Professor Barak Kushner

Barak Kushner is a Professor of East Asian History and served as Co-Chair of the Faculty of Asian & Middle Eastern Studies (2021-2024). He is a fellow of Corpus Christi College and a Fellow of the British Academy (FBA). His scholarship crosses geographical and disciplinary boundaries and has advanced our understanding of war, empire, propaganda, and cultural exchange in modern East Asia. Kushner began his career as a high school teacher of social studies in Chicago. Later, he travelled to Iwate, Japan where he taught English, lived in a Buddhist temple, and attended Japanese elementary school, studying Japanese along with other young students. He moved to Yokohama and Tokyo, at times studying at Rikkyo University and Tokyo University. After completing courses in advanced Japanese, he taught western history at Shenyang Teacher's University in the north of China where he also started studying Chinese and began research in Chinese history. After returning to the U.S., he attended graduate school at Princeton University, did more Chinese language training in Taipei, Taiwan and then received a PhD in history.