Biography
Activities and Interests
I hold a PhD in English from the University of Washington. My areas of interest include transpacific studies (US-Japan), Global Asias, queer studies and LGBTQ history, Asian American and ethnic studies, and rhetoric and composition. As a lecturer at UW, I've taught composition, Asian American literature, cultural studies, and interdisciplinary writing across the humanities and social sciences.
I'm also a creative writer. I published Ockham's Razor, a gay Mormon novel, in 2009. I'm currently at work on a queer (BL) political fantasy novel.
My tentative academic book project is titled "Queer Liberal Humanism across the US-Japan Entanglement." Using the US-Japan or Nichibei relation as a case study, the book will analyze the intersection of racialization and queer exclusion/inclusion in order to better elucidate the workings of 19th- to 21st-century empire. Scaffolding projects include a chapter entitled "Queer Histories of Colonial Modernity" for the forthcoming Oxford Handbook of LGBTQ History.
Selected Completed Research
Summaries of the following publications can be found on my personal website.
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“A Neglected Queer Play Hidden in Plain Sight: Soon-Tek Oh's Tondemonai—Never Happen! (1970),” Journal of Asian American Studies 28, no. 2 (2025): forthcoming.
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“Queering the Color Line within the Color Line: W. E. B. Du Bois and the Transwar Transpacific,” American Studies 61, no. 4 (2022): 31–63. [link] [abstract]
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“Rethinking Yaoi on the Regional and Global Scale,” Intersections: Gender and Sexuality in Asia and the Pacific 37 (2015). [link]
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“Mormon and Queer at the Crossroads,” Dialogue: A Journal of Mormon Thought 44, no. 1 (2011): 53–84. [link]; “The Curious Case of Mormons and LGBT Rights,” Religion Dispatches, March 27, 2013. [link]
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“Raping Apollo: Sexual Difference and the Yaoi Phenomenon,” in Boys’ Love Manga: Essays on the Sexual Ambiguity and Cross-Cultural Fandom of the Genre, eds. Antonia Levi, Mark McHarry and Dru Pagliassotti, 221-231. Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2010. [link]
If you hit a paywall, copies are available on my Academia.edu page.