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, whose 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. An article based on this research, “ ‘A Country of Hair’: A Global Story of South Korean Wigs, Korean American Entrepreneurs, African American Hairstyles, and Cold War Industrialization,” 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.

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.