Office: TMH-108
Email: ps30@txstate.edu
Phone: (512)245-6756

Curriculum Vitae

A graduate of Swarthmore College (BA 1984), the University of Pennsylvania (MA 1989), and the University of Texas at Austin (MA 1998, PhD 2004), Peter Siegenthaler specializes in the social, cultural, and political contexts for historic preservation and heritage tourism in postwar Japan. His PhD dissertation, “Looking to the Past, Looking to the Future: The Localization of Japanese Historic Preservation, 1950–1975,” investigates the origins of three local preservation movements in the 1950s and 1960s, to establish a historical basis for the sudden prominence of “townscape preservation” (machinami hozon) movements across Japan in the 1970s and since. His current research expands that project to look back at the role of the Allied Occupation in the refashioning of heritage preservation in Japan in the late 1940s and to look more deeply at the cultural and political dynamics that informed the promotion of historic preservation in smaller Japanese cities in the 1950s.

Dr. Siegenthaler began his teaching career in the Department of Radio-TV-Film at UT-Austin, where his courses focused on the interrelationships of film and history in Japan, China, and Korea over the course of the twentieth century. He came to Texas State in the fall of 2004 and has taught both parts of the Western Civilization and World History surveys, as well as specialized courses on Modern Japan, postwar Japan, Japanese urban life, identity in Central Asia, and East Asian tourism. Before teaching fulltime, Dr. Siegenthaler worked for more than a decade in the publishing industry, serving as an editor for Oxford University Press, SR Books, and The American Poetry Review.


Written Works

Japanese Domestic Tourism and the Search for National Identity

Creation Myths for the Preservation of Tsumago Post-town

The ningen kokuho: a new symbol for the Japanese nation

Courses Taught

Texas State Department of History
WORLD CIVILZATION TO 1715
WORLD CIVILIZATION TO DATE
HISTORY OF POSTWAR JAPAN
EMPIRE AND IDENTITY IN CENTRAL ASIA

Texas State Honors Courses
JAPANESE URBAN EXPERIENCE
TOURISTS AND HOSTS IN CONTEMPORARY EAST ASIA

Additional Courses
POSTWAR JAPANESE CINEMA NEW WAVES
A HISTORY OF JAPANESE FILM
SPACE ADN PLACE IN EAST ASIAN FILM
GENRE, MOVEMENTS, HISTORY AND THE CHINESE FILM