Fulbright College History Professor Receives Asian Studies Research Grant

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Kelly Hammond

Kelly Hammond, an assistant professor in the Department of History in the J. William Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences, has received a research grant from the Northeast Asia Council of the Association for Asian Studies.

In accordance with the Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission, the Northeast Asia Council supports an assortment of grant programs in Japanese studies designed to aid individual scholars in their research, better the quality of teaching about Japan on all academic levels and incorporate the study of Japan into the major academic disciplines in the United States.

Hammond received a grant of $4,000, matching a $4,000 grant she received from the vice provost of research and development of the University of Arkansas. With these awards, she will travel to Japan in spring 2017 to collect additional archival materials pertaining to her book project, China's Muslims and Japan's Empire.

There, she will divide her time in Tokyo between the Islamic Studies Library at Waseda University, the Diplomatic Archives of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Japan and the National Diet Library of Japan.

"I'm really looking forward to spending time in Tokyo after winter break," Hammond said. "Together, these two grants will give me the opportunity to collect the archival sources and other materials I need to start working on my book project in earnest. All my previous research trips to Japan have been over the summer, so I am very excited to experience winter in Japan."

Previously, in the summer of 2016, Hammond spent three months in Taiwan as a fellow at the Center for Chinese Studies in the National Central Library. She also visited Tokyo to collect supplemental documents that support her expanded argument.

Hammond's research entails studying a cooperation between Italy and Japan that enabled five Muslims from Beijing, China, to go on a Japanese-sponsored hajj pilgrimage to Mecca at the beginning of World War II.

By forging connections beyond the borders of occupied China with other Muslims, Hammond said these men served as mouthpieces of Japanese imperialism and provided the Japanese with the means to expand their political and cultural influence in both occupied China and the greater Islamic world.

Hammond said that the sources she plans to obtain on her upcoming trip will help strengthen and broaden her argument, placing her book project in a larger discussion about global fascist imperialisms and Islam in the 1930s and 1940s, as well as Japan's quest for empire in Southeast Asia, focusing particularly on Japanese policies geared toward Muslims in the Philippines, Malaya and Indonesia.