Cynthia Tolentino (Associate Professor)
Statement
My research examines the intersection between the literary narratives of writers of color and liberal narratives of race in a global context. I am the author of America’s Experts: Race and the Fictions of Sociology (University of Minnesota Press, 2009) , which considers how Asian American and African American writers were the subjects of the U.S. state’s sociological interest in narrating the problems of racial identity and assimilation as well as the narrators of such problems themselves. I am currently working on a new project, tentatively entitled “Aberrant Empire: the Philippines, Puerto Rico, and the Idea of the Unincorporated Territory,” which explores representations of the unincorporated territory, commonwealth, and special economic zone in Filipino and Puerto Rican fiction and visual culture. My work has been published in such journals as American Literature, Novel: A Forum on Fiction, and MELUS, and also in edited collections. At Oregon, I teach courses on U.S. ethnic literature, Asian Pacific American literature, African American literature, twentieth century literature, and cultures of U.S. empire.
