ASIAN AMERICAN STUDIES PROGRAM

Joshua Chambers-Letson

Professor of Asian American Studies and the Department of Performance Studies

jchambers@northwestern.edu

Joshua Chambers-Letson is the Chair of Performance Studies and Professor of Performance Studies and Asian American Studies at Northwestern University. Conducting research at the intersection of performance theory, queer of color critique, and the study of contemporary performance and art, JCL is completing a book on queer love and loss and the art of grief. Chambers-Letson is also the author of After the Party: A Manifesto for Queer of Color Life (NYU Press, 2018) and A Race So Different: Law and Performance in Asian America (NYU Press, 2014). After the Party studies contemporary performance and art with profiles of work by Nina Simone, Danh Võ, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Eiko Otake, Tseng Kwong Chi, and Nao Bustamante. Using the analytic frameworks of queer of color critique and performance theory, the book traces the use of performance in art and everyday life to foster conditions for survival and continuance for queers and people of color. A Race So Different married performance theory, Asian Americanist critique, and legal theory together to consider the interplay between law and performance in the racialization of different Asian Americas. Both books were winners of the 2019 and 2014 Outstanding Book Award from the Association of Theatre in Higher Education and After the Party was recipient of the 2019 Erroll Hill Award from the American Society for Theatre Research. JCL is also the co-editor of José Esteban Muñoz’s The Sense of Brown with Tavia Nyong’o (Duke University Press, 2020), Frances Ya-Chu Cowhig’s China Trilogy: Three Parables of Global Capital with Christine Mok (Bloomsbury, 2021), and series co-editor of NYU Press’s Sexual Cultures series with Nyong’o and Ann Pellegrini. In addition to a host of scholarly publications, Chambers-Letson’s writing appears in publications for the National Portrait Gallery of the Smithsonian Institute, the Whitney Museum of Art, the Taiwanese Pavilion of the 57^th Venice Biennale, and the Haus der Kulturen der Velt. JCL received a PhD in Performance Studies from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts in 2009, held a postdoctoral fellowship at Wesleyan University’s Center for the Humanities from 2009-2010, was a 2021-2022 Presidential Fellow at Yale University, and the 2022-2023 Thinker-In-Residence with the Felix Gonzalez-Torres Foundation.

Publications can be accessed here.

Helen Cho

Visiting Assistant Professor

hcho@northwestern.edu

Helen Cho’s research and teaching examines the role of mass media in producing and disseminating narratives of socio-political difference, and how narratives of difference shape the way people navigate their ascribed and avowed racial and ethnic identities in U.S. and international contexts.

Tara Fickle

Associate Professor of Asian American Studies

tfickle@northwestern.edu

Tara Fickle's research interests include Asian/American Gaming, Comics, Literature, and Digital Culture. She is the author of The Race Card: From Gaming Technologies to Model Minorities.

Michelle N. Huang

Assistant Professor of Asian American Studies and the Department of English

michelle.n.huang@northwestern.edu

Michelle N. Huang's research interests include Asian American literature, feminist science and technology studies, and posthumanism. Her work has appeared in Journal of Asian American Studies, Amerasia, and Twentieth-Century Literature, among other venues. 

Raymond San Diego

Associate Professor of Instruction in Asian American Studies

ray.sandiego@northwestern.edu

Raymond San Diego's research and teaching interests broadly focus on transnational queer and feminist Asian/American performance practice, biopolitics and disability studies, and the spatial politics of erotic visual cultures. 

Shalini Shankar

Professor of Asian American Studies and the Department of Anthropology

sshankar@northwestern.edu
Ph.D., New York University, 2003

Shalini Shankar is a sociocultural and linguistic anthropologist. She is the author of Beeline: What Spelling Bees Reveal about the New American Childhood, Advertising Diversity: Ad Agencies and the Creation of Asian American Advertising, and Desi Land: Teen Culture, Class, and Success in Silicon Valley.

Nitasha Tamar Sharma

Professor of Asian American Studies and the Department of Black Studies

n-sharma@northwestern.edu
Ph.D., University of California, Santa Barbara, 2004

Nitasha Sharma's research interests include Black Pacific, Comparative Race Studies, Hawai‘i, Asian and Black Relations, and Afro-Asian Studies. She is the author of Hawai'i is my Haven: Race and Indigeneity in the Black Pacific, and Hip Hop Desis: South Asian Americans, Blackness, and a Global Race Consciousness.

Ji-Yeon Yuh

Associate Professor of Asian American Studies and the Department of History

j-yuh@northwestern.edu
Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania, 1999

Ji-Yeon Yuh's research interests include Asian diasporas, race and gender, and oral history. She is the author of Beyond the Shadow of Camptown: Korean Military Brides in America. Her current projects include the Asian Diasporas Digital Archive.