Karen Kuo

Candidate statement

I am an associate professor and lead faculty in Asian Pacific American Studies in the School of Social Transformation at Arizona State University. My scholarship and teaching examine Asian America within U.S. formations of race, ethnicity, nation, gender, and sexuality by using interdisciplinary critical tools from literary, historical, legal, and film studies. As a faculty in Arizona where some of the harshest legislation in the country targets the most vulnerable populations, I understand the challenges of building Asian American and ethnic studies programs and the need for interdisciplinarity and collaboration between the academy and community across racial/ethnic lines. As regional representative, I will continue that work by emphasizing that we must expand our inquiries and research toward collaborative models of pedagogy and activism between AAAS members and their respective communities; and employ interdisciplinary and comparative analysis, knowledge production, and activism to build coalitions at different levels of education.