PhD Student
Jonathan Paul Garza is a PhD student researching the environemtnal history of the Japanese empire. He received a BA in Government with a minor in History from Franklin & Marshall College in Lancaster, PA and an MA in International Relations from Ritsumeikan University in Kyoto. Jonathan has also earned an MA in History from UC Berkeley en route to his PhD. Jonathan’s research interests include intellectual history, the history of China and Taiwan, the history of Southeast Asia, and the history of silviculture.
His prospective dissertation, tentatively entitled The Camphor Archipelago, follows the history of the camphor tree in the islands of Shikoku, Kyushu, and Taiwan from the beginning of the Meiji Period and into the 1920s. Historically, camphor, which is made from the camphor tree, holds a long history as a luxury item, lending scent to incense and perfumes, as well as an active ingredient in medicinal ointments. In the mid-nineteenth century, camphor was integral to the recipe for celluloid, catapulting the camphor tree to the center of the modern, global economy and altering the relationship between humans and the tree. Rapid industrialization entailed deforestation, disrupting the highland communities that relied onthe tree for their livelihood. Pushed by deforestation, the people of Kyushu were pulled by the hundreds to work for speculator Kada Kinzaburō (1857-1922) in camphor operations on the eastern coast of Taiwan. However, this extractive operation was met with resistance by the indigenous people and resulted in violence that challenged the Japanese presence in the region.
Awards and Fellowships
The John L. Simpson Pre-dissertation Research Fellowship in International & Area Studies (2025)
Foreign Language and Area Studies (FLAS) Summer Fellowship (2023)
Chancellor’s Fellowship (Fall 2022 & Spring 2023)
Valedictorian for Ritsumeikan University Graduate School of International Relations (2022)
Excellent Thesis Award for Ritsumeikan University Graduate School of International Relations (2022)
Seiseki-Yushusha Academic Excellence Scholarship (2020 & 2021)
Presentations
“The Camphor Archipelago”, University of Pennsylvania East Asian Studies Graduate Student Research Colloquium (April 2026)
“Dead Nationalism: Tanaka Shōzō’s bōkokuron”, University of California, Berkeley Japanese Studies Research Symposium (Sept. 2024)
“Landscape and National Space: The Psychogeography of Shiga Shigetaka”, UC Berkeley Department of History Colloquium (May 2024)
“Towards the formation of the national subject—the thought of Althusser and Tosaka Jun” or “Kokuminteki na shutai no keisei wo megutte—aruchuseeru to tosaka jun no shiso kara”, Historian’s Workshop 1st Japanese Research Show Case for Early Career Historians at University of Tokyo (Feb. 2022)