Scott Wong

Photo of Scott Wong

Charles R. Keller Professor of History, Emeritus


 


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 WorldJournal 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 ’21Returning to Black Internationalism: W. E. B. Du Bois and the Council on African Affairs, 1944-1963 (with Tyran Steward)

Hannah Antonellis ’18David B. Lyman & Samuel C. Armstrong: The Cultivation of Character as Racialized Education

Catherine Treesh ’15The Life and Legacy of Joseph Warren

Linda Chu ’14 Shifting Homes:  Identity Formations of the Chinese in Peru

Grace Rehnquist ’13Letters Divided:  An Experiential Deconstruction of the Nisei Collective During Wartime Internment

Glynis Startz ’12Through the Lens of Japanese American Internment:  Twentieth-Century Changes in West Coast Agricultural Counties

Lily Wong ’12Remembering 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 ’07Martial 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 ’02Coming 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 ’98Patterns of Discrimination and Hardship: The Mexican American Farm Worker Experience in Twentieth Century America, 1998.

Daisy Y. Ha ’96Embittered Immigrant Dreams: Korean Americans and the 1992 Los Angeles Riots

Stuart McLaughlin ’94Searching for Acceptance: The JACL and the Nisei, 1919-1952

American Studies

Masahiro Fox ’05Found in Translation (Feature-length film)

Lesley Benware ’05Eugenics in the United States: A Movement in Three Bodies

Carisha Swanson ’02White Benefits: The Effects of Whiteness on African American Advancement

Alison Swain ’01Their Own Island: The Japanese American Community on Bainbridge Island, Washington, 1890-1945

Rebecca Kline ’93Watching Our Ps and Qs: Class and Race in the Development of American Immigration Policy, 1988-1992

Asian Studies

Tiffany Wan-Chung Chao ’06An 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 ’01Yu Wei: A Personal Account of Twentieth Century Chinese History

Art History

Rebecca Burditt ‘ 06Images From a Forgotten War: Photojournalism, Life, and ‘The Little Boy Who Wouldn’t Smile’