Nancy Kinue Stalker

Nancy Kinue Stalker is a Professor and holds the Sen Sōshitsu Distinguished Chair in the Department of History at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. Her research focuses on 20th-century Japanese culture, emphasizing the intersections of traditional practices, material culture, and modernity. She has held prior faculty positions at The University of Texas at Austin and served as a visiting professor at UC Berkeley. Stalker earned her Ph.D. in History and M.A. in East Asian Studies from Stanford University, followed by a postdoctoral fellowship at Yale University.

Her work examines topics such as new religions, culinary identity, and the globalization of traditional arts like ikebana. Key publications include Prophet Motive: Deguchi Onisaburō, Oomoto and the Rise of a New Religion in Imperial Japan (2008) and Japan: History and Culture from Classical to Cool (2018). She is currently completing a monograph on ikebana's global expansion during the Cold War era.

Stalker’s research bridges cultural history, gender studies, and transnational perspectives, with notable articles analyzing Japanese food media, contemporary art, and religious practices. She actively contributes to academic initiatives such as the Bentley World History Funds and the History Forum.