Dr. Jason Petrulis is an Assistant Professor in 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. (Please email Dr. Petrulis if your institution does not have access to these articles.)

Dr. Petrulis’s interests also include Taiwanese flour sack underwear, Black sailors and Blackness on the Perry expedition to Japan, 19th-century students of color at US universities, World War II advertising and propaganda, and digital and public humanities.