Nicolyn Woodcock
Election
Position
Name
Nicolyn Woodcock
Candidate statement
Assistant Director, Asian and Native American Center, Wright State University
Bio: I first attended the AAAS conference in 2015 at Evanston, IL and have built an incredible community of mentors and peers over the past decade, especially through the Filipinx, Comfort Women, and Critical Mixed Race Studies sections. Through my article, “Tasting the Forgotten War,” I was also lucky to work with anonymous peer reviewers and the editorial staff of JAAS in 2018. I am excited by the opportunity to deepen my involvement and contribute to the future of AAAS. I am particularly interested in offering support to emerging scholars and graduate students, creating a welcoming environment like I experienced when new to the organization. I look forward to representing the Midwest region, where I was raised and educated and have made my home. The region is not without its flaws, and now more than ever, needs advocacy for higher education and ethnic studies, especially outside of its urban and progressive hubs.
Most recently, I served as the director of the Asian and Native American Center at Wright State University, a position and a space outlawed by 2025 anti-DEI legislation in Ohio. I earned my PhD in English from Miami University (Ohio) and have previously been a faculty member at Colorado College, Clark University, and Medaille College. My teaching has been in twentieth-century American, multiethnic, and Asian American literary studies and my research interests include transpacific US empire, intimacy, war stories, and food studies. I am especially interested in narratives emerging from the spaces and legacies of US war and militarism in Asia since the late nineteenth century. Other publications include “Narratives of Intimacy in Asian American Literature” in the Oxford Research Encyclopedia, “‘Yellow Fever’ at Whole Foods” in Eating More Asian America, and “The Intimate Labors of World War II: Sex, Race, and Belonging in Lisa See’s China Dolls” in Frontiers.
I have been especially interested in the experiences of Asian Americans in the Midwest, both professionally — see my article “Reading Midwest Asian America in Celeste Ng’s Everything I Never Told You” in American Studies and my contribution to Midstory’s “Asian in Ohio” — and in personal and community engagement, such as with OPAWL, a statewide AAPI feminist leadership organization. Within OPAWL, I serve as co-leader of the Dayton caucus, am a member of the Grassroots Fundraising Working Group, and have been involved in the “Educating for Ohio’s Future” legislative campaign, a nonpartisan grassroots effort for K-12 social studies curricula to reflect the diversity of Ohio’s communities, past through present.
Bio: I first attended the AAAS conference in 2015 at Evanston, IL and have built an incredible community of mentors and peers over the past decade, especially through the Filipinx, Comfort Women, and Critical Mixed Race Studies sections. Through my article, “Tasting the Forgotten War,” I was also lucky to work with anonymous peer reviewers and the editorial staff of JAAS in 2018. I am excited by the opportunity to deepen my involvement and contribute to the future of AAAS. I am particularly interested in offering support to emerging scholars and graduate students, creating a welcoming environment like I experienced when new to the organization. I look forward to representing the Midwest region, where I was raised and educated and have made my home. The region is not without its flaws, and now more than ever, needs advocacy for higher education and ethnic studies, especially outside of its urban and progressive hubs.
Most recently, I served as the director of the Asian and Native American Center at Wright State University, a position and a space outlawed by 2025 anti-DEI legislation in Ohio. I earned my PhD in English from Miami University (Ohio) and have previously been a faculty member at Colorado College, Clark University, and Medaille College. My teaching has been in twentieth-century American, multiethnic, and Asian American literary studies and my research interests include transpacific US empire, intimacy, war stories, and food studies. I am especially interested in narratives emerging from the spaces and legacies of US war and militarism in Asia since the late nineteenth century. Other publications include “Narratives of Intimacy in Asian American Literature” in the Oxford Research Encyclopedia, “‘Yellow Fever’ at Whole Foods” in Eating More Asian America, and “The Intimate Labors of World War II: Sex, Race, and Belonging in Lisa See’s China Dolls” in Frontiers.
I have been especially interested in the experiences of Asian Americans in the Midwest, both professionally — see my article “Reading Midwest Asian America in Celeste Ng’s Everything I Never Told You” in American Studies and my contribution to Midstory’s “Asian in Ohio” — and in personal and community engagement, such as with OPAWL, a statewide AAPI feminist leadership organization. Within OPAWL, I serve as co-leader of the Dayton caucus, am a member of the Grassroots Fundraising Working Group, and have been involved in the “Educating for Ohio’s Future” legislative campaign, a nonpartisan grassroots effort for K-12 social studies curricula to reflect the diversity of Ohio’s communities, past through present.