Faculty
| Faculty Member | Academic Interests |
Vivian HalloranDirector Associate Professor, American Studies and English vhallora@indiana.edu |
My research and teaching interests include ethnic American literature in a comparative context, food studies, postmodernism, popular culture, museum studies and the intersection between race, gender and performance. I am currently at work on a book length project investigating how immigrants to the United States use the genre of the culinary memoir or memoir with recipes to both dissect and perform various cultural identities simultaneously. I am interested in analyzing how these popular texts serve as platforms for the writers to simultaneously perform their exotic Otherness by sharing intimate details of their upbringing as well as expand the racial, ethnic, and class assumptions about what it means to be an American by sharing recipes for the food they enjoy eating and preparing. This project includes in-depth analysis of memoirs by Chinese Americans, Indian Americans, Japanese Americans, Korean Americans and Vietnamese American writers. Examples of my work on Literary Food Studies may be found in my blog: http://literaryfoodstudies.wordpress.com/ |
Purnima BoseAssociate Professor, English Director, Cultural Studies Program pbose@indiana.edu |
Literary theory, globalization, and post colonial and comparative ethnic literatures. Her book, Organizing Empire (Duke 2003), examines colonial, Irish and Indian feminist and nationalist constructions of individualism and collective agency. Her articles on South Asian feminism and the diaspora, nationalism, and globalization have appeared in Genders, Passages, Concerns, GLOBAL SOUTH, and Haunting Violations. Her co-authored essays with Laura E. Lyons on colonial personnel circuits and corporate globalization have appeared in boundary 2 and Against the Current. She serves on the editorial board of Genders, SAMAR (South Asian Magazine for Action and Reflection), and SAGAR (South Asia Graduate Research Journal). |
Denise Cruz
Assistant Professor, English and American Studies cruzd@indiana.edu |
In my published and current research, I use spatial and geographic formations (from the transpacific, to the regional, to the Global South) to examine previously unstudied archives (from the first works of English literature by Filipina and Filipino authors, to private papers that document connections between the Midwest and U.S. empire, to fashion shows in Manila). I contend that this combined analytical and archival approach extends our understanding of the importance of national, regional, transnational, and global dynamics in the United States, the Philippines, and Asia. As a feminist scholar, I am especially interested in examining how these interactions have historically impacted and continue to influence constructions of gender and sexuality. My first book, Transpacific Femininities: The Making of the Modern Filipina, analyzed connections between the rise of Philippine print culture in English and emergence of new classes of transpacific women from the early to the mid-twentieth century. I claim that this period was dominated by a fascination with transpacific Asian women--figures who were connected to both nationalist movements in Asia and the global women's suffrage movement. While Transpacific Femininities centers on Filipina and Filipino literature and culture, ultimately, the book tracks geopolitical transitions and presents a new way of thinking about gendered productions, space, and constructions of a feminized Asia. I am currently working on two book projects: a study of Philippine fashion and its connections to the Global South, and an analysis of the importance of regions and regionalism to Asian America. Fueled by my research, my courses complicate the geographic, chronological, and disciplinary parameters that shape the study of twentieth and twenty-first century American, ethnic American, Asian American, and Philippine literature and culture. |
Ilana GershonAssociate Professor, Communication and Culture igershon@indiana.edu |
My previous research has compared Samoan migrant experiences in New Zealand and the United States, focusing in particular on the contrasts between how governments and migrants understand what it means to have a culture. I have two current research projects. In my long-term research project, I look at Maori members of the New Zealand parliament, exploring how indigenous self-representation in the national legislature has contributed to the current Maori Renaissance. In my short-term project, I am studying how people end relationships using new forms of communication. By studying breaking up, I hope to gain an understanding of when and how people experience new media as "new". |
Karen InouyeAssistant Professor, American Studies kinouye@indiana.edu |
In my courses, I ask students to think about the tensions between civil liberties and national security during times of crisis and the experience of Asian Americans during these periods. I also teach courses on the history of race and labor in the U.S. with a focus on comparative ethnic histories. My own research interests include Asian Americans and Social Scientific Practice, Comparative Asian American Experience, Asian Americans and Temporality, History of Trauma, and Internment of Japanese Americans. |
Jennifer C. LeeAssistant Professor, Sociology lee484@indiana.edu |
Sociology of education, work and labor market stratification, and Asian American communities. Jennifer has recently published research on high school employment and dropout, and her current research investigates Asian employment in ethnic economies in the United States. In other research, she examines high school employment patterns and educational attainments of children of immigrants. |
Joan Pong LintonAssociate Professor, English jlinton@indiana.edu |
I am generally interested in the diverse ways literary and cultural productions relate to history and theory. I have written on gender and the literary formations of English colonialism, the romance, early modern women writers. My current research on trickster agency and trickster poetics in early modern England feeds my passion for narrative, storytelling, and the figural politics of theater. And I'm still working my way back to the trickster that launched my critical imagination, the Chinese Monkey in its diasporic transmissions. |
Angela PaoAssociate Professor, Comparative Literature acpao@indiana.edu |
Theatre and performance theory, intercultural theatre and cross-cultural representations, 19th-century French cultural studies, literatures of ethnic minorities, and diasporic literature and culture. She is the author of The Orient of the Boulevards: Exoticism, Empire and 19th-Century French Theatre (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998) and articles on race and gender in 20th-century American theatre. Currently, she is working on a second book No Safe Spaces: Re-Casting Race, Ethnicity and Nationality, which examines non-traditional casting practices and new dramatic forms in relation to theories of individual and collective cultural identity. |
Michael RobinsonProfessor, East Asian Languages & Cultures Adjunct Professor, History robime@indiana.edu |
My research is focused on modern Korea in the early to mid-20th century. I have a particular interest in the period of colonial rule between 1910-1945. My early work was in the field of intellectual and political history of the Korean nationalist movement in the 1920s. Since the late 1980s, I have shifted towards an examination of the cultural history of Korea during the period of Japanese rule, and toward a more general study of the links between popular culture, group identity, and political elites. I am currently writing a monograph on the origins, evolution, and significance of broadcasting during the colonial period. My teaching draws from my general background as a Koreanist trained in the modern history of the East Asian region. I offer courses on Korean civilization, modern Korean history, the history of Asian immigration to the U.S., cultural identity and nationalism in East Asia, and East Asian popular culture. I also work with graduate students in Japanese and Chinese history, literature, and culture as well as students from Cultural Studies, Folklore, and Anthropology. |
Jodie SackleyAdvisor, Asian American Studies jocarlbe@indiana.edu |
For an advising appointment, students can contact me by email or phone, 812-855-6270. |
Samrat UpadhyayProfessor, English supadhya@indiana.edu |
Samrat Upadhyay is the first Nepali-born fiction writer writing in English to be published in the West, and the recipient of numerous prestigious awards. His first book, the short story collection, Arresting God in Kathmandu (2001) has been translated into French and Greek. His stories have been read live on National Public Radio and published widely as well as in Scribner's Best of the Writing Workshops edited by Sherman Alexie, and Best American Short Stories edited by Amy Tan. Upadhyay's second book, the novel, The Guru of Love (2004), was named a New York Times Notable Book of the Year 2003, and a finalist for the 2004 Kiriyama Prize. His recent story collection, The Royal Ghosts (2006), won the 2007 Asian American Literary Award and the Society of Midland Authors Award in fiction. It was also a finalist for the Ohioana Book Award. The Los Angeles Times marks him as "among the smoothest and most noiseless of contemporary writers." |
Y. Joel WongAssociate Professor, School of Education, Counseling and Educational Psychology joelwong@indiana.edu |
I teach counseling theories, counseling skills, and multicultural counseling in the Counseling and Counseling Psychology programs at IU. One of my main research interests is the psychology of Asian Americans. My previous and current research projects have focused on Asian American mental health issues. For example, I am currently working on a study examining factors associated with Asian Americans' suicide ideation. I also have an interest in Asian American adolescent outcomes. |
Ellen WuAssistant Professor, History wue@indiana.edu |
The questions that I explore in my work deal with issues of race, immigration, citizenship, and nation through the lens of Asian American history. My book , The Origins of the Model Minority: Racial Liberalism, Global Wars, and Imperatives of Asian American Citizenship (forthcoming from Princeton University Press) is the first to tell the history of invention of the "model minority" stereotype from the 1940s-1970s. Looking ahead, my next project will consider the ways in which Asian Americans have fit into and re-shaped the nation's racial order in the late 20th century and into the 21st. |
