Benjamin Hiramatsu Ireland, Ph.D.
b.ireland@tcu.edu817-257-6356Scharbauer Hall 3207 (map link)
Program Affiliations
Education
Ph.D., University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
B.A., Davidson College
Courses Taught
Asia and French Empire: Postcolonial Indochina, Oceania, and Postwar Japan
Race, Death, and Photography: Visual Culture of the Holocaust and the Algerian War
Carceral Visualities: Critical Theory Seminar on Transnational Violence
Islands and Archipelagoes: Environmental Politics
Paris-Tokyo: Literary and Cinematic Visions
Asia in Francophone Societies: Postcolonial Vietnam to Postmodern Japan
Identity: Friendship, Love, and Deception in French Literature (Premodern to Modern
Literature)
Introduction to French Literature
Advanced French Composition
Introduction to French Composition
Advanced French Grammar and Contemporary France
Early Advanced French through Film
Intermediate French through Film
Intensive Review of Elementary French
Elementary French
Elementary Japanese Language
Late Intermediate Japanese Language
Advanced Japanese Language
Introduction to University Life
Areas of Focus
Dr. Benjamin Hiramatsu Ireland is Associate Professor and Coordinator of French Studies and Director of Asian Studies at Texas Christian University. He also holds faculty affiliations with the John V. Roach Honors College and other university programs. A specialist in the intersection of global business strategy, management, and intercultural behavior with French and Asian Studies, Dr. Ireland bridges the humanities and business disciplines to prepare students for leadership across globally interconnected societies. His CV can be accessed here.
Raised between Kurashiki, Japan, and New Orleans, Louisiana, Dr. Ireland earned his Ph.D. in French from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, and his B.A. in French and East Asian Studies (Phi Beta Kappa, High Honors) from Davidson College. He pursued comparative research at the Université Paris-Sorbonne, Université Paris-Diderot, and Kyushu University in Fukuoka, Japan.
Fluent in both French and Japanese, Dr. Ireland teaches in the Department of Modern Language Studies and oversees the Japanese Language Sequence. His work has been featured by The New York Times, The Japan Times, and other international media. He is currently completing an MBA in Data Analytics and Supply Chain Management at TCU’s M.J. Neeley School of Business, where his research explores how AI and information management reshape fiscal strategy, mergers and acquisitions, and organizational behavior in international businesses and institutions of higher learning.
His teaching and research span French and Francophone Studies, Global Management and Leadership, AI and Data Analytics in Higher Education Leadership, Asian American and Japanese Studies, and Postcolonial and Empire Studies. These interdisciplines are unified by his student-centered commitment to demonstrating how cross-cultural understanding drives innovation and ethical global leadership.
Dr. Ireland is the author of Voices Beyond the Grave: Japanese Internment in the French Pacific (forthcoming, University of Hawaiʻi Press, 2026), which uncovers the transnational history of Japanese diaspora, incarceration, and internment across the French South Pacific and Australia during World War II. His second monograph project, Paris–Tokyo: Countercultures, examines the literary, cinematic, and underground performance exchanges linking 1960s France and Japan through the lens of French, Japanese, and Russian thinkers.
Outside of TCU and since 2018, Dr. Ireland has led multiple humanitarian projects reconnecting descendants of Japanese civilian internees held in Australian camps with long-lost family members in Japan—a transnational effort that has received international recognition and extensive media coverage.
For academic collaborations, student mentorship, and press/media requests for interviews, please contact him directly at his TCU email address.
For a more comprehensive bibliography, please see my CV.
- “From the Asia Pacific to Algeria: Carceral Memories of Japanese and North African Internment” at the Prisoners of the Asia-Pacific War: History, Memory, and Forgetting International Symposium, Kyoto, Japan, February 7, 2023.
- “Hauntological Utopias and Literary Indigeneity: Tahiti and the Pacific Islands Forum (PIF)” at the International Multidisciplinary Symposium (Utopia and Migration: Renewing the Imagination of Borders in the 21st Century), Faculty of Modern and Medieval Languages, Oxford University; Oxford, UK. 2021.
- “Rage against Nuclear N/Oceans: Chantal Spitz and Henri Hiro’s Poetic Voices in French Polynesia.” International conference sponsored by the Faculty of Modern and Medieval Languages, Cambridge University; Cambridge, UK. 2020.
- “Roland Barthes’s Rendez-vous sans paroles.” Kyushu University. International conference sponsored by the Department of French Literature. Fukuoka, Japan. 2019.
- “The Pacific Islands: Environmental Activism and the American University.” AddRan Back-to-Class Public Event. Texas Christian University. Fort Worth. 2019.
- “The Japanese of New Caledonia: Mixed Race Histories of Ethnocide in the French Pacific and Australia.” Asian Studies Association of Australia. University of Sydney, Australia. 2018.
- “Mixed Race Poetics of the Francophone Indian Ocean: Afrasian Animal-Maroons.” MLA Convention. New York City, New York. 2018.
- “East Asian Diasporas in Francophone Oceania: Vanishing Ethnicities, Preserving Voices.” MLA Convention. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. 2017.
- “Ook Chung’s Kimchi: Foodways in the Francophone Nippo-Korean Novel.” Appetites: Discourses of Consumption. University of Michigan Comparative Literature Conference. University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. 2016.
Last Updated: November 01, 2025