Current Institutional Affiliation
Assistant Professor, Sociology Department, State University of New York (SUNY) / Binghamton University

Award Information

International Dissertation Research Fellowship 2008
Institutional Affiliation (at time of award):
History, University of California / Santa Cruz
Nations and Migrations in the Pacific: Peruvian Chinese Contributions to Nationalism and Nation-Building in China and Peru

For my dissertation project, I will undertake an historical and ethnographic examination of Chinese in Peru from 1847 to World War II in order to explore Chinese Peruvian identity formation and their contributions to the making of modern-Chinese nationalisms. My project involves three histories: of Peru, of China, and of the translocal interactions that brought the two together. These histories are part of a Pacific formation emerging in the mid-19th century, a period that some scholars have viewed as part of an earlier phase in the globalization of capitalism through imperialism and colonialism. Through their labor and capital, Chinese Peruvians -contributed significantly to this earlier phase of Pacific formation and globalization. Using interstate treaties, state documents, periodicals, Peruvian Chinese community organization documents, and personal archival materials produced by migrants, I will analyze two distinct phases of Chinese migrations to Peru in order to explore Chinese Peruvian contributions to the making of modern Chinese nationalisms, to the emergence of China and Peru as modern nation-states, and to the formation of East Asia, Latin America, and the Pacific as modern geo-political and economic regions whose origins are inextricably entangled.

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