Graduate Student Directory

Summary of Expertise

Teaching Experience:

• Lecturer, “JAPN 410: Quakes and Nukes: (Un)Natural Japanese Environments,” California State University, Monterey Bay. In-person upper-division course. •  Spring 2023
• Teaching assistant, “HIS 80Y World War II Memories in the U.S. and Japan,” (2022) 
• Teaching assistant, “HIS 150E History and memory in the Okinawa Islands,” (2021) 
• Teaching assistant, “HIS-44 Modern South Asia, 1500 to Present,” (2021) 
• Teaching assistant, “HIS-105 Nations and Nationalism,” (2021) 
• Teaching assistant, “HIS-78 Modern Mass Dictatorship and Authoritarianism,” (2020)

Research Experience:

• Graduate Student Researcher for Dean of Humanities Jasmine Alinder, University of California, Santa Cruz • 2021-2023

 Academic Service/Leadership

• Graduate Student Representative, UCSC History Department • 2019-2021
• Moderator at California State University, Chico’s annual Town Hall Meeting • 2017
• Organizing Assistant at ISSRNC (The International Society for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture) Conference: “Religion, Science and the Future” at University of Gainesville, Florida • 2016
• Vice President of J*Fusion, CSU Chico’s Japanese Language and Culture Club • 2013-2016
• Student Ambassador, Anthropology Department • 2016-2017
• Organizing Assistant at ISSRNC (The International Society for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture) Conference: “Nature & the Popular Imagination” at Pepperdine University, Malibu • 2012

Research Interests

General:

• 19th-20th century Japan
• 19th-20th century East Asia
• Empire & colonialism
• Nation-building & nationalism
• Folklore
• Memory
• Disaster studies
• Social history
• Environmental history
• Political history

Specific:

• 20th century disaster history
• 1896 Meiji Sanriku Earthquake
• 1923 Kantō Earthquake
• 1933 Sanriku Earthquake

Biography, Education and Training

Currently, I am in my 5th year of graduate school, working on a dissertation tentatively titled "Mapping Imperial Japan’s Greatest Calamities: Learning Nation and Enacting Empire Through Disaster." My research centers around how people's experiences with and memories of crises and catastrophes shape society over time through moments of memory-making. Specifically, my research focuses on how the annual anniversaries of the 1923 Great Kantō Disaster and other disasters were used for various political and social programming during Japan's imperial period. 

CV - 2023

Education:

B.A., Anthropology, California State University, Chico

B.A., Humanities, California State University, Chico

M.A., History, University of California, Santa Cruz

Honors, Awards and Grants

• UCSC History Department Summer Research Funding Award • UC Santa Cruz 2023
• UCSC THI Summer Dissertation Fellowship • UC Santa Cruz 2023
• UCSC History Department Summer Research Funding Award • UC Santa Cruz 2022
• SSRC Dissertation Proposal Development Program • UC Santa Cruz 2022
• National Humanities Center Graduate Student Summer Residency 2021 • Summer 2021 
• Graduate Certificate in Teaching for Equity • Spring 2021
• Irvine Memorial Fellowship for graduate study and coursework • UC Santa Cruz 2020
• THI Graduate Student Success Fellowship • UC Santa Cruz 2021
• THI Graduate Student Success Fellowship • UC Santa Cruz 2020
• Mellon IHR Grad Fellowship • UC Santa Cruz 2020
• Regents Fellowship • UC Santa Cruz 2019-2020
• Research and Creativity Grant • CSU Chico 2016
• Research and Creativity Grant • CSU Chico 2014
• USAC Spring Scholarship • 2015
• Jean Nedrow Kutz Foundation Scholarship • CSU Chico 2013
• Outstanding Research Project in Anthropology Award • CSU Chico 2017
• Outstanding Student in Humanities Award • CSU Chico 2017

Selected Publications

Bergamini, Clara. Review of Earthquake Children: Building Resilience from the Ruins of Tokyo, by Janet Borland. Children, Youth and Environments 33, no. 1 (2023): 188-190. doi:10.1353/cye.2023.0007.

Resettlement: Chicago Story. Full Spectrum Features, 2023. Collaborated with Full Spectrum’s web design and film production team as a researcher, content curator, and adviser for a cinematic digital history project 

Selected Presentations

“Memorializing the Kantō Massacre: Calamity in Japan's Imperial Project” (Paper Presentation) in panel on “Labour, Knowledge, Development and Memory: Landscapes of Imperial Subjectivity in the Japanese Empire” at the Association for Asian Studies 2022.

Teaching Interests

Empire in Modern East Asia

Modern Japan

Environmental Global History

History of Disaster