Journal Articles:

"Of Comics and Charisma: Representing Transpacific White Masculinities"

New Global Studies, Vol. 15.1 (2021): 47-72. 

This article employs palimpsestuous reading practices to query the transpacific reach and imperial pedigree of the comic strip “Charisma Man.” Turning to Max Weber’s theory of “charismatic authority” to understand the comic’s humorous portrayals of white male heterosexual privilege in Asia, the article proposes that the comic strip illuminates the patterns of raced and gendered “hereditary charisma” that continue to haunt transpacific relations. “Charisma Man,” penned by a team of North American men living in Japan, links contemporary white migrants across Asia – especially native English teachers – with a longue durée of Euro-American imperial actors abroad and builds meaning through intertextual engagement with the iconic cultural texts Superman and Madame Butterfly. The article concludes that “Charisma Man” makes light of white male hereditary charisma in Asia through a layering of temporally-disjointed transpacific discourses and, in turn, adds one more layer to a palimpsestuous sedimentation of sexist and racist hierarchies, normalizing their continuation within contemporary globalization.

“Traveling Yellow Peril: Race, Gender, and Empire in Japan’s English Teaching Industry”​

American Studies, Vol. 55 No. 4 / Vol. 56 No. 1 (2017): 29-49. 

          (A shortened version of this journal article also won Finalist

           mention in the American Studies Association's 2015 Comparative    

           Ethnic Studies Essay competition.)

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Contemporary U.S. white migrants working in Japan long-term as English teachers find themselves in an increasingly precarious labor market. When reacting to industry flexibilization, the U.S. men I interviewed during two years of fieldwork in Nagoya regularly invoked Filipina competition as an impending threat to their livelihoods. Anxieties coalesced around the question of whether racialized postcolonial subjects can fully inhabit the category of “native English teacher.” This article combines Asian / American, postcolonial, feminist, and transnational American Studies perspectives to situate these “nativist” logics within an historical trajectory of anti-Asian labor backlash in the United States, “benevolent assimilation” policies in the Philippines, and the devaluation of Asian women’s labor within neoliberal globalization. These histories reappear within Japan’s neoliberal labor regimes to position Filipina migrants as a feminized “yellow peril” menace to hegemonic white masculinities abroad. Extending Homi Bhabha’s theorization of “colonial mimicry,” I show how benevolent assimilation holds within it the seeds of yellow peril. Within the context of contemporary Japan, Filipina “colonial mimicry” undermines the embodied, linguistic authority of white “native” English teachers and becomes a discursive conduit for the transplantation into Japan of the “white male victim” figure commonly seen in domestic U.S. culture wars.

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“The Global American Studies Classroom: International Students and Critical Pedagogy”

co-authored with Abbie Boggs, American Quarterly Vol. 68 No. 2 (2016): 379-385.

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In 2012 the UC Davis American studies program began collaborating with the university’s Extension program and its Center for International Education by offering courses designed specifically for short-term international students. We contextualize these targeted efforts as a response to broader neoliberal trends toward the internationalization and marketization of U.S. higher education and explore practical strategies for centering critical inquiry of U.S. nationalism and sociopolitical hegemony  within these classroom spaces. As universities are called on to develop curricula to serve international students, this development can occur in one of two directions. We argue that instead of off-loading this work to the rapidly expanding nonacademic “student life” sectors of campus, American studies scholars can proactively intervene precisely because we are attuned to the necessity of a critical and reflective approach to the study of the United States.

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“When Filipino Prisoners Go Viral”

 Transformations: The Journal of Inclusive Scholarship and Pedagogy.

 Vol. 24. No. 1 & 2 (2014): 25-39.

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This article examines the usefulness of “viral” videos for framing classroom conversations about the cultural politics of globalization. The author presents a series of coursework activities that revolve around YouTube videos of Filipino prisoners at the Cebu Provincial Detention and Rehabilitation Center dancing to iconic U.S. pop music and shows how the power dynamics at work within the production and dissemination of these videos opens up productive analytical space for students in a lower-division, general education course on popular culture. In addition to allowing students to concretize competing perspectives in critical theory, this coursework addresses a widespread push to transnationalize the humanities and social science curriculum.

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Book Review:

Chong Chon-Smith’s East Meets Black: Asian and Black Masculinities in the Post-Civil Rights Era.
University of Mississippi Press, 2015. Journal of Asian American Studies Vol. 19 No. 2 (June 2016).

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Public Humanities:

"A Post-Lockdown Wardrobe Experiment & the Mix-and-Match Story of Myself"

Dismantle Magazine 3 Nov 2022.

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This short personal essay explores how fashion serves as a vehicle for identity formation and as an embodied medium through which we can navigate the fragmentation of the subject. It interweaves memoir with  pedagogical reflections on teaching about fashion and style, especially  during the height of the COVID19 pandemic.

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"Full Spandex Suits and Other Fashion Fantasies in 'Weird Japan' Media Coverage"

Fashion Research: Fashion, Culture, Theory (blog), 19 Aug 2015.

moved to Dismantle Magazine on 6 Jan 2017.

This short online piece examines how "weird Japan" click bait produced by U.S.-based news outlets reproduces Orientalist rhetorics and conservative visions of the U.S.-Japan alliance. I have learned from colleagues that this article is often assigned to undergraduate students in Japanese Cultural Studies courses.