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headshot of Lisa T. Yun

Lisa T. Yun

Associate Professor

English, General Literature and Rhetoric; Department of Asian and Asian American Studies
LN 1144

Background

Lisa Yun works in engaged digital humanities. She is especially interested in how multimodal forms of storytelling and testimony are mobilized to address injustice.

In the wake of rising hate crime, she recently co-produced season one of the podcast, 鈥淚mmigrants Wake America鈥 and is working on a book project, 鈥淒igital for Ourselves.鈥 She teaches at the intersection of race and gender, digital humanities, public humanities, and community engagement.

Her book The Coolie Speaks is a groundbreaking literary and historical study that makes the case for 鈥渃oolie testimonio,鈥 a culturally-hybrid form that emerges from nearly 3,000 written and oral testimonies by indentured laborers in 19th century Cuba. Yun鈥檚 additional work appears in Afro Asia: Revolutionary Political and Cultural Connections (Duke), Transnational Blackness: Navigating the Global Color Line (Palgrave), Afro Asian Connections of Latin America and Caribbean (Lexington), The Chinese of Latin America and Caribbean (Brill) and in journals such as Afro Hispanic Review, SOULS: Critical Journal of Black Politics, Caribbean Quarterly, E-misf茅rica, Journal of Chinese Overseas, Journal of Asian American Studies, Amerasia Journal, Asian Pacific American Journal, MELUS, Wasafiri, Black Book Review, among others. Her poetry appears in anthologies Identity Lessons (Viking Penguin) Roots and Flowers (Holt), The NuyorAsian Anthology (Temple), and journals such as The Paterson Literary Review, A Gathering of the Tribes, among others.

Yun is Coordinator of the Peter T. and Shun Yee Chang Memorial Internship which emphasizes community engagement, now in its tenth year, and was the co-principal investigator (with PI John Chaffee) of a Freeman Foundation Grant ($1.75 million), which led to founding the Department of Asian and Asian American Studies.


Education

  • PhD, University of Texas at Dallas
  • BA, Yale University

Research Interests

  • Immigration and Migration
  • Humanities for Justice
  • Digital Storytelling
  • Digital Pathways to Community
  • Community Engagement
  • Afro Asian Connections
  • Asian American Literature and Culture
  • Asians of the Americas

Awards

  • SUNY Chancellor鈥檚 Award for Faculty Service
  • BU Exemplary Community Engaged Teaching Award
  • Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities Fellowship
  • Center for Civic Engagement Fellowship
  • New York Foundation of the Arts Fellowship

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