CONTACT INFORMATION
suwoo@fullerton.edu
Voice: 657-278-3345
Fax: 657-278-5820
Dept: 657-278-2441
Cal State University, Fullerton
American Studies
800 N. State College Blvd. GH-313
Fullerton, CA 92831
Susie Woo, Ph.D.
Associate Professor of American Studies
Susie Woo is an American Studies scholar whose research focuses on US militarism in the Pacific, race, and migration. Her book, Framed by War: Korean Children and Women at the Crossroads of US Empire (New York University Press, 2019), traces how Korean children and women became central to US involvement in the peninsula during and after the Korean War. She analyzes how the figures of the Korean orphan, “GI baby”, adoptee, birth mother, bride, and prostitute revealed the intimate reach of US empire. Her articles have appeared in American Quarterly, American Studies Journal, Oxford Research Encyclopedia of American History, and the edited volume, Pacific America: Histories of Transoceanic Crossings (University of Hawai‘i Press, 2017). Her current research project examines prosthetics, interracial blood transfusions, and mixed-race children to explore how bodies changed by war altered the landscape of US involvement in the Pacific. Professor Woo teaches classes on race, memory, and immigration. She co-leads the American Studies Internship Program and coordinates the CSUF-Martin Luther King, Jr. Elementary School Diversity Reading Program.
DEGREES
2009, Ph.D., American Studies, Yale University
2002, M.A., Asian American Studies, University of California, Los Angeles
1995, B.A., Art History, University of California, Irvine
MA Exam Reading Lists
Race and Ethnicity
The National and the Global
Gender and Sexuality
Immigration (Alternative Field)
COURSES TAUGHT
AMST 131 Explore Core: Migrant Lives
AMST 201 Introduction to American Studies
AMST 324 American Immigrant Cultures
AMST 395 California Cultures
AMST 401T Race in American Studies
AMST 445 The Cold War and American Culture
AMST 488 Race, Sex, and American Urban Cultures
AMST 502T Theorizing Race in American Studies
publications
Book
Framed by War: Korean Children and Women at the Crossroads of US Empire (New York: New York University Press, 2019).
Articles and Book Chapters
“Transpacific Adoption: The Korean War, U.S. Missionaries, and Cold War Liberalism,” in Pacific America: Histories of Transoceanic Crossings, ed. Lon Kurashige (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2017).
“When Blood Won’t Tell: Integrated Transfusions and Shifting Foundations of Race in 1950s America,” American Studies Journal 55.4 (2017): pp. 5-28. Winner of the 2017 Mid-America American Studies Association Stone-Suderman Prize for best essay.
“Imagining Kin: Cold War Sentimentalism and the Korean Children’s Choir,” American Quarterly 67:1 (March 2015): pp. 25-53.
Other Scholarly Works
“Korean Americans and the Early Cold War,” reference essay in Oxford Research Encyclopedia of American History, January 2023.
“Korean Americans in the Cold War,” in Asian American Encyclopedia Project, ABC-CLIO, 2014.
Interviewed by Judy Tzu-Chun Wu, “Framed by War: Korean Children and Women at the Crossroads of US Empire,” Society for the History of Children and Youth Podcast 16:11, March 2023.
Book Reviews
Kori Graves, A War Born Family: African American Adoption in the Wake of the Korean War (New York: New York University Press, 2020), in Diplomatic History 46:2 (April 2022), 411–414.
Richard Lentz and Karla K. Gower, The Opinions of Mankind: Racial Issues, Press, and Propaganda in the Cold War (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 2010). In Journal of American Ethnic History 34, no. 2 (Winter 2015): 125-127.
Cindy I-Fen Cheng, Citizens of Asian America: Democracy and Race during the Cold War (New York: New York University Press, 2013). In The Journal of American History 101, no. 1 (June 2014): 330-331.
Select Presentations
“Rehabilitating Body and Soul: American Prosthetics in Postwar Korea,” Association of Asian Studies, Annual Meeting, March 2023.
"Institutionalizing Race: Sociology and the Study of Japanese Brides at the University of Hawai’i," American Studies Association, Annual Meeting, November 2019.
“Cold War K-Pop: Korean Singers and Cultural Border Crossings in 1950s America,” CSUF Humanities and Social Sciences, Interdisciplinary Conversations on Crossing Borders Lecture Series, May 2017.
“Making Bodies Whole: Korean Citizen Subjects in America’s Cold War Pacific,” Militarism and Migration Conference, UC San Diego, April 2017.
“Korean Americans, Past and Present,” USC Korean Studies Institute Web Lecture Series, January 2014. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8yuOdGXI3Bc
Select Grants and Awards
Outstanding Untenured Faculty Award, Humanities and Social Sciences, CSUF, 2019
Nancy Weiss Malkiel Scholars Award, Institute for Citizens and Scholars, 2017
American Council of Learned Societies New Faculty Fellow, American Studies and Ethnicity, University of Southern California, 2011-2013
OFFICE HOURS
Spring 2023
Mondays 1 pm to 3 pm (Zoom); Wednesdays 11:30 am to 12:30 pm (Zoom or GH-419); and by appointment
For Zoom link, email suwoo@fullerton.edu
CURRENT COURSE SCHEDULE
AMST 131: Explore Core-Migrant Lives
AMST 324: American Immigrant Cultures
