About Me

I am a lover of dogs, books, and libraries. I study, teach, and write about literature, particularly Asian American literature and other writing that challenges uncritical visions of America and the world we live in.

After working at the front of the college classroom for ten years, I returned to school in the Master's in Library and Information Science program at St. Catherine University and earned my degree in May 2013.

A number of research topics occupy me currently:

• 1. Sounding Asian American (exploration of aural meaning and the racialization of Asian Americans)

  2. Discontiguous States of America (mapping American literary formations from beyond the 48-contiguous states, focusing on writers from and about Indian reservations, Puerto Rico, the U.S. Virgin Islands, Alaska, Hawai'i, Guam, and the Philippines as a former colonial possession)

  3. Native-Asian Encounters (historical, literary, political, and visual encounters between American Indians and Asian Americans)

  4. Dog parking in the Twin Cities (examination of dog parks as a recent urban planning phenomenon, including discussions about public funds, land use, community, public safety, environmental protection, dog-human relationships, and the differences between the cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul in terms of their establishment of off-leash dog parks)

  5. Asian American studies librarianship (exploration of what librarians can do to collaborate with faculty and students in the interdisciplinary field of Asian American studies)

  6. Asian American children's and young adult literature (Dr. Sarah Dahlen and I are co-authoring a book that provides historical and critical discussions of children's and young adult literature by and about Asian Americans)

The first two are "solo" projects. The third, fourth, and sixth are very collaborative. The fifth project is new and still potentially a solo research study or a more expansive collaborative one. The Native-Asian Encounters one is conceived as a conversation between Native Studies and Asian American Studies, and I have been working with many colleagues on conversations related to the topic. With Lindsey Claire Smith, we have organized a number of related conference panels and published a collection of essays on a broader topic of global Indigeneity that encompasses some of the questions of Native-Asian Encounters as a more discrete project. I am also hoping to pull together a symposium on the topic in the Twin Cities with local colleges and universities. The dog parking project is one I am working on with Maria Dahmus, and we hope to publish a general audience book on the topic in the future.