E. Taylor Atkins

Current Research

Historiography of the use of "fascism" to describe Japan’s 1930s-40s state; religious cosmopolitanism in Northeast Asia.

Major Publications

Books

• Introduction: Sung C. Yoo’s Place in History. In Sung C. Yoo, Transformed as a Nurse from North Korea to America through Three Wars. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co., 2025. 13-27.
• Kogun by the Toshiko Akiyoshi-Lew Tabackin Big Band. 33 1/3 Japan Series. London: Bloomsbury Press, 2024.
• A History of Popular Culture in Japan, from the Seventeenth Century to the Present. London: Bloomsbury Press, 2017; second edition, 2022.
• Primitive Selves: Koreana in the Japanese Colonial Gaze, 1910-45. Colonialism 5. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010.
• Jazz Planet. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2003. (Editor)
• Blue Nippon: Authenticating Jazz in Japan. Durham: Duke University Press, 2001. (Winner of the Association for Asian Studies' 2003 John Whitney Hall Book Prize for best book on Japan or Korea)

Articles/Book Chapters

• “‘Enemy Soldiers’ and ‘Ball Mates’: Intra-Imperial Football and Identity Politics in Interwar Northeast Asia.” Studies on Asia 6.1 (June 2021): 2-23.
• “Frenemy Music? Jazz and the Aural Imaginary in Wartime Japan.” Memoria e Ricerca: Rivista di storia contemporanea 26.2 (May-August 2018): 241-260.
• “Colonial Modernity.” In Michael Seth, ed. Routledge Handbook of Modern Korean History. London: Routledge, 2016. 124-140.
• “The Funky Divas Talk Back: Dialogues about Black Feminism, Masculinity, and Soul Power in the Music of James Brown.” Popular Music and Society 38.5 (Dec. 2014): 337-354.
• “The Dual Career of ‘Arirang': The Korean Resistance Anthem That Became a Japanese Pop Hit.” Journal of Asian Studies 66.3 (August 2007): 645-687.

Teaching Interests

My principal teaching responsibilities at the lower division are modern World and Asian history classes. At the upper division, I regularly teach a three-semester, 300-level sequence in Japanese history and a 400-level course on the Japanese empire. I have also taught thematic courses on Rebel Music, the Korean War, Asian women's history, and graduate seminars on modern colonialism, popular culture, and the First World War.

I am affiliated faculty with the NIU World Music program.

Courses Taught

• HIST 141 Asia Since 1500
• HIST 171 World History II: Problems in the Human Past
• HIST 346 Women in Asian History
• HIST 350 Japan to 1600
• HIST 351 Japan since 1600
• HIST 352 Popular Culture in Japan
• HIST 395 Historical Methods
• HIST 398 Themes in World History: The Korean War
• HIST 399 Honors Seminar—Rebel Music
• HIST 401 Third Clinical Secondary School Experience in History/Social Sciences
• HIST 444/544 The Japanese Empire
• HIST 491/591 Special Topics: Knights And Samurai (with Professor Valerie Garver)
• HIST 494 Oral History
• HIST 495 Senior Thesis
• HIST 496 History and Social Science Instruction for Secondary Educators
• HIST 680 Modern Colonialism
• HIST 680 The First World War
• HIST 790 Research Seminar—Popular Culture
• ILAS 201 Introductory Clinical Experience