Dr. Karen J. Leong, History

Name:

Dr. Karen J. Leong

Title:

Associate Professor

Department:

History

Describe your research in about 200 words.

I research 20th century U.S. social and cultural history, with a focus on nationalism, borders, and citizenship as articulated through popular culture, immigration policy, and social formations at the intersections of race/ethnicity, gender, sexuality, socioeconomic status, and other social factors. My scholarship seeks to demonstrate how different communities have engaged and challenged the United States in diverse ways, and how the U.S. as a nation state has sought to organize diverse communities to promote certain values and ideals. I have 3 research projects: Japanese Americans in Transnational Arizona uses community oral histories explores Japanese immigrant community building in relation to transnational empire building and settler colonialism; American Movements: Understanding the Ideological and Institutional Reasoning for Japanese American and American Indian Relocations, 1940-1970 with Dr. Myla Vicenti Carpio explores how U.S. federal policies toward the Japanese American immigrant community and American Indian communities as domestically dependent sovereign nations informed each other; and Women’s Sexual and Reproductive Health: Visibility, Equity, and Asian America, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islanders (under contract with Routledge) with Dr. Kathy Nakagawa and Dr. Aggie Yellow Horse seeks to be an introduction for students and community organizations. I enjoy working with communities to document their own experiences.

What’s the most interesting thing you have learned from a student?

That students will engage in coursework if they understand why it matters.