Jessamyn Abel, a historian of modern Japan, is the author of Dream Super-Express: A Cultural History of the World’s First Bullet Train (Stanford University Press, 2022) and The International Minimum: Creativity and Contradiction in Japan’s Global Engagement, 1933-1964 (University of Hawai’i Press, 2015).  She has published journal articles and book chapters on infrastructure and technology, the bullet train, the Tokyo Olympics, cultural diplomacy, textbooks, and the history of whaling in the 19th and 20th centuries.

Before joining Penn State, Abel taught at Bowling Green State University and held research fellowships at Harvard University’s Program on U.S.-Japan Relations and Columbia’s Expanding East Asian Studies Program.  She is currently an associate professor in the Asian Studies Department, affiliated faculty of the School of International Affairs, and College of the Liberal Arts Endowed Fellow.