PETRULIS Jason

Dr. Jason Petrulis is an Assistant Professor of Global History whose research and teaching focus on Asia-US relations. He received his PhD, MPhil, and MA from Columbia University, and his BA from Harvard University. He is a historian of global capitalism, broadly conceived.

His book in progress, Wig: A Global History, 1958-1979, uses a curious commodity as a “lens” on Asian industrialization. Wig draws on archival, library, and field research at sites ranging from India and Hong Kong to the US and Singapore.

“ ‘A Country of Hair’: A Global Story of South Korean Wigs, Korean American Entrepreneurs, African American Hairstyles, and Cold War Industrialization,” based on this research, was published in Enterprise & Society. “A Country of Hair” was awarded the Philip Scranton “Best Article” prize and also received an honorable mention for the Mira Wilkins prize for best article in international/comparative history, both from the Business History Conference. A second article from this project, “Making a global beauty business: the rise and fall of Hong Kong wigs in the 1960s,” was published (in English) in Entreprises et Histoires.

Dr. Petrulis is also researching Black performances and performances of “Blackness” connected with the US Navy's expedition to Japan (1853-54). An article from the project was recently published in American Music: “From Jonkonnu and Son de los diablos to Congo Square and Son Jarocho: Global Histories of the Jawbone/Quijada as a Black Musical Instrument.” The article was awarded honorable mention for the Frances Densmore Prize from the American Musical Instrument Society.

(Please email Dr. Petrulis if your institution does not have access to these articles.)

Dr. Petrulis’s interests also include Taiwanese flour sack underwear, 19th-century students of color at US universities, World War II and Cold War advertising and propaganda, and digital and public humanities.