Aaron Skabelund specializes in modern Japanese history, with an emphasis in the social and cultural history of imperialism, animals, and war.  Dr. Skabelund joined the history department in 2006 after completing a Ph.D. in modern Japanese history at Columbia University in 2004 and a postdoctoral fellowship with the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science at Hokkaido University.  His first book examines the history of Western and Japanese empires by analyzing the actual and metaphorical deployment of dogs.  In a second project, he is exploring the history of the Japan’s post-Second World War military, commonly known as the Self-Defense Force.  Skabelund’s publications include Inu no teikoku:  Bakumatsu Nippon kara gendai made (Empire[s] of Dogs:  From Bakumatsu Nippon to the Present), trans. Motohashi Tetsuya (Tokyo:  Iwanami shoten, 2009); “Fascism’s Furry Friends:  Dogs, National Identity, and Racial Purity in 1930s Japan,” in The Culture of Japanese Fascism, (Durham NC:  Duke University Press, 2009); “Breeding Racism:  The Imperial Battlefields of the ‘German’ Shepherd,” Society & Animals 16, no. 4 (Winter 2008), and “Can a Subaltern Bark?” Imperialism, Civilization, and Canine Cultures in Nineteenth-Century Japan,” in JAPANimals:  History and Culture in Japan’s Animal Life (Ann Arbor:  Center for Japanese Studies, University of Michigan, 2005).