Nakaganeku Saito

Nakaganeku Saito is Assistant Professor of English at Amherst College, specializing in Indigenous Okinawan studies, militarism, and decolonization. Born in Japan with family roots in Okinawa (formerly the Ryukyu/Lūchū kingdom), Saito's personal background deeply informs their academic work examining US militarism and Japanese settler colonialism in the Pacific.

Saito holds a Ph.D. in English Critical and Cultural Studies from the University of Pittsburgh, an M.A. in English from Boston University, and a B.A. in English from the University of Colorado, Colorado Springs. Their academic journey has been supported by prestigious fellowships including the Ford Foundation Dissertation Fellowship and Mitsubishi Foundation Graduate Fellowship.

Research interests focus on the intersections of militarism, settler colonialism, and Cold War security in Asia and the Pacific, utilizing literary analysis and Indigenous Pacific feminist practices. Saito's current book project, Under the Roots of the Gajumaru Tree: Seeding Dispossession and Storying Ecologies in Indigenous Okinawa, examines ecological impacts of US-Japanese colonial agreements through literary, archival, and yuntaku (Uchinaaguchi: talk-story) sources.

Recent publications reveal consistent engagement with Black Pacific theory, Indigenous sovereignty, and ecological resistance, with articles appearing in the Journal of Asian American Studies and American Quarterly. Saito's work connects Okinawan struggles to broader Pacific contexts while centering Indigenous practices that exceed settler militarist epistemologies.

• Five Colleges Crossroads in the Study of the Americas (CISA) Fellow (2024-2025)
• Ford Foundation Dissertation Completion Fellowship (2022-2023)
• A.W. Mellon Foundation Fellowship (Summer 2022)
• Mitsubishi Foundation Graduate Fellowship (2021-2022)

Saito serves as Co-chair of the Five Colleges Asian/Pacific/American Workshop and sits on the Executive Board of Koza MiXtopia Research Center in Okinawa. Their teaching focuses on Asian American and Pacific Islander literatures, emphasizing how literature critiques structures of domination while imagining alternative ways of knowing. Saito is actively engaged with Lūchūan communities in Okinawa and the diaspora, working toward Uchinanguchi language revitalization as part of Indigenous Pacific feminist practice.