Year Started

2006

Education

• Ph.D. History, Yale University
• M.A. East Asian Studies, Yale University
• B.A. Philosophy, University of California at Berkeley

Teaching Interests

• Modern Japan
• Modern China
• Pre-modern Japan
• East Asian History
• Modern World History
• Regional Studies---East Asia
• History of the Samurai
• Buddhism
• Japanese film and literature
• Totalitarianism in modern East Asia
• Technology and religion

Research Interests

• Evolutionism, biomedicine, and technological development in modern Japan
• Philosophy of science and technology
• Non-axial religiosity and modern society

Biography

Dr. Gregory Sullivan is a scholar of Asian history. He holds a Ph.D. and a M. Phil. in Modern Japanese History as well as a M.A. in East Asian Studies from Yale University. His undergraduate degree was an B.A. in Philosophy from the University of California at Berkeley. He earned a certificate for Japanese Language at the Inter-University Center for Japanese Language in Yokohama and a certificate in Applied Linguistics from San Diego State University.

His Ph.D. dissertation was entitled, "War of the Corms: Haeckelian Bio-politics in Oka Asajir's Evolution and Human Life".

His publications include Regenerating Japan: Organicism, Modernism and National Destiny in Oka Asajirō’s Evolution and Human Life, New York: Central European Press, 2018; "Tricks of Transference: Oka Asajirō (1868-1944) on Laissez-faire Capitalism," Science in Context 23, Issue 3 (2010), pp. 367-91’ and "The Instinctual Nation-state: Non-Darwinian Theories, State Science and Ultra-Nationalism in Oka Asajirō's Evolution and Human Life," The Journal of the History of Biology Volume 44, Issue 3 (2011), pp. 537-86.

His current work focuses on technology, biomedicine, state Shinto, and the developmental paradigm of Imperial Japan. Upcoming titles include “Organicist Instrumentalism: Shinkaron, the Division of Labor, and Meiji Grand Strategy;” “Unity and Development: Albert Borgmann and the Meiji Technological Revolution;” “The Irony of Laissez-faire: the Critique of Negative Freedom in Borgmann’s The Technological Character of Contemporary Life;” “Technology over Orthopraxy: An Interpretation of Kurosawa’s Ichiban Utsukushiku (The Most Beautiful);” The Technological Disposition: A Reading of Albert Borgmann’s Technology and the Character of Contemporary Life; and Meiji’s Partial and Protracted Technological Revolution: Focal Production and the Meta-device.