John D. Montgomery Postdoctoral Fellowship
Since 2013 the PBRC has offered an annual John D. Montgomery Postdoctoral Fellowship.
Each year the PBRC looks for a recent academic graduate, based on interests that reflect the various interests of faculty and students. Intended to support young scholars whose research emphasizes humanistic development in and connections between the peoples of the Pacific Basin, the Montgomery fellow teaches courses both in one of SUA’s concentrations and in the General Education curriculum, including a special topics course related to their expertise. A valuable addition to campus life, this program allows students and faculty alike to benefit from the latest innovations in scholarship relevant to the university’s mission.
Zachary Gottesman
2024-2025 John D. Montgomery Post-Doctoral Fellow
Dr. Zachary Gottesman is a Pacific Basin Research Center Post-Doctoral Fellow at Soka University of America. Zachary received his PhD from the University of California, Irvine, where he wrote a dissertation “Korean Animation: Aesthetics in the Age of Globalized Production” which he is currently turning into a manuscript. He has published work in journals including the Journal of Japanese and Korean Cinema, Animation: an interdisciplinary journal the Journal of Settler Colonial Studies and positions: asia critique and presented his research at conferences including the Association of Asian Studies Conference, the World Congress of Korean Studies, and the Modern Language Association Conference. His research interests include animation, Japanese and Korean popular culture, global political economy, new media, and transnational fandoms.
Dr. Zachary Gottesman studies the global production, dissemination, and consumption of East Asian popular culture. His dissertation explores Korean animation throughout different epochs of modern Korean history. Tracing the different developmentalist approaches each Korean regime used to create an animation industry and their eventual capitulation to serving as a labor hub for the global outsourcing industry, he recontextualizes Korean animation’s infamous lack of domestic and international success within larger questions of imperialism and the limits of Korean animation caught between American and Japanese monopoly production. He selects key works of Korean animated media and analyzes how each work reflects on its historical moment aesthetically and the contradictions of Korean economic development beyond its supposed “miracle.” He has a forthcoming article based on his dissertation in positions: asia critique on Wonderful Days (2003), the most expensive Korean adult-oriented, feature-length animated film after the Asian financial crisis, its ambitious visuals and production, and the consequences of its market failure. He also has an article currently under review at Mechademia on the relationship between the Japanese anime Space Battleship Yamato (1974), the Korean nationalist mimicry Fly! Space Turtleship (1979), and the growth of global anime fandom based on the former while the latter was forgotten as Korean military regime collapsed around it.
His current research analyzes the production and circulation of “Asianness” across the pacific basin. Expanding his previous research on Korean outsourcing labor for aesthetically and thematically “Asian” American cartoon Avatar: the Last Airbender (2005-2008), he argues that Asianness is a contested term between people, nation-states, transnational corporations, and international fandoms in a global system that has reconfigured these forces into new forms of horizontality but also new hierarchies. On the one hand, this reconfiguration has seen the rise of East Asian cultural exports and global fandoms that seemingly transcend American global cultural hegemony, Japanese dominance of Asian culture, and even the very concept of a national culture. On the other hand, these new “Asian” cultural forms are founded on the continued dominance of American finance, platforms, and aesthetic forms. He argues that American racial discourses of Asianness are part of this shift and investigates how Asians became contemporary mediators of global Asian capitalist production and the American settler-colonial empire.
American racial discourses of Asianness are part of this shift and investigates how Asians became contemporary mediators of global Asian capitalist production and the American settler-colonial empire.
Previous Postdoctoral Fellows
Michael Schaefer
2019-2020Michael Schaefer received a PhD in Environmental Earth System Science from Stanford University where his research focused on how humans become exposed to environmental contaminants. In Asia, naturally occurring arsenic is so pervasive in groundwater that it has been termed “the largest mass poisoning in human history” and millions of people around the world continue to be exposed to unsafe arsenic concentrations in drinking water. Michael’s dissertation research included field work in Cambodia, China, and Vietnam to understand how drinking water wells become contaminated with naturally-occurring arsenic, focusing on how interactions between surface and groundwater affect when and where arsenic is likely to occur in dangerous concentrations.
Laureen Hom
2018-2019Laureen D. Hom received her PhD in Planning, Policy, and Design with an emphasis in Asian American Studies at the University of California, Irvine. She also received a BA in Anthropology and Art History at the University of California, Los Angeles and an MPH in Sociomedical Sciences, Urbanism and the Built Environment concentration at the Mailman School of Public Health at Columbia University. Her research interests are in the areas of urban studies, ethnicity and race, neighborhood change, and the political economy of space. Her work also emphasizes the importance of interdisciplinary approaches and community engagement to promote social equity and inclusion of historically underrepresented groups in academic and policy conversations.
Jeremy Guida
2017-2018Jeremy Guida arrived at Soka having recently finished his PhD in religious studies at the University of California, Riverside. His research focuses on how people learn spiritual beliefs and practices outside of religious organizations. As a postdoctoral fellow at PBRC, Jeremy focused on investigating the importance of the Pacific Basin in the religious developments of the 1960s. In addition to carrying out the above projects, Jeremy taught two classes at SUA: World Religions Today and The Religious History of California.
Rumela Sen
2016-2017Rumela Sen earned a PhD in Political Science, specializing in comparative politics, with a regional interest in South Asia. In addition to pursuing her research interests, Rumela taught an interdisciplinary course titled Introduction to Peace Studies. In the spring, she offered another course on the political economy of conflict, with a regional focus on South Asia.
Lauren Baker
2015-2016Lauren Baker earned a PhD in Environmental Studies, specializing in social and political ecology. Her work focuses on indigenous development and social movements, identity politics, environmental justice, environmental governance, and the political ecology and political economy of natural resource extraction as a form of development. In addition to advancing her research, Lauren also taught two courses: Indigenous Development and Social Movements in the fall and Introduction to the Pacific Basin in the spring.
Ilona Moore
2014-2015Ilona Moore earned a PhD in Geography, specializing in economic and political geography. Her work focuses on the geopolitics of food, agriculture, and development. In addition to continuing her research, Ilona also taught two courses during her time at SUA: Introduction to the Pacific Basin in the fall and Entitlements and Exclusions: Approaching Human Development in South Asia in the spring.
Erica Vogel
2013-2014Dr. Erica Vogel is a cultural anthropologist who works on issues of globalization, migration, and religious conversion between Asia and Latin America. As a postdoctoral fellow at the PBRC, Erica taught two courses: Intro to the Pacific Basin in the fall and a course about Asia and Latin America in the spring. Dr. Vogel is currently the Anthropology Instructor in the Department of Social Sciences at Saddleback College.
