Creator

Christine Su

Southeast Asian studies scholar and editor who founded the Khmer Generations Project and edits and writes books on Khmer diaspora life.

Christine Su is a Southeast Asian studies scholar, writer and editor who founded and directs the Khmer Generations Project.[1][2] She wrote Voices of a New Generation: Cambodian Americans in the Creative Arts, co-wrote the cookbook Kroeung: Cambodian Cooking with Chef T with Visoth Tarak Ouk, and edited volumes of The Stilt House and Pheap Thon: Stories from the Khmer Diaspora.[1][2][3][4]

Career

After college, Christine Su traveled to Cambodia during the unrest of the 1990s. She went on to study Cambodian history, learned Khmer and wrote a Ph.D. thesis on Cambodia.[1] She holds a bachelor's degree from the University of Notre Dame, a master's degree from Bowling Green State University and a Ph.D. from the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa.[2][5]

She has worked in the United States, Cambodia and Indonesia as a college instructor, academic counselor, grant writer, program director, study abroad leader and consultant.[2] At Ohio University she was first assistant director and then director of the Center for Southeast Asian Studies, where she ran the center's daily operations, including its master's program.[1][2] There she developed study-abroad and exchange programs and agreements with institutions in Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia and Cambodia. She set up the university's first undergraduate Introduction to Southeast Asia course and its certificate in Southeast Asian studies, and she helped the university host Fulbright teaching assistants in the Malaysian language for the first time.[2] She also managed the Khmer Studies Forum, a yearly three-day international conference on Cambodia that drew scholars, artists and activists from the United States, Cambodia, the United Kingdom and Australia.[2]

After moving to the San Francisco Bay Area, she became coordinator for Student Success and Support Programs and Career Services at the College of San Mateo, where she has also taught ethnic studies as adjunct faculty.[2][1] As of 2025 she was visiting faculty in Southeast Asian studies and history at the University of Massachusetts Lowell, a post also given as Southeast Asian history and Asian American studies.[6][7][5]

She has been a curriculum consultant for the Department of International Studies at the Royal University of Phnom Penh and an advisor to the School of Genocide, Conflict and Human Rights Studies at the Sleuk Rith Institute.[2] In 2025 she was one of the authors of the Cambodian American Studies Model Curriculum, which gives teachers lesson plans, primary documents and teaching methods for bringing Cambodian culture and history into the classroom.[7]

Khmer Generations Project

Su founded the Khmer Generations Project, a digital storytelling project that records the stories of Khmer people of all generations as online oral history.[2] She works with members of many generations as she records their stories.[1]

Writing

Her research centers on multiracial and transnational identity and on Southeast Asian diaspora history and culture.[7][5] She has written academic book chapters and journal articles, and she is drawn to how art can express individual and shared identities and help people deal with direct and inherited trauma in refugee communities.[1]

Voices of a New Generation: Cambodian Americans in the Creative Arts (2021) tells the stories of 15 Cambodian American artists of the 1.5 and second generations, among them traditional dancers, rappers, filmmakers, martial artists, fashion designers and musicians.[1][6]

Kroeung: Cambodian Cooking with Chef T (2022), written with Visoth Tarak Ouk, tells how Chef T, a former gang member, found his calling in cooking and rose to executive chef. Su wrote its introduction. She first met him in 2016 at a Khmer Student Coalition Conference hosted by California State University, Long Beach, and the two worked together to record his recipes and life stories.[1][8][4] As of 2024 she was working on a follow-up cookbook and on a love story about two people separated by the Khmer Rouge genocide who found each other again in the United States.[1]

She edited the creative works in the Genealogy volume of The Stilt House, wrote its editor's introduction and contributed "The Equator." In the introduction she writes that she hopes to help rebuild Khmer culture and to offer Cambodian youth their heritage as a source of dignity.[3] She also edited Pheap Thon: Stories from the Khmer Diaspora.[2]

Community

She serves on the boards of directors of the Cambodian Americans for Rural Education Foundation and the Southeast Asian Community Center of San Francisco, on the editorial board of the Journal of Southeast Asian American Education and Advancement, and on the advisory board of the Cambodia Town Film Festival in Long Beach.[2] She is a trustee of Reconnecting Cambodia in the United Kingdom.[5]

She was the main organizer of Khmer Literary Arts Day at UMass Lowell on March 21, 2025.[9] In 2025 she moderated the panel "Beyond Trauma Narratives: Modern Khmer American Writing," presented by the Cambodia Town Film Festival and Rumduol.[7]

Recognition

Her professional memberships include the Association for Asian Studies, the Asian American Studies Association, the International Association of Genocide Scholars, NAFSA and Asian Pacific Americans in Higher Education.[2] In 2025 Devata Giving Circle named her one of four Courage & Leadership Award honorees, under the theme Artists & Activists.[6]

Works


See also

Sources

References

  1. ↑ 1.00 1.01 1.02 1.03 1.04 1.05 1.06 1.07 1.08 1.09 Bold Journey interview
  2. ↑ 2.00 2.01 2.02 2.03 2.04 2.05 2.06 2.07 2.08 2.09 2.10 2.11 2.12 Cambodian American Literary Arts Association, Pheap Thon
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 Cambodian American Literary Arts Association, Stilt House: Genealogy
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 Long Beach Post
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 Reconnecting Cambodia, Meet the Team
  6. ↑ 6.0 6.1 6.2 Rhummanee Hang, Devata Giving Circle Announces 2025 Honorees (March 21, 2025)
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 7.3 Cambodia Town Film Festival, CTFF Present: Beyond Trauma Narratives: Modern Khmer ... (2025-08-17)
  8. ↑ Historical Society of Long Beach, Kroeung: Cambodian Cooking with Chef T (PDF)
  9. ↑ RichardHowe.com, Khmer Literary Arts Day, Lowell (March 27, 2025)
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This page was last edited on 26 September 2026, at 23:35.