Biography
K. Scott Wong is the Charles R. Keller Professor of History at Williams College where he teaches a variety of courses on Asian American history, American immigration history, History and Memory, War and Society, and the Sixties. He has written numerous articles for journals and anthologies and is the author of Americans First: Chinese Americans and the Second World War (Harvard University Press, 2005.) He has also co-edited Claiming America: Constructing Chinese American Identities during the Exclusion Era (Temple University Press, 1998,) Keywords for Asian American Studies (New York University Press, 2015,) and Asian America: A Primary Source Reader (Yale University Press, 2017.) When he is not writing or teaching, he enjoys fly fishing for trout and is still trying to play like Mississippi John Hurt.
Selected Publications
Books:
Asian America: A Primary Source Reader (Yale University Press, 2017) Co-edited by Cathy J. Schlund-Vials, K. Scott Wong, and Jason Oliver Chang.
Keywords for Asian American Studies (New York University Press, 2015) Co-edited by Cathy J. Schlund-Vials, Linda Trinh Võ, and K. Scott Wong
Americans First: Chinese Americans and the Second World War (Harvard University Press, 2005). Received Honorable Mention in the History category from the Association for Asian American Studies in 2006
Claiming America: Constructing Chinese American Identities during the Exclusion Era (Philadelphia: Temple University Press,1998). Co-edited with Sucheng Chang and K. Scott Wong. Received the History and Social Sciences Book Award, Association for Asian American Studies, 2001.
Articles:
“From Pariah to Paragon: Shifting Images of Chinese Americans during World War II, in Chinese Americans and the Politics of Race and Culture, Sucheng Chan and Madeline Y. Hsu, eds. (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2008.)
“The Eagle Seeks a Helpless Quarry: Chinatown, the Police, and the Press. The 1903 Boston Chinatown Raid Revisited,” Amerasia Journal, 22:3 (1996), pp. 81-103.
The Transformation of Culture: Three Chinese Views of America,”American Quarterly, 48: 2 (June, 1996) pp. 201-232. Reprinted in Lucy Maddox, ed. Locating American Studies: The Evolution of a Discipline (Baltimore: The
Johns Hopkins University Press, 1998).
“Liang Qichao and the Chinese of America: A Re-evaluation of his Selected Memoir of Travels in the New World” Journal of American Ethnic History, 11:4 (Summer, 1992), pp. 3-24. (Received the Immigration History Society’s Carlton Qualey Award)
Research Interests
Asian American History, American Immigration History
Theses Advised
History
Sonia Nyarko ’21 – Returning to Black Internationalism: W. E. B. Du Bois and the Council on African Affairs, 1944-1963 (with Tyran Steward)
Hannah Antonellis ’18 – David B. Lyman & Samuel C. Armstrong: The Cultivation of Character as Racialized Education
Catherine Treesh ’15 – The Life and Legacy of Joseph Warren
Linda Chu ’14 – Shifting Homes: Identity Formations of the Chinese in Peru
Grace Rehnquist ’13 – Letters Divided: An Experiential Deconstruction of the Nisei Collective During Wartime Internment
Glynis Startz ’12 – Through the Lens of Japanese American Internment: Twentieth-Century Changes in West Coast Agricultural Counties
Lily Wong ’12 – Remembering the Nanjing Massacre: Transnationalism and Atrocity
(with Alexandra Garbarini and Anne Reinhardt)
Adam Pinto ‘08 – “First things first, then we come for you”: Memory and Commodification in September 11 Comics
Akio Adams ’07 – Martial Law and Internment in Hawaii: The Significance of Local Affirmations of Loyalty on the Wartime and Post-war Development of the Japanese Community in the Islands
Heather R. Barney ’02 – Coming Home: The Rise of Gay Conservatism
Crystal Mun-hye Baik ’02 – Retracing Silenced Memories: Korean ‘Comfort Women,’ Voice, and Agency
Catherine A. Williams ’00 – The Politics of ‘Rehabilitation’: The Native Hawaiian Response to American Imperialism, 1920-1959
Gillian R. Bazelon ’98 – Patterns of Discrimination and Hardship: The Mexican American Farm Worker Experience in Twentieth Century America, 1998.
Daisy Y. Ha ’96 – Embittered Immigrant Dreams: Korean Americans and the 1992 Los Angeles Riots
Stuart McLaughlin ’94 – Searching for Acceptance: The JACL and the Nisei, 1919-1952
American Studies
Masahiro Fox ’05 – Found in Translation (Feature-length film)
Lesley Benware ’05 – Eugenics in the United States: A Movement in Three Bodies
Carisha Swanson ’02 – White Benefits: The Effects of Whiteness on African American Advancement
Alison Swain ’01 – Their Own Island: The Japanese American Community on Bainbridge Island, Washington, 1890-1945
Rebecca Kline ’93 – Watching Our Ps and Qs: Class and Race in the Development of American Immigration Policy, 1988-1992
Asian Studies
Tiffany Wan-Chung Chao ’06 – An Investigation of Third Culture Kids from the International School of Beijing as Compared to Students Educated in the United States of America
Geraldine Yun Shen ’01 – Yu Wei: A Personal Account of Twentieth Century Chinese History
Art History
Rebecca Burditt ‘ 06 – Images From a Forgotten War: Photojournalism, Life, and ‘The Little Boy Who Wouldn’t Smile’