Creator
Sue J. Kim
Professor of English who directs the Southeast Asian Digital Archive and its oral history collecting in Lowell, Massachusetts.
Sue J. Kim is a professor of English at the University of Massachusetts Lowell and project director of its Southeast Asian Digital Archive.[1] She is co-director of the university's Center for Asian American Studies and board president of Angkor Dance Troupe.[2][3]
Career
Kim earned a BA in English at Dartmouth College and a PhD in English at Cornell University in 2003, with Asian American studies as a supporting area.[4][5] Her work centers on contemporary literature, literary theory, Asian American studies, narrative theory, gender and class. She writes about how narrative forms relate to race, gender and class, and about anger and empathy.[2] From 2015 to 2017 she held the Nancy Donahue Endowed Professorship in the Arts at UMass Lowell.[2]
In 2020 Kim was dean for undergraduate studies in UMass Lowell's College of Fine Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences.[5] As of 2026 she is dean of the college.[1]
She served on the executive council of the International Society for the Study of Narrative from 2015 to 2017 and on the board of the Association for Asian American Studies from 2016 to 2019. She co-chaired the association's East of California section from 2012 to 2014 and formerly co-chaired the Modern Language Association's Committee on the Literature of People of Color of the U.S. and Canada. In 2014 she coordinated the International Conference on Narrative in Cambridge, Massachusetts.[2]
Southeast Asian Digital Archive
The Southeast Asian Digital Archive collects cultural heritage materials, including recorded oral histories, from Southeast Asian American communities in the Lowell region.[1] It focuses on the history of Southeast Asians in Greater Lowell, especially refugee resettlement and community building from the 1970s to the present. The archive holds that these histories should be kept in the voices of the people who lived them, and it has 18 digital collections.[6] Its support has come from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the UMass Creative Economy Fund, the Lowell Cultural Council and a Chancellor's 2020 Challenge Grant.[2] In 2019 Kim recorded interviews for the archive's oral history project.[7]
Kim has also led the related projects Southeast Asian American Memories and Cambodian Arts: From Tradition to Innovation.[1] With Phitsamay Uy she led a research project on college readiness among first-semester Southeast Asian American students at UMass Lowell. It used surveys with 50 students and focus groups with 25, and it looked at the community and university resources that urban, low-income Southeast Asian and immigrant students use to reach their goals. The project was funded by the UMass Boston Asian American Student Success Program.[8] From it came "College and Career Readiness of Southeast Asian American College Students in New England" (2016), written with P. S. Uy and C. Khuon and listed in the Journal of College Student Retention: Research, Theory & Practice.[8]
Writing
Kim is the author of On Anger: Race, Cognition, Narrative (University of Texas Press, 2013), which argues that anger is shaped by society and history and that race is central to how anger is understood and felt.[2][8] Her other books are Critiquing Postmodernism in Contemporary Discourses of Race (Palgrave, 2009) and Rethinking Empathy Through Literature (Routledge, 2014), which she co-edited with Meghan M. Hammond. She guest-edited the special issue "Decolonizing Narrative Theory" of the Journal of Narrative Theory in fall 2012.[2] Her essays have appeared in Modern Fiction Studies, Narrative, College Literature and the Journal of Asian American Studies. She co-edits the Cognitive Approaches to Culture series at Ohio State University Press.[2]
Community
Kim is board president of Angkor Dance Troupe, a Lowell organization that carries Cambodia's artistic lineage forward through youth education and mentorship.[3] She has also served on the board of the Lowell TeleMedia Center.[5]
Works
- Niem Nay-kret oral history audio recording, 2019 (Recording)
See also
References
- ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 Southeast Asian Digital Archive, Sue J. Kim
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 2.5 2.6 2.7 UMass Lowell, English faculty, Sue J. Kim
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 Angkor Dance Troupe, Our Team (February 28, 2024)
- ↑ UMass Lowell ADVANCE, Sue J. Kim
- ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 Angkor Dance Troupe, Sue J. Kim, Ph.D. (2020)
- ↑ UMass Lowell, Southeast Asian Digital Archive (SEADA)
- ↑ Southeast Asian Digital Archive, Oral History Project, 2019 onward
- ↑ 8.0 8.1 8.2 UMass Lowell, Center for Asian American Studies, Research