2018-2019 CUNY Thomas Tam Visiting Professor

Nadia Y. Kim is Professor of Sociology at Loyola Marymount University and the 2018 Thomas Tam Professor at City University of New York Graduate Center. Her research focuses on transnational experiences of US race and citizenship inequalities among Korean/Asian Americans and South Koreans in (neo)imperial context and among Asian and Latinx activists for Environmental (Health) Justice as well as immigration and education reform in Los Angeles; she also specializes in race/gender/class intersectionality, cultural globalization, and race theorizing.

Kim is author of Imperial Citizens: Koreans and Race from Seoul to LA (Stanford, 2008), an exploration of how Koreans and Korean immigrants have navigated American (neo)imperial race inequality and ideology since World War II and by transnationally connecting both societies. In addition to garnering two American Sociological Association book awards for Imperial Citizens, Kim has won multiple best article awards, early career awards, and teaching honors. She is nearly done completing her current book, We the Polluted People: Immigrants Remap Race, Class, Gender & the Body to Remake Citizenship (Stanford University Press), which examines how legal Asian and unauthorized Latinx immigrants fight nativist racism by way of a new politics of citizenship, one that prioritizes transnational, communal, embodied, and emotive politics.

Read more

2017-2018 CUNY Thomas Tam Visiting Professor

Sujani K. Reddy is the 2017-2018 Thomas Tam Visiting Professor of Asian American Studies at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. Dr. Reddy’s work focuses on histories of U.S. imperialism, immigration, and South Asian diaspora, as well as mass criminalization, immigrant rights, transnational feminism, and struggles for liberation. She is the author of Nursing & Empire: Gendered Labor and Migration from India to the United States (UNC Press, 2015) and co-editor of The Sun Never Sets: South Asian Migrants in an Age of U.S. Power (NYU Press, 2013). Both books are also published in South Asia by Orient BlackSwan.

Read more

2016-2017 CUNY Thomas Tam Visiting Professor

Eric Tang is the 2016-2017 CUNY Thomas Tam Visiting Professor at the CUNY Graduate Center. Prof. Tang is an Associate Professor in the African and African Diaspora Studies Department and faculty member in the Center for Asian American Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. He also holds a courtesy appointment in the Department of Sociology and serves as a faculty fellow with both the Institute for Urban Policy Research & Analysis and the Division of Diversity and Community Engagement. Unsettled is his first book.

Read more

2015-2016 CUNY Thomas Tam Visiting Professor

Angie Y. Chung is an Associate Professor of Sociology at the University at Albany, SUNY, and the 2015-2016 Dr. Thomas Tam Visiting Professor at the CUNY Graduate Center and Asian American / Asian Research Institute (AAARI). She is author of Saving Face: The Emotional Costs of the Asian Immigrant Family Myth (Rutgers University Press, 2016) and Legacies of Struggle: Conflict and Cooperation in Korean American Politics (Stanford University Press, 2007). She is currently conducting research with co-PIs Sookhee Oh and Jan Lin for a National Science Foundation-funded project on immigrant redevelopment politics in Koreatown and Monterey Park. Chung has published on the topics of ethnic politics, interethnic coalitions, immigrant families, ethnic enclaves and second generation in various journals such as Ethnicities, Urban Affairs Review, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, and Qualitative Sociology.

Read more

2014-2015 CUNY Thomas Tam Visiting Professor

Prema Kurien is the founding director of Asian/American Studies and Professor of Sociology at Syracuse University’s Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs. Dr. Kurien is a past CUNY Thomas Tam Visiting Professor at the CUNY Graduate School, 2014-2015. Her recent research focuses on race and ethnic group relations, as well as the role of religion in shaping group formation and mobilization among contemporary ethnic groups.

Dr. Kurien has received postdoctoral fellowships and grants from the National Science Foundation, The Woodrow Wilson International Center, the Carnegie Corporation, the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion, the Pew Charitable Trusts, the Center for the Study of Religion at Princeton University, the American Institute of Indian Studies, the Louisville Institute, and the New Ethnic and Immigrant Congregations Project. Her work has been recognized with a Contribution to the Field award, two national book awards, and three national article awards.

Read more

2013-2014 CUNY Thomas Tam Visiting Professor

Vivian Louie Hunter College/CUNY Department of Urban Affairs and Planning Fall 2013 Course: Social Contexts of Education Course Syllabus: PDF What is the relationship between schools and society? How can schools respond to society’s transformations, for example, labor market and demographic shifts, and address educational inequality? There have been major transformations in the school populations … Read more