Vita
U.S. 19th and 20th century cultural and political history with research
and teaching focus on Asian American history; history of medicine and
public health; and the history of gender and sexuality.
Affiliated Faculty with the Ethnic Studies Department, Critical Gender
Studies Program, and Center for Comparative Immigration Studies.
|
Publications
|
Current Research
- "Sexual Aliens: South Asian Migration, Law and Contested Citizenship".
- This book manuscript project examines the intersections of citizenship,
sexuality and national identity by closely investigating immigration
regulations, criminal and civil laws that sanction or prohibit sexual
relations, from marriage and spousal immigration to miscegenation,
rape and sodomy. Through the prism of legal regulation, this project
pursues the history of the migration of men from the province of
Punjab in British colonial India to Canada and the United States
from 1890 to 1950. The court cases illuminate how regulatory systems
shape subjectivity, social dynamics and categories of race and sexuality
in twentieth century North America.
- Convenor, Research Residency Group at the Univeristy of California
Humanities Research Institute Irvine (Winter 2006)
Gender and sexual dissidence in Muslim dominant and Muslim minority
societies
This research residency group will gather scholars to explore the social
histories and contemporary ecologies of dominant Muslim and minority
Muslim societies through their conceptions, practices, legalities, and
imaginaries of gender and sex. This project turns toward the analytic
frameworks of gender and sex to open up new research questions about
the dynamics of social heterogeneity and cultural collisions. The social
relations of gender and sexuality, especially the ideals of female bodies
and the expectations for women's sexual practices have historically
constituted community and frequently register one community's cultural
and moral differences from other communities. The bodies of women, and
of female and male youth have been particularly volatile loci of eroticism,
desire, possession, and social and biological reproduction. Transformations
and challenges to gender relations and sexual expression have also been
the important grounds for articulating dissidence from prevailing orthodoxy
as well as distinctive visions of the social and political order. This
project invites the participation of scholars to explore the convergence
of different communities across a broad spectrum of Muslim dominant
and Muslim minority societies throughout Asia, the Middle East, Africa,
Europe and the Americas. The research residency group will examine the
diverse array of disputes over sexual behavior and expression that have
erupted into social tension, political strife and violence as well as
the social formations that constitute dissident gender and sexual identities,
politics and communities.
Advisory Board Member of the University of California Multi-campus Research
Group in "Subaltern Studies and Popular Culture" at University
of California Santa Barbara.
|
