
Over the past 36 years, Lane Ryo Hirabayashi has held tenured faculty positions at San Francisco State University, University of Colorado at Boulder, U.C. Riverside, and UCLA.
While Lane was growing up, his father Jim encouraged and enabled him to travel extensively. By the time he finished graduate school, Lane had been to Asia, Central and South America, Europe, and Africa. Among his favorite cities he counts Tokyo, Kyoto, Cebu City, Mexico City, Buenos Aires, Sao Paulo, London, Paris, and Malaga, as well as Zaria and Kano, in northern Nigeria, both of which he visited in 1977.
After years dedicated to classical music, and then American folk music/blues/R&B, Lane decided to pursue doctoral studies in 1974. He earned an M.A. (1976) and then a Ph.D. (1981) in Anthropology from the University of California, Berkeley. Subsequently, Lane held a post-doctoral fellowship at the UCLA's Asian American Studies Center, 1981-82. He is author or editor of over thirty scholarly articles, as well as nine books and anthologies. His "research in progress" includes a book-length manuscript on Japanese American resettlement in Colorado as of 1946; and a cycle of articles focusing on the post-war life and writing of poet and novelist Carlos Bulosan, a project that he is writing in collaboration with Marilyn C. Alquizola.
Over the course of his career, Lane taught courses on the Japanese American experience, Asian American Studies, reparations movements in selected Asian American communities, and Asian American documentary films, among other topics.
In addition to his academic resume, Lane actively sought ties to community-based organizations as one of the foundations to his academic work. Over three-and-a-half decades he worked with a wide range of groups including: NCRR (both the "National Coalition for Redress/Reparations," and the renamed "Nikkei for Civil Rights and Reparations"), Los Angeles; the Gardena Pioneer Project; East-West Players, Los Angeles; the Japanese Community Youth Council, San Francisco; the Japanese American Community Graduation Program, Denver; the "Harada House" museum project, Riverside; and the Japanese American National Museum, Los Angeles. He also serves as a board member, and/or consultant, for additional Japanese American community organizations.
In June, 2017, Lane retired from his position as a full professor in the Department of Asian American Studies at UCLA, where he was also the inaugural "George & Sakaye Aratani Chair in Japanese American Incarceration, Redress, and Community." He is presently "professor emeritus," UCLA.
While Lane was growing up, his father Jim encouraged and enabled him to travel extensively. By the time he finished graduate school, Lane had been to Asia, Central and South America, Europe, and Africa. Among his favorite cities he counts Tokyo, Kyoto, Cebu City, Mexico City, Buenos Aires, Sao Paulo, London, Paris, and Malaga, as well as Zaria and Kano, in northern Nigeria, both of which he visited in 1977.
After years dedicated to classical music, and then American folk music/blues/R&B, Lane decided to pursue doctoral studies in 1974. He earned an M.A. (1976) and then a Ph.D. (1981) in Anthropology from the University of California, Berkeley. Subsequently, Lane held a post-doctoral fellowship at the UCLA's Asian American Studies Center, 1981-82. He is author or editor of over thirty scholarly articles, as well as nine books and anthologies. His "research in progress" includes a book-length manuscript on Japanese American resettlement in Colorado as of 1946; and a cycle of articles focusing on the post-war life and writing of poet and novelist Carlos Bulosan, a project that he is writing in collaboration with Marilyn C. Alquizola.
Over the course of his career, Lane taught courses on the Japanese American experience, Asian American Studies, reparations movements in selected Asian American communities, and Asian American documentary films, among other topics.
In addition to his academic resume, Lane actively sought ties to community-based organizations as one of the foundations to his academic work. Over three-and-a-half decades he worked with a wide range of groups including: NCRR (both the "National Coalition for Redress/Reparations," and the renamed "Nikkei for Civil Rights and Reparations"), Los Angeles; the Gardena Pioneer Project; East-West Players, Los Angeles; the Japanese Community Youth Council, San Francisco; the Japanese American Community Graduation Program, Denver; the "Harada House" museum project, Riverside; and the Japanese American National Museum, Los Angeles. He also serves as a board member, and/or consultant, for additional Japanese American community organizations.
In June, 2017, Lane retired from his position as a full professor in the Department of Asian American Studies at UCLA, where he was also the inaugural "George & Sakaye Aratani Chair in Japanese American Incarceration, Redress, and Community." He is presently "professor emeritus," UCLA.