Oleg Benesch

BA (Alaska Fairbanks), MA (Reitaku), PhD (British Columbia)

Oleg Benesch is Professor of East Asian History, specializing in the history of early modern and modern Japan and China. His publications and teaching interests cover a variety of fields, including Japanese intellectual, religious, and social history, Chinese intellectual history, as well as the transnational history of modern East Asia. He presents his research findings at academic conferences and invited lectures throughout East Asia, Europe, North America, and Australia. Oleg’s first book, Inventing the Way of the Samurai: Nationalism, Internationalism, and Bushido in Modern Japan, was published by Oxford University Press in 2014. His second monograph, Japan's Castles: Citadels of Modernity in War and Peace, was co-authored with Ran Zwigenberg and published by Cambridge University Press in 2019. Oleg is also a co-author of the 2015 book, Civilizing Emotions: Concepts in Nineteenth-Century Asia and Europe, also published by Oxford University Press.