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2021-2022 CRES Fellows

Faculty Fellows

img_9531-2.jpgKatrina Quisumbing King 
Department of Sociology

Biography: Katrina Quisumbing King (surname: Quisumbing King, pronounced kiss-uhm-bing king) is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at Northwestern University. She studies racial classification and exclusion from a historical perspective that foregrounds the state’s authority to manage populations. She is particularly interested in the ways state actors conceive of and make decisions around race and citizenship. Her research recenters empire as a key political formation. In the U.S. context, she focuses especially on how the state defines colonized populations and how these people fit into the U.S. racial order.

 Project Summary: This project explores debates over citizenship and political status from U.S. territories on the continent as well as in the Pacific and Caribbean. While much of the existing work on the racial fitness of the colonies and the applicability of U.S. bureaucratic racial classifications focuses on Puerto Rico (and to a lesser extent the Philippines, Hawaii, New Mexico, and Arizona), Alaska, the Virgin Islands, Guam, and Samoa remain understudied. Through comparison, this project shed light on how state actors applied U.S. racial categories to new and heterogeneous populations that were not so easily classified as white or Black. I analyze how U.S. lawmakers navigated colonial, geopolitical interests and bureaucratic racial designations to decide both the political status of territories as well as which colonial subjects deserved citizenship. This project will address three central questions: (1) How did government officials apply bureaucratic racial classification systems in different colonies, whose populations were heterogeneous? (2) How did judges and naturalization officers draw on these systems of racial classification in making decisions about citizenship? And (3) What were the consequences for the diverse colonial populations and the territories they inhabited?

 
ji-yeon-yuh-168x210.jpgJi-Yeon Yuh 
Department of History and Asian American Studies

Biography: Ji-Yeon Yuh (Ph.D., University of Pennsylvania, 1999) teaches Asian American history, Asian diasporas, race and gender, and oral history. Her current projects include Asian Diasporas Digital Archive, a digital oral history repository at the Northwestern Library; “Performing History: Documenting and Enacting the Asian American Midwest,” an oral history and performance project with scholars at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, funded by the Humanities Without Walls consortium; Memories of War, an undergraduate research seminar and oral history project on the life narratives of Vietnamese and Korean Americans; and a book on Korean diasporas in China, Japan, and the United States. Active in community organizations, she is a co-founder of the Alliance of Scholars Concerned about Korea, a board member of Korea Policy Institute, and former board president of KANWIN, a Korean American women's organization focusing on domestic violence. She is a native of Seoul and Chicago, a former journalist, and a fan of genre fiction.

 


 

Graduate Fellows

a883e807-aef7-4639-a94b-e912b7c0bf5d_1_201_a.jpegCindy Lima  
Department of History

Biography: Cindy Lima is a History PhD candidate. She studies the 20th century global Third World liberation movements. In particular, her dissertation looks at the transnational activism of Third World women during the course of the 20th century. As a CRES fellow, she is most excited to continue learning and growing along side the faculty and students of Asian American and Latinx Studies. In addition, Cindy is a native Chicagoan and a home cook enthusiast.

 

michellmiller.jpgMichell Miller  
Department of Performance Studies

Biography: Michell Nicole Miller is an undisciplined poet and educator. Her current project explores the intersections of black feminist spiritualities, reproductive justice, and ritual performance. Her research interests include: transnational black feminisms, postcolonial/decolonial praxis, black poetics, and sound studies. She holds an A.M. in Theater and Performance Studies from Washington University in St. Louis and a B.A. in English Literature and Languages. 

 


 

Undergraduate Fellows

stf.jpgSarah Fernandez Tabet  
Department of English

Biography: Sarah Fernández Tabet is a senior in the English Department. Sarah was born in Cuba and came to the U.S. with her family at age 7, growing up in Las Vegas, NV. They love to dance, spend time with family and friends and eat good food. 

Project Summary: My project looks at different poetry collections relating to prisons, border detention, and immigration in order to ask: What does the direct encounter of poetry reveal about the atomized structure of the carceral state? What can this poetry reveal about how the carceral state is manifest and how is it able to do so? In answering this, my project aims to expand the comprehension of the carceral state beyond continental U.S. boundaries in order to encompass neoliberal economics and geopolitics. 

 

is.l.jpegIsabell Liu  
Asian American Studies Program

Biography: Isabell Liu (they/she) is a fourth-year student majoring in Asian American studies with a minor in creative writing. Their interests include writing poetry and nonfiction, and making academia more accessible. When they’re not in class or conducting research, they can be found skating around Northwestern’s campus and playing with their cat Marceline. 

Project Summary: Isabell’s CRES fellowship research dives into the effects of poverty, food access, and oppression on the perception of the body. They tap into fat studies, critical race theory, and the politics of poverty. They hope to turn their research findings into accessible toolkits and lesson plans for students in middle school, high school, and college.

 

 

kw.pngKarina Karbo-Wright  
Department of African American Studies

Biography: Karina (she/they) is a senior studying African American Studies, Sociology, and Legal Studies. Karina is from South Minneapolis and is so incredibly passionate about liberation and solidarity across marginalized and centered identities. She loves singing and continues her passion and practice of it after choosing to end her major. Karina also loves learning about the universe and space. On-campus, she is involved in the Social Justice Education department, the Writing Place, ASG, BlackBoard Student Publication, and many other clubs!