Core Faculty
All members of the core faculty regularly teach courses in Asian American Studies. Hover over the photo to learn more about each professor. (Will not work in IE6 and Opera. Click here to get faculty bios.)
Dr. Chen is a Professor of Anthropology at Scripps College.
Nancy N. Chen1994. Scripps, Professor, Anthropology
Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley and San Francisco.
Office: Vita Nova 112, Scripps College
Phone: 909-607-7586
Dr. Goto is an Associate Professor of Psychology and Asian American
Studies. Her research interests include perceptions of
discrimination experienced by Asian Americans, and the mental
health and organizational consequences of discrimination. She is
also interested in looking at cultural differences in cognition
and brain activation patterns. She teaches courses in Asian
American psychology and industrial/organizational psychology.
Sharon G. GotoJoint Appointment
1994. Pomona, Associate Professor, Psychology
Ph.D., University of Illinois.
Office: Lincoln 2101, Pomona College
Phone: 909-621-8854
Dr. Hwang is currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of Psychology at
Claremont McKenna College. He double majored in Psychology and Asian Studies at
the University of Utah, and received his Ph.D. from the Clinical Psychology
program at UCLA (2003). He did his predoctoral fellowship at
Richmond Area Multi-Services (RAMS), National Asian American
Psychology Training Center and his clinical-research
postdoctoral fellowship at Harbor UCLA Medical Center. He worked
as an Assistant Professor at the University of Utah during
2003-2006. His dissertation was on the factors that predict
depression in Chinese Americans. His research interests include
ethnic, racial, and cultural issues in mental health and
conceptualizations of mental illness, with an emphasis on
affective disorders. Specifically, he is interested in
differences in the expression of distress, cross-cultural
validity of diagnostic and assessment instruments, immigration
and adaptation issues, and the prevalence and etiology of
psychopathology across ethnic populations. His most recent work
focuses on cultural competency and adaptation of services for
ethnic minorities, as well as improving immigrant family
relations. He has authored numerous clinical and research
articles in the field of minority mental health. Dr. Hwang is a
clinical psychologist and also maintains a private practice in
Claremont and Pasadena.
Wei-Chin Hwang2003. Claremont McKenna, Associate Professor, Psychology
Ph.D., University of California, Los Angeles
Office: Seaman 234, Claremont McKenna College
Phone: 909-607-2762
Dr. Kang is Associate Professor of Music at Scripps College and currently Chair of the
Music Department. Her work broaches a wide variety of subjects including music theory
pedagogy, Korean/Korean American music, the WPA Federal Music Project in the US, and 17th
c. Italian composition and theory.
YouYoung Kang1999. Scripps, Associate Professor, Music
Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania
Office: PAC218, Scripps College
Phone: 909-607-8760
Dr. Kim is presently Associate Professor of Politics and International Relations at
Scripps College. He is also the Executive Director of the Korea Policy Institute
(http://www.kpolicy.org), an independent research and educational institute whose
mission is to provide timely analysis of United States policies toward Korea and
developments on the Korean peninsula. Dr. Kim has been interviewed dozens of times on
U.S. and international radio and television, and he has been quoted in numerous journals
and newspapers including The New York Times, The International Herald Tribune,
Congressional Quarterly Weekly, and The Nation. He is the author of The Racial Logic of
Politics: Asian Americans and Two-Party Competition (Temple University Press, 2006).
Dr. Kim's insights and op-eds have been published in U.S. and South Korean newspapers
as well as the U.S. Congressional Record.
Thomas Kim2000. Scripps, Associate Professor, Politics & Int'l Relations
Ph.D., University of California, San Diego
Office: Balch 301, Scripps College
Phone: 909-607-3535
Joyce Lu is a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow for 2008-2010 at Pomona College in both theater
and Asian American Studies. She received her doctorate from the University of California
at Berkeley in Performance Studies, and also holds a MFA in Asian Performance from the
University of Hawai'i at Manoa. Her research interests include: decolonization and
healing through the performing arts, and Asian and Asian American performance. She is
member of the Living Arts Playback Theater Ensemble and Gadung Kasturi Balinese Dance
and Music in the Bay Area.
Joyce LuMellon Postdoctoral Fellow
Pomona, Theater
Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley
Office: Seaver 114, Pomona College
Phone: 909-607-4385
Ma has been making experimental videos for more than 15 years. His videotapes Sniff (1997),
Slanted Vision (1995), Toc Storee (1992), and Aura (1991) have screened national and
internationally. Ma's recent projects include the multimedia Xin Lu Project, including the
four videos: [os] (2007), Movements East—West (2003), Mother/Land (2000), and Myth(s) of
Creation (1997), which use personal and family history to explore the shifting identities
of peoples in movement - as tourist, traveler, immigrant, refugee, exile. [os], the most
recently completed video in the series, excavates the personal and the collective, the colonial
and the transnational, the traumatic, the wistful, the queer, and the spectral to tell
intersecting stories about our desires to return to the past. Its title represents the
etymological ‘"ghost’" that haunts the creation of the word "nostalgia", which combines the
Greek word nostos (return home) and New Latin algia (akin to Greek neisthai to return).
Ming-Yuen Ma2001. Pitzer, Associate Professor, Media Studies
M.F.A., California Institute of the Arts
Office: Scott 213, Pitzer College
Phone: 909-607-4319 (Link to Website)
Miyake’s training is in classical Japanese literature and she works extensively in the
narrative prose and diary literature traditions of the tenth through twelfth centuries.
She examines the different narrative strategies employed by authors, narrators and readers
in the creation of the textual experience. She also looks at how gender is configured by/in
the various players, for example, in a narrator who is a continuum composite of male and female
rather than simply one or the other. Her interests are in post-structuralism, feminism and
cultural studies, and she teaches a course in Japanese and Japanese American autobiography.
Lynne Miyake1989. Pomona, Professor, Modern Languages and Literatures
Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley
Office: Mason 205, Pomona College
Phone: 909-621-8931
Joe Parker is an Associate Professor in the International and Intercultural Studies field group
at Pitzer college, where he is also affiliated with Gender and Feminist Studies, Media Studies,
and Asian American Studies. His interdisciplinary courses range from media representations of
Asian Americans and Asia to multiracial community studies; U.S. cultural politics; critiques of
Eurocentrism, nationalisms, and ethnocentrisms; intersections of gender, sexual orientation, race,
and class; and the politics of knowledge. His research pursues ways that feminism, diaspora
studies, postcolonialism, queer studies, and cultural studies may question modern conceptions of
experience, justice, knowledge, and culture to find new frameworks for social relations and
academic practices.
Joseph Parker1989. Pitzer, Associate Professor, Int'l & Intercultural Studies
Ph.D., Harvard University
Office: Broad Center 213, Pitzer College
Phone: 909-607-4318
Hung Cam Thai is Assistant Professor of Sociology and Asian American Studies at Pomona College in
Claremont, California. His general areas of interests are race and ethnicity, gender, immigration,
and the family. Thai is an ethnographic sociologist and his research is motivated by questions of
how state policies (such as immigration laws) intrude on what we often view as the realm of the
private, which is to say the family and intimate relations. His research employs interviews and
participant observations and aligns with feminist and race theories. He has conducted research in
Vietnam and in the United States with a special focus on Vietnamese transpacific marriages. His
book, For Better or For Worse: Marriage and Migration in the New Global Economy, is in-press with
Rutgers University Press.
Hung Cam ThaiJoint Appointment
2003. Pomona, Associate Professor, Sociology
Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley
Office: Hahn 218, Pomona College
Phone: 909-607-3922
Tsujimoto is a licensed clinical psychologist. He is involved with the Vision Mentoring Program, which
works with the Department of Probation to improve the life prospects of Asian American gang members.
Richard Tsujimoto1973. Pitzer, Professor, Psychology
Ph.D., State University of New York, Stony Brook
Office: Scott 236, Pitzer College
Phone: 909-607-3779
Yamane is a Professor of Economics and Asian American Studies at Pitzer College and a core faculty member
in the Intercollegiate Department of Asian American Studies. He has a B.S. in Economics from M.I.T.,
and a Ph.D. in Economics from Yale University. His research has covered macro, labor, Japan, and Asian
American Studies, and he likes to tell economics jokes. He is currently studying the labor market status
of Asian Americans using 1990 and 2000 census data exploring various issues dealing with labor market
discrimination. He has spent some time at the Japan Development Bank, the World Bank, AT&T Bell
Laboratories, and the National Bureau of Economic Research. He has also taught at Wellesley College,
Harvard University, and Yale University. He has been at Pitzer College since 1988.
Linus Yamane1988. Pitzer, Professor, Economics
Ph.D., Yale University
Office: Fletcher 216, Pitzer College
Phone: 909-607-3769 (Link to website)
Dr. Kathleen S. Yep is an assistant professor of Asian American Studies and Sociology at Pitzer College.
After completing her doctorate from the Ethnic Studies Department at the University of California at
Berkeley, Yep was a University of California Presidential Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of
California at Santa Cruz. Her research interests include cultural politics, social movements, feminist
and anti-racist pedagogies, and oral historiography. Yep has published in the Sociology of Sport Journal
and the Asian American Policy Review. Currently, she is working on a manuscript that explores the racial
and gender politics of Chinatown basketball in the 1930s and 1940s. The book features oral histories with
working-class Chinese American women and men who collectively used their athletic bodies to mediate social
inequalities. In addition, she is co-authoring a young adult novel about immigrating through Angel Island
in the 1920s. To be published by Harper Collins, the novel is based on the immigration files of her
grandfather. The co-author is Dr. Laurence Yep, the recipient of the Laura Ingalls Wilder Lifetime
Achievement in Children’s Literature and the author of over thirty young adult novels about Chinese and
Chinese Americans.Kathleen S. Yep
Full Appointment
2004. Pitzer, Associate Professor, Asian American Studies
Ph.D., University of California, Berkeley
Office: Bernard 201, Pitzer College
Phone: 909-607-2645
David K. Yoo is Associate Professor of History at Claremont McKenna College, and Core Faculty, Intercollegiate
Department of Asian American Studies at the Claremont Colleges. He is the author of Growing Up Nisei,
editor of New Spiritual Homes, and co-editor of Religion and Spirituality in Korean America (forthcoming).
His current research focuses on early Korean American history.
David Yoo1994. Claremont McKenna, Associate Professor, History
Ph.D., Yale University
Office: Seaman 222, Claremont McKenna/Lincoln 1100, Pomona
Phone: 909-607-2828