Assistant Professor of American Studies
Coordinator, Humanities- Liberal Arts and Asian Studies concentrations
Humanities Department
Clark Hall 420D

Email

Preferred: funie.hsu@sjsu.edu

Telephone

Preferred: 408-924-4726 (please email during Covid-19)

Office Hours

T/Th 3-4 and by appointment

Education

Ph.D. - Education, University of California, Berkeley

           Designated Emphasis in Women, Gender and Sexuality

Ed.M. - Education Policy and Management, Harvard Graduate School of Education

B.A. - Asian American Studies, University of California, Davis

Licenses and Certificates

CA CLEAR CLAD Teaching Credential - Los Angeles Unified School District

Bio

I am an transdisciplinary scholar with an academic and practice background in the field of education. Broadly speaking, my work examines US empire and knowledge construction. 

The first area of my research investigates American empire and English language instruction. I have written on the role of English instruction in the overseas colonization of the Philippines and Puerto Rico and in the settler colonization of the United States. I have also examined Taiwan's recent Mandarin-English bilingual policy in relation to US empire and Han settler colonialism (forthcoming, 2021). My first book, Instructions for (Erasing) Empire: English, Domestication, and the US Colonization of the Philippines (under contract), argues that English language instruction served to erase the violent reality of US occupation. It presents an interdisciplinary analysis that draws from American studies, Asian American studies, history, education, language policy, and animal studies to detail how notions of race and species difference undergirded the colonial policy of English instruction in the Philippines.

My second area of research focuses on constructions of knowledge about American Buddhism in relation to orientalist studies of Buddhism, capitalism, race, language, and secular mindfulness. My scholarship in this area, and second book project, examines the attempted marginalization of Asian American Buddhists in American Buddhism and in the secular transformation of mindfulness, especially in the context of neoliberal schooling. In addition to my academic scholarship, I have also contributed public scholarship on American Buddhism and race, with a focus on Asian American Buddhists.

My research interests reflect my experiences as a former elementary school teacher in Los Angeles, my background as a 1.75 generation immigrant from a low-income, multilingual (Taiwanese Hokkien, Hakka, Mandarin, English) family from the continuously colonized island of Taiwan, and my Buddhist upbringing. My research has been sponsored by the SJSU MOSAIC Cross Cultural Center Faculty Fellowship, the UC President's Postdoctoral Fellowship (UC Davis), the American Educational Research Association Minority Dissertation Fellowship, the UC Dissertation Year Fellowship, and the Eugene Cota-Robles Diversity Fellowship. My scholarship and writing have appeared in American Quarterly, Educational Studies, CATESOL, L2 Journal, Buddhadharma: The Practitioner's Quarterly, Turning Wheel, Lionsroar.com, and Huffpost.com. 

 

 PREVIOUS ACADEMIC APPOINTMENTS:

•  UC Davis, School of Education- UC President's Postdoctoral Fellow 

 

Links

https://sjsu.academia.edu/FunieHsu