Faculty Book Publications
2024
Jack Fong
In his newly edited book titled "Reconfiguring Global Societies in the Pre-Vaccination Phase of the COVID-19 Pandemic," Jack Fong and contributing scholars examine lived experiences of the COVID-19 pandemic in communities and societies around the world before the arrival of vaccines. This collection presents analyses of scholars from eight countries, all of whom were engaged in the unfolding crisis of social forces across the world.
This timely volume conveys valuable insights about how public officials, the state, healthcare workers, and, ultimately, citizens responded to consequences of the pandemic upon not only the body but also social relations in community, city, and society. The contributing scholars document how state apparatuses, urban configurations, places of employment, legal structures, and ways of life responded to crisis-altered social conditions during the pandemic. The book investigates what societies experiencing crisis around the world reveal about the state’s efficacy and inefficacy in fulfilling its social contract for its citizens, especially on unresolved issues related to social relations based on politics, race, ethnicity, gender, and crime.
This collection brings together a cross section of scholars experiencing the same temporal moment of crisis together, watching and observing how the pandemic of their age uncoiled itself into the fabric of community, onto the institutions and bureaucracies of society, and into the most intimate confines of the home.
For more information about the book check out the Q&A with Dr. Jack Fong
2023
Faye Linda Wachs
In her book titled "Metamorphosis: Who We Become after Facial Paralysis," Faye L. Wachs takes us on a captivating journey, exploring the physical, emotional, and psychological transformations experienced by individuals with facial paralysis. Wachs interviews over one hundred people with acquired facial difference challenged her presumptions about identity, disability, and lived experience. Participants described microaggressions, internalizations, and minimalizations and their impact on identity.
Heartbreakingly, synkinesis disrupts the ability to have shared moments. When one experiences spontaneous emotion, wrong nerves trigger misfeel and misperception by others. One is misread by others and receives confusing internal information. Communication of and to the self is irrevocably damaged. Wachs describes the experience as a social disability. People found a host of creative ways to reinvigorate their sense of self and self-expression. Like so many she interviewed, Wachs experiences a process of change and growth as she is challenged to think more deeply about ableism, identity, and who she wants to be.
2022
Anthony Christian Ocampo
Ocampo chronicles the coming-of-age experiences of queer sons of immigrants in Los Angeles, in their families, schools, as well as ethnic and LGBTQ spaces. Brown and Gay in LA is an homage to second-generation gay men and their radical redefinition of what it means to be gay, to be a man, to be a person of color, and, ultimately, what it means to be an American.
In 2023, Ocampo has been named the co-winner of the ASA Section of Latina/o Sociology Award for his groundbreaking book and distinguished contribution to research in the field!
2020
Jack Fong
Harnessing the empowering ideas of Friedrich Nietzsche to read the human condition of modern existence through a sociological lens, Employing Nietzsche’s Sociological Imagination: How to Understand Totalitarian Democracy confronts the realities of how modernity and its utopianisms affect one’s ability to purpose existence with self-authored meaning. By critically assessing the ideals of modern institutions, the motives of their pundits, and their political ideologies as expressions born from the social decay of exhausted dreams and projects of modernity, Fong assembles Nietzsche’s existential sociological imagination to empower actors to emancipate the self from such duress. Illuminating the merits of creating new meaning for life affirmation by overcoming struggle with one’s will to power, Fong reveals Nietzsche’s horizons for actualized and empowered selves, selves to be liberated from convention, groupthink, and cultural scripts that exact deference from society’s captive audiences.
2019
Nicholas Von Glahn, Sara Langford & Anjana Narayan
Incorporating Technology: Debates for the 21st Century Classroom helps educators understand how technology impacts the classroom and can be incorporated in the classroom. The book presents controversial issues related to using technology in the classroom, while also highlighting the benefits of technology as a pedagogical tool. This holistic approach to the subject matter emphasizes the complexity of the debate over technology in the classroom and challenges readers to think critically about it.
2017
Jack Fong
This sociological work examines the phenomenon of the Death Café, a regular gathering of strangers from all walks of life who engage in “death talk” over coffee, tea, and desserts. Using insightful theoretical frameworks, Fong explores the common themes that constitute a “death identity” and reveals how Café attendees are inspired to live in light of death because of death. Fong examines how the participants’ embrace of self-sovereignty and confrontation of mortality revive their awareness of and appreciation for shared humanity. While divisive identity politics continue to foster neo-tribalisms and the construction of myriad “others,” Fong makes visible how those who participate in Death Cafés end up building community while being inspired toward living more fulfilling lives. Through death talk unfettered from systemic control, they end up feeling more agency over their own lived lives as well as being more conscious of the possibility of a good death.
2016
Anthony Christian Ocampo
Honorable Mention for the 2017 Book Award on Asian America sponsored by the American Sociological Association (ASA) - Asia and Asian America Section.
Is race only about the color of your skin? In The Latinos of Asia, Ocampo shows that what "color" you are depends largely on your social context. Filipino Americans, for example, helped establish the Asian American movement and are classified by the U.S. Census as Asian. But the legacy of Spanish colonialism in the Philippines means that they share many cultural characteristics with Latinos, such as last names, religion, and language. Thus, Filipinos' "color"—their sense of connection with other racial groups—changes depending on their social context. The Filipino story demonstrates how immigration is changing the way people negotiate race, particularly in cities like Los Angeles where Latinos and Asians now constitute a collective majority. Amplifying their voices, Ocampo illustrates how second-generation Filipino Americans' racial identities change depending on the communities they grow up in, the schools they attend, and the people they befriend. Ultimately, The Latinos of Asia offers a window into both the racial consciousness of everyday people and the changing racial landscape of American society.
2016
Min Zhou & Anthony Ocampo
When CONTEMPORARY ASIAN AMERICA was first published in 2000, it exposed its readers to the formation and development of Asian American studies as an academic field of study, from its inception as part of the ethnic consciousness movement of the 1960s to the systematic inquiry into more contemporary theoretical and practical issues facing Asian America at the century's end. It was the first volume to integrate a broad range of interdisciplinary research and approaches from a social science perspective to assess the effects of immigration, community development, and socialization on Asian American communities. This updated third edition discusses the impact of September 11 on Asian American identity and citizenship; the continued influence of globalization on past and present waves of immigration; and the intersection of race, gender, sexuality, and class on the experiences of Asian immigrants and their children. The volume also provides study questions and recommended supplementary readings and documentary films. This critical text offers a broad overview of Asian American studies and the current state of Asian America.
2014
Mary Yu Danico & Anthony C. Ocampo
Asian American Society: An Encyclopedia provides a thorough introduction to the wide–ranging and fast–developing field of Asian American studies. Published with the Association for Asian American Studies (AAAS), two volumes of the four-volume encyclopedia feature more than 300 A-to-Z articles authored by AAAS members and experts in the field who examine the social, cultural, psychological, economic, and political dimensions of the Asian American experience. The next two volumes of this work contain approximately 200 annotated primary documents, organized chronologically, that detail the impact American society has had on reshaping Asian American identities and social structures over time.
2012
Brett C. Stockdill & Mary Yu Danico
People outside and within colleges and universities often view these institutions as fair and reasonable, far removed from the inequalities that afflict society in general. Despite greater numbers of women, working class people, and people of color―as well as increased visibility for LGBTQ students and staff―over the past fifty years, universities remain “ivory towers” that perpetuate institutionalized forms of sexism, classism, racism, and homophobia. Transforming the Ivory Tower builds on the rich legacy of historical struggles to open universities to dissenting voices and oppressed groups. Each chapter is guided by a commitment to praxis―the idea that theoretical understandings of inequality must be applied to concrete strategies for change. The contributors to this volume defy the pressure to assimilate by critically examining personal and collective struggles.Speaking from different social spaces and backgrounds, they analyze antiracist, feminist, and queer approaches to teaching and mentoring, research and writing, academic culture and practices, growth and development of disciplines, campus activism, university-community partnerships, and confronting privilege.
2011
Lise-Hélène Smith & Anjana Narayan
This collection draws insights from an interdisciplinary group of scholars who specialize in diverse methods ranging from ethnography, archival research, and oral histories, to quantitative data analysis and experiments used in the social sciences and humanities to reflect on the empirical, methodological, and practical implications of conducting research beyond one’s national borders. The goal of this book is to help researchers contemplate existing orientations that dominate current research processes and consider the need for transnational multidisciplinary practices that remain aware of the inequalities which continually inform research practices. With this focus, this collection is also a resourceful initiative that seeks to share experiences as well as extract key ideas and approaches likely to overlap or resonate in different disciplines.