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In both my teaching and research, I am interested
in contemporary works--primarily but not exclusively written
in the U.S.--that
challenge genre boundaries, and that engage issues in feminist
theory, ethnic studies, and cultural studies. Courses that I have
taught explore topics including: the contemporary detective novel;
women writers and multiculturalism; contemporary autobiography;
memoir and disability; gender and sexuality; love and terror; American
literary history; contemporary literary theory; education and culture;
multi-genre women's literature; and contemporary minority literature.
My book, Academic Lives: Memoir, Cultural Theory and the University
Today, is forthcoming in Spring 2009 with the University of Georgia
Press. My first book, Writing Women's Communities: The Politics
and Poetics of Contemporary Multi-Genre Anthologies, was published
in 1997 with the University of Wisconsin Press. After co-chairing
the first international MELUS (Multi-Ethnic Literatures of the
U.S.) Conference with Ruth Hsu in 1997, we co-edited two volumes
emerging from that conference, Navigating Islands and Continents:
Conversations and Contestations in and around the Pacific, and
Re-Placing American Literature: Conversations and Contestations.
Other essays and review articles appear in the journals American
Quarterly, Biography, Hitting Critical Mass, Life Writing, LIT,
MELUS, The Contemporary Pacific, and in Gloria Anzaldúa
and AnaLouise Keating's This Bridge We Call Home.
Recent work also includes the co-editing, with my colleague Laura
Lyons, of a special issue of Biography, "Personal Effects:
The Testimonial Uses of Life Writing." In that issue appears
our introduction, "Bodies of Evidence and the Intricate Machines
of Untruth," and our interviews with Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak
and Haunani-Kay Trask. I also have collaborated with Laura Lyons
on articles entitled "Remixing Hybridity: Globalization, Native
Resistance, and Cultural Production in Hawai'i" (in American
Studies) and "From Grief to Grievance: Ethics and Politics
in the Testimony of Anti-War Mothers" (forthcoming in Life
Writing). We are currently working on an interview we conducted
with Albert Wendt and Reina Whaitiri.
I am co-editor of the journal Biography with Miriam Fuchs and Craig
Howes; am co- advisor for the Comparativism and Translation in
Literary and Cultural Studies (CTLCS) Research Cluster; and am
on the Coordinating Council for the Center on Disability Studies.
I have served as Director of the Honors Program in English and
on the International Cultural Studies Program Steering Committee,
and have been active in campus-wide organizations including the
University Peace Initiative and PO'E.
Education
BA, Stanford University
MA, PhD, University of California-Berkeley
Interests
Contemporary women's literature, ethnic
U.S. literatures, life writing, disability studies, feminist
theory, cultural studies
Awards
Frances Davis Memorial Award for Excellence in Teaching,
1998
Board
of Regents' Award for Excellence in Teaching, 2007
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