Sidney Lu is a social and cultural historian of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Japan and China, with research interests in the areas of migration, settler colonialism, gender, race, and trans-Pacific connections. He earned his Ph.D. in history from the University of Pennsylvania in 2013. Before joining Rice, he was an associate professor of history at Michigan State University.
His first book, The Making of Japanese Settler Colonialism: Malthusianism and Trans-Pacific Migration, 1868-1961, published by Cambridge University Press in 2019, is a study of the relationship among Malthusianism, emigration, and colonial expansion in the history of modern Japan. He has also co-edited the book, Japanese Empire and Latin America, published by University of Hawaii Press in 2023, which provides a comprehensive analysis of the relationship between Japanese migration and capital exportation to Latin America and the rise and fall of the Japanese empire Asia. In addition, He is the author of several articles that appear in Journal of Asian Studies, positions: asia critique, Journal of Global History, Journal of World History, Japanese Studies, and Settler Colonial Studies.
His second and forthcoming book, Collaborative Settler Colonialism: Japanese Migration to Brazil in the Age of Empires, explores the intersections in the histories of Japan and Brazil, and the historical convergence of Asia and Latin America in general through the lens of modern settler colonialism.
He is currently working on the third book length research, that examines the history of Sino-Japanese settler colonial struggles in Southeast Asia.
He is a coeditor of the book series Between Asias and Americas at University of Pittsburgh Press, which bridges Asian studies with American studies (conceived hemispherically to include Latin American studies and Asian American studies).
He is the PI and faculty mentor of the digital exhibition, History of Japanese Farmers in Texas, which received the Trailblazer Award of Texas Digital Library. He is an associate of Lovett College.
For more information, please visit his personal website >
BOOKS
Collaborative Settler Colonialism: Japanese Migration to Brazil in the Age of Empires (University of California Press, forthcoming in February 2025)
The Making of Japanese Settler Colonialism: Malthusianism and Trans-Pacific Migration, 1868–1961
Sidney Lu (Open access via Cambridge University Press.)
Japanese Empire and Latin America
Coedited by Pedro Iacobelli and Sidney Lu
COURSES
ASIA/HIST 380 Asian American History
ASIA 295 Introduction to Transnational Asian Studies
ASIA 229 Modern East Asia
ASIA 219 Modern Japan
FWIS 286 Minorities and Subcultures in East Asia