fellows Grant: “Dancing Histories: Intercultural History” with Jeffrey Friedman (2005-6)
  • Purpose Grant: “Performing History” with Jennifer Jones (2003-4)
  • Bildner Intercultural Fellows Grant: “Asian Oceans: Intercultural History” with Indrani  Chatterjee (2003-4)
  • Project Director, "Utopia, Violence Resistance: Remaking and Unmaking
  • Humanity—Global Visions/ Local Histories," project for Rutgers Centerfor Historical Analysis (2000-2001)
  • Rutgers Dialogues Grant: "Rethinking the Pacific Century: History and Globalization" (1999, 2000, 2001)
  • NEH Summer Institute: Re-imagining Indigenous Cultures: The Pacific Islands East-West Center, Honolulu (1999)
  • Rutgers Faculty of Arts and Sciences Award for Distinguished Contributions to Undergraduate Teaching (1997)
  • Faculty Prize, UCLA Distinguished Teaching Award (1990)
  • Paris Program in Critical Theory (1990)

PROFESSIONAL AFFILIATIONS

  • Society for French Historical Studies
  • Western Society for French History
  • New York Area French History Seminar
  • Editorial Board Historical Reflections/ Réflections Historiques
  • Phi Beta Kappa Society
  • AAUP