Ethan Segal

Biography

Ethan Segal is a scholar of traditional East Asia with a particular focus on Japan.  He earned his M.A. from the University of Washington, his Ph.D. from Stanford University, and was a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Tokyo.  In 2008-09, he was Visiting Assistant Professor of Pre-modern Japanese History in Harvard University’s Department of East Asian Languages & Civilizations.

Topics of Professor Segal’s research and teaching include economic history, nationalism, women and gender, history and film, contemporary popular culture, and Japanese textbooks.  His publications appear in journals such as 歴史学研究 and Education About Asia as well as in edited volumes including Currents in Medieval Japanese History and Economic Thought in Early Modern Japan.  Professor Segal’s first book, Coins, Trade, and the State: Economic Growth in Early Medieval Japan, re-examines money, trade, and evolving medieval political and social institutions; it is available from Harvard University Press.