Wendy Cheng

Professor of American Studies; Chair, Department of American Studies

American Studies, Asian American Studies

Phone: 73692

Biography

Wendy Cheng is Professor of American Studies at Scripps College and Core Faculty in the Intercollegiate Department of Asian American Studies. She received her A.B. from Harvard University in English and American Language and Literature, her M.A. in Geography from UC Berkeley, and her Ph.D. in American Studies and Ethnicity from the University of Southern California. Her research focuses on race and ethnicity, comparative racialization, critical geography, urban and suburban studies, and diaspora. Her book, The Changs Next Door to the Díazes: Remapping Race in Suburban California (University of Minnesota Press, 2013), won the 2014 Book Award from the American Sociological Association’s Section on Asia and Asian America. Her coauthored book, A People’s Guide to Los Angeles (with Laura Pulido and Laura Barraclough; University of California Press, 2012), for which she was also the photographer, won the Association of American Geographers’ Globe Book Award for Public Understanding of Geography and the SCIBA Nonfiction Award. Her current research projects focus on the political activism of Taiwanese student migrants to the United States and racial plunder in everyday landscapes. Cheng is a board member of the Annals of the American Association of Geographers, Amerasia Journal, and the Journal of Asian American Studies, and was a founding member of Arizona Critical Ethnic Studies. She coedits A People's Guide book series with University of California Press. For more information, please visit: wendycheng.com

Courses Taught

AMST 103: Introduction to American Cultures

AMST 113: Asian/American Geographies

AMST 128: Race, Space, and Difference

AMST 130: Cold War Taiwanese/America

AMST 180: American Studies Seminar

Core 3: Landscapes of Plunder

Books

Cheng, Wendy. Island X: Taiwanese Student Migrants, Campus Spies, and Cold War Activism. University of Washington Press, 2023.

Cheng, Wendy. The Changs Next Door to the Díazes: Remapping Race in Suburban California. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2013.

Pulido, Laura; Laura Barraclough; and Wendy Cheng. A People’s Guide to Los Angeles. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2012.

Selected Research and Publications

Baik, Crystal Mun-hye and Wendy Cheng. “Cold War Reformations.” Introductory essay to special issue. March 2022. Amerasia Journal 47:2, 178-86.

Cheng, Wendy. “The Red Sun Will Rise Over Madison.” Essay in “Cold War Reformations” special issue. February 2022. Amerasia Journal 47:2, 373-75.

Cheng, Wendy. “The Global, Imperial, and Capitalist Roots of ‘Anti-Asian Hate.’” Forum essay in “In the Wake of Atlanta Shooting: non/citizens’ perspectives on Anti-Asian Racism and Sinophobia.” June 2021. positions: episteme. https://positionspolitics.org/the-global-imperial-and-capitalist-roots-of-anti-asian-hate/

Cheng, Wendy. “Refuting the Silences of Taiwanese/American History: The Case of Chen Yu-hsi.” Forum essay. 2021. American Quarterly 73:2, 343-48.

Wendy Cheng and Chih-ming Wang. “Against Empire: Taiwan, American Studies, and the Archipelagic.” Introductory essay to coedited forum of same title. 2021. American Quarterly 73:2, 335-41.

Cheng, Wendy. “‘Landscapes of Beauty and Plunder: Japanese American Flower Growers and an Elite Public Garden in Suburban Los Angeles.” 2020. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 38:4, 699-717. https://doi.org/10.1177/0263775820909836

Cheng, Wendy. “Of Railroads, Camps, and Strip Malls: Symbolic Landscapes of Asian America.” Essay with photos. California Dreaming: Movement and Place in the Asian American Imaginary. Edited by Christine Bacareza Balance and Lucy Mae San Pablo Burns. University of Hawai’i Press, 2020. Pp. 261-279.

Cheng, Wendy. “The Taiwan Revolutionary Party and Sinophone Political Praxis in New York.” 2019 (Fall). Amerasia Journal. Special issue on Asian American activism coedited by Diane Fujino and Robyn Rodriguez. DOI: 10.1080/00447471.2019.1665962

Cheng, Wendy. “‘This Contradictory but Fantastic Thing’: Student Networks and Political Activism in Cold War Taiwanese/America.” 2017. Journal of Asian American Studies 20:2, 161-191.

Cheng, Wendy. “Suburban Cosmopolitanism in the San Gabriel Valley.” East of East: The Making of Greater El Monte, 1700 to 2017. Edited by Romeo Guzman, Carribean Fragoza, Alex Cummings, and Ryan Reft. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2020. Pp. 297-308. (Revision of Cheng, Wendy. “East of East: The Global Cosmopolitans of Suburban LA.” 2015. BOOM: The Journal of California 5:1, 20-28.)

Cheng, Wendy. “The Changs Next Door to the Diazes: Suburban Racial Formation in Los Angeles’ San Gabriel Valley.” 2013. Journal of Urban History 39:1, 15-35.

Cheng, Wendy. “Strategic Orientalism: Racial Capitalism and the Problem of ‘Asianness.’” 2013. African Identities 11:2, 148-58. DOI:10.1080/14725843.2013.797284

Cheng, Wendy. “‘Diversity’ on Main Street? Branding Race and Place in the New ‘Majority-Minority’ Suburbs.” 2010. Identities: Global Studies in Power and Culture 17:5, 458-496.

Cheng, Wendy; Laura Barraclough; and Laura Pulido. “Radicalising Teaching and Tourism: A People’s Guide as Active and Activist History.” 2010-2011 (Fall/Winter). Left History 15:1, 109-125.

Awards and Honors

2022 – 2023 E. Peter Mauk, Jr. / Doyce B. Nunis, Jr. Fellowship, Huntington Library

2020 Taiwanese American Foundation of San Diego Project Grant

2018 Visiting Scholar, International Institute for Social Research and Cultural Studies, National Chiaotung University; Hsinchu, Taiwan

2017 Antipode Foundation Scholar-Activist Project Award for “A People’s Guide Online”

2016 Early Career Achievement Award, Association for Asian American Studies

Emerging Scholar Award, Diverse: Issues in Higher Education

2014 Section on Asia and Asian America Book Award, American Sociological Association

2013 Globe Book Award for Public Understanding of Geography, Association of American Geographers

2012 Southern California Independent Booksellers Award for Nonfiction

2011 Digital Humanities and American Studies NEH Summer Institute Fellowship, Institute for Multimedia Literacy, University of Southern California

2010 Ralph Henry Gabriel Best Dissertation Prize, American Studies Association