Tomoko Masuaza is currently a professor in the Program in Comparative Literature and Department of History at the University of Michigan.  Before moving to Michigan, she taught at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill as well as Middlebury College.  She did her undergraduate work at the International Christian University in Tokyo and received her Ph.D. in Religious Studies from the University of California, Santa Barbara.  Professor Masuaza’s early work, The Search for Dreamtime: The Quest for the Origin of Religion, focused on the intersection of critical theory – more precisely post-structural theory – and classical 19th and early 20th century theories of religion.  In her recent book – The Invention of World Religions: Or, How European Universalism was Preserved in the Language of Pluralism, she has not only extend her investigation of religion but also presented an analysis of formative factors in the emergence of Europe.  Returning to issues related to her undergraduate studies, she is currently co-editing a book entitled Modernity, University, the Science of Religion: History of the Modern Study of Religion in Japan.