Viranjini Munasinghe I am an historical anthropologist working in the Caribbean (Trinidad) and the Asian Diaspora in the Americas. My initial research focused on the relation between ethnicity and nationalism and the politics of exclusion in nation building projects. My research specifically focuses on Indo Caribbeans who were brought as indentured labor to the New World when slavery was abolished in the British Caribbean. The New World context of the Caribbean allow for intriguing formulations of modernity and nationalism. I am particularly interested in a comparative understanding of how narratives of mixture, like creolization or multiculturalism operate to exclude citizens from the nation despite their overt promise of inclusion. Theoretically, I am also interested in epistemological issues having to do with the articulation of certain "theoretical concepts" like race, ethnicity and nation with their lay and political discursive forms and the implications of such entanglements for disciplines, theory and politics. My current research explores how nations are constituted through projects of comparison in different empirical settings that include the Americas and Asia.

Derek Chang I came to Cornell in 2002 and am an associate professor in the Department of History and in the Asian American Studies Program. I currently serve as the Director of Asian American Studies. I'm also affiliated with the American Studies Program and with Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies.

I was born in Massachusetts, raised in southern California, attended college in Connecticut (at Trinity), did my graduate work in North Carolina (at Duke), and now reside in central New York. All of this makes me profoundly curious about the role of regional and geographic difference in Americans' lives. My first book, Citizens of a Christian Nation: Evangelical Missions and the Problem of Race in the Nineteenth Century (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010), examines the regional variations in white supremacy and racial formation during the late-nineteenth century. I analyze black-white relations in the U.S. South and Chinese-white relations on the Pacific Coast.

My current projects also address, although somewhat differently, race and region. In one, I am researching the segregated South, the place of Asians within it, and its relationship to broader economic and regional systems (like the Caribbean). In the other, I am analyzing how nineteenth-century American missionaries and mission theorists understood the relationships among cultural difference, geographic space, and historical time. More generally, my research and teaching interests focus on comparative race and ethnicity, American religious history, and gender and women's history, but I also have an abiding interest in the history American social movements.

I spend most of my non-academic time with my family (my partner, Lauren, and our kids Max and Isabel). We live in Ithaca's Fall Creek neighborhood with a dog, a cat, two goldfish, two guinea pigs, a hermit crab, and a leopard gecko. I love soccer. I coach my kids' youth teams, root for Liverpool FC, and play recreationally when I can. I am also obsessed with the music of the late great Joe Strummer (his work, obviously, with the Clash but also his work for film and with the Mescaleros). Finally, I have learned to love Ithaca - the lake, the hills, the gorges, the Chapter House.

Sunn Shelley Wong is Associate Professor of English and Asian American Studies. She received her B.A. and M.A. degrees in English from Simon Fraser University, and her doctorate in Ethnic Studies from the University of California at Berkeley. She has published articles on twentieth-century American poetry, as well as Asian American and African American prose fiction. Her scholarly interests include twentieth-century American literature (with an emphasis on Asian American and African American literature) and twentieth-century Canadian literature. She served as Acting Director of the Program from 1994-95 and as the Program's Director from 1999-2006.

Minh-Ha Pham I’m an Assistant Professor in the History of Art & Visual Studies Department and the Asian American Studies Program. I’m completing a book called Work of Art: Race, Labor, and Fashion Bloggers, which focuses on Asian diasporic super bloggers. The book argues that the enormous popularity and success of bloggers like BryanBoy, Susie Bubble, and Rumi Neeley suggest a significant shift in Asians’ role in fashion’s informal and increasingly informational labor economy. The book examines the racial and gender aspects of fashion’s labor market at a moment when immaterial commodities (e.g. blogs) are becoming key sources of capital accumulation.

My academic and popular writings on Asian/Americans and new and traditional media appear in Feminist Media Studies (2012); positions: east asia cultures critique (forthcoming); Camera Obscura: Feminism, Culture, and Media Studies 76 26.1 (2011); Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 36.2 (Winter 2010-11); Hollywood’s America: Twentieth Century America through Film (Wiley-Blackwell 2010); Style Sample magazine (January 2010); and The Journal of Popular Film & Television 32.3 (2004).

I’m also co-author of a research blog on the politics of fashion and beauty called Threadbared (http://iheartthreadbared.wordpress.com/) that engages a broad readership of scholars, museum professionals, journalists, and students. Threadbared has been cited in Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies, English Studies in Canada, The Atlantic, and was featured in the San Francisco Chronicle. In addition, I’m curator of a digital archive called Of Another Fashion (http://ofanotherfashion.tumblr.com/) that focuses on the everyday material cultures and practices of U.S. women of color. Of Another Fashion has been featured in an array of media sites including Ms. Magazine, Colorlines, Worn Fashion Journal, Youth Radio, Go Fug Yourself (fashion website), and Hyphen Magazine (forthcoming)..