Professor Scholars
We have a list of scholars on the Advisory Council Board in which they lend us their expertise. Their names are in alphabetical order of their first name.
DR. ELAINE STILES
Dr. Elaine Stiles is an Associate Professor of Historic Preservation in the Cummings School of Architecture at Roger Williams University, Rhode Island where she teaches courses in preservation practice and the history of the built environment. Before entering academic, Elaine worked as an architectural historian, historic preservation planner, and preservation advocate, engaging in projects from the rural reaches of northern Maine to the streets of San Francisco. She is also the Faculty Director of RWU Public Humanities and Arts Collaborative (Co-Lab).
DR. ESTHER JUNE KIM
Dr. Esther June Kim is an Assistant Professor in Curriculum and Instruction and affiliate faculty for Asian Pacific Islander Studies at William and Mary. Her research focuses on how racial and religious identities (or different origin stories) might shape student understandings and embodiments of citizenship. She also explores how religious and racial narratives are taught (or not) primarily in secondary classrooms with particular attention to Asian American communities. Currently, her work includes collaborations with undergraduate students adapting archival research on Asian American histories to resources for K-12 students and educators. Dr. Kim is a former high school humanities and history teacher who taught in both South Korea and California.
DR. HONGYAN YANG
Dr. Hongyan Yang is an interdisciplinary activist-scholar who enters the built environment in the research, teaching, and empowerment of marginalized communities in the United States. She explores the intersections of race, ethnicity, and space, and asks how Asian immigrants’ identities and culinary practices shaped and were shaped by the spaces they designed and inhabited. Her work is guided not only by historical methods but also by her engagement with local communities through field documentation, oral history and preservation efforts. Dr. Yang is currently a Visiting Assistant Professor of History at Boston College where she is working on her first book Landscapes of Resistance: Chinese Placemaking across the Pacific.
DR. NOREEN NASEEM RODRIGUEZ
Dr. Noreen Naseem Rodriguez is an assistant professor of elementary education and educational justice. Her research engages critical race frameworks to explore the pedagogical practices of teacher of color and the teaching of so-called difficult histories through children’s literature and primary sources. Her current study is funded by the Spencer Foundation, examines grassroots efforts for Asian American studies teaching and learning in K-12 classrooms in Georgia, Texas and Virginia. She is co-author of “Social Studies for a Better World: An Anti-Oppressive Approach for Elementary Educators” (W W Norton and Co, Inc., 2021) with Katy Swalwell, and co-editor of “Critical Race Theory and Social Studies Futures: From the Nightmare of Racial Realism to Dreaming Out Loud” (Teachers College Press, 2022) with Amanda Vickery. Her newest book is “Teaching Asian America in Elementary Classrooms” (Routledge, 2023) with Sohyun An and Esther Kim. Before becoming a teacher educator, she was a bilingual elementary teacher in Austin, Texas for nine years.
DR. SOHYUN AN
Dr. Sohyun An is a Professor of Social Studies Education at Kennesaw State University. Her research and teaching centers on curriculum, pedagogy, and movement of K-12 Asian American studies and social studies education. Her recent works include Teaching Asian America in Elementary Classroom co-written with Dr. Noreen Naseem Rodríguez and Dr. Esther June Kim; “Our folks Were Badass!” Learning and Dreaming in Basement (Rethinking Schools, 2023); Who’s Behind the Camera? Anticolonial Visualization of “Westward Expansion” (Social Studies and the Young Learner, 2024); Representation of Asian Americans in 50 states US history standards (The Social Studies, 2022). She received many awards including the Distinguished Professor Award from Kennesaw State University, Distinguished Researcher Award from American Educational Research Association’s Research on the Education of Asian Pacific Americans Special Interest Group, as well as the Outstanding Paper Award from American Educational Research Association’s Social Studies Research Special Interest Group. As a co-founder of Asian American Voices for Education, she works alongside Asian American youth, educators, and community organizers to advance Asian American studies and ethnic studies in Georgia’s K-12 schools. Before becoming a teacher educator and researcher, Sohyun was a middle and high school teacher in South Korea.
Dr. Noreen Naseem Rodriguez and Dr. Sohyun An’s award winning page on Social Studies here.
DR. THAO HA
Dr. Thao Ha is a Vietnamese refugee and professor who holds a doctorate in Sociology from the University of Texas at Austin with publications in areas of race, immigration, and Vietnamese American experiences in the South. She was an associate producer of “Seadrift”, a 2019 documentary about the racial violence and KKK intimidation in the 1970s against Vietnamese Americans in Texas. Her forthcoming memoir, Love Letters to the Dirty South, follows her journey from being in a Houston Vietnamese gang in the 1990s to reconnecting with her incarcerated first love and exploring the social structures of the refugee experience, mass incarceration, and prison injustice. She is the Founder of Collective Freedom, a nonprofit serving the reentry population in North County San Diego. She is also the Board President of the Vietnamese American Arts and Letters Association and Board Chair of the Doan Foundation for the Arts.