New Assistant Professor in EALCS
In July 2020, the Department of East Asian Languages & Cultural Studies welcomed Suma Ikeuchi, Assistant Professor in Transnational Japanese Studies! This position marks the first hire in Japanese Studies at UCSB that is specifically designed for a scholar of Japan whose expertise lies in a transnational methodology. Ikeuchi is the author of Jesus Loves Japan: Return Migration and Global Pentecostalism in a Brazilian Diaspora (Stanford University Press, 2019) which explores the interplay of ethnic, national, and religious identities among the Nikkei (Japanese Brazilians) who return-migrated to their ancestral homeland. In 2020 and 2021 respectively, the book was awarded the Francis L.K. Hsu Book Prize from the Society for East Asian Anthropology and the Clifford Geertz Prize from the Society for the Anthropology of Religion. For more detail, see here and here.