Asian American Studies Faculty

Dr. Gena Lew Gong is a Lecturer in the Department of Anthropology and the Asian American Studies Program at Fresno State. She has extensive experience working and volunteering in the Asian American and Pacific Islander community and has held numerous leadership positions, including Board President of Central California Asian Pacific Women, Executive Director of the Asian Pacific Community Fund, and Director of Public Policy & Communications for Leadership Education for Asian Pacifics (LEAP).  She is also an alumna of the Asian Pacific American Women’s Leadership Institute (APAWLI) and the Changing Faces Women’s Leadership Seminar of the East-West Center at the University of Hawaii.

In 2018, she was recognized as one of the Top Ten Professional Women by the Marjaree Mason Center in Fresno.  Gena has a Doctorate in Educational Leadership from CSU Fresno, an M.A. in Public Policy from Duke University, and a B.A. in Psychology from UC San Diego.  She enjoys practicing hula with her Hālau Hula I Ka La ‘ohana, trying out new and interesting recipes, and traveling with her husband and family to experience diverse cultures and local cuisines.

Ed.D., Educational Leadership, CSU Fresno
M.A. Public Policy, Duke University
B.A. Psychology, University of California, San Diego

Gena Gong has a wealth of nonprofit experience, holding staff leadership roles at A New Way of Life Reentry Project, Community Partners, Asian Pacific Community Fund, and Leadership Education for Asian Pacific (LEAP).

Email: ggong@csufresno.edu 

Publications
Dissertation: "Asian Americans at a Western University: An Institutional Analysis." Order No. 28026848, California State University, Fresno, 2020. 

Research Brief: "The Academic Challenges of Southeast Asians at Fresno State." California Commission on APIA Affairs.

Seng Alex Vang completed his BA in Anthropology from Stanislaus State University and MA in Ethnic Studies from UC San Diego. His areas of interests include racial and ethnic history, immigration laws and policy, and media representation. Vang has worked on several projects to preserve refugee community history and document 45 years of Hmong in America. In addition to Fresno State Asian American Studies, Vang teaches writing classes at UC Merced and in Ethnic Studies at Stanislaus State.

M.A. Ethnic Studies, University of California, San Diego

Interests: Racial and ethnic history, immigration, Asian American Studies

Email: svang@csufresno.edu | Phone: 559-473-3884

Amrit Deol is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology and the Asian American Studies Program at Fresno State. Prior to coming to Fresno State, Dr. Deol received her PhD in Interdisciplinary Humanities from the University of California, Merced. Her current book project Waves of Revolution: Interrogations of Sikh Political and Spiritual Subjectivities in Punjab and the American West, 1900-1928, explores the intellectual history of non-secular traditions in the anticolonial Ghadar Party. More broadly, she is interested in race, religion, and empire in relation to anticolonial movements in Punjab and its diaspora. A proud alumni of Fresno State herself, Deol received her Bachelors degrees in Women and Gender Studies and English in 2013. 

Publications:

Deol, Amrit. “Political Activism in the 20th Century,” The Sikh World,  (under contract).

Deol, Amrit, “The Role of Art in the Farmers’ Protest” Sikh Formations, Special Issue: Farmers’ Protest (forthcoming)

Deol, Amrit, “The Makings of a Mutiny: Exploring Diasporicity in Ghadar Party Poetry in North America,” Sikh Formations (forthcoming)

Deol, Amrit, “‘Workers and Peasants Unite’: The Formation of Kirti and the Kirti-Kisan Party and the Lasting Legacy of the Ghadar Movement, 1918-1928,” Journal of Punjab Studies, 26.1 (Spring 2019), 249-267.

Jenny Banh is an Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology and the Asian American Studies Program at Fresno State. She received a Ph.D. and M.A. degrees in Anthropology at the University of California, Riverside, an M.A. in Cultural Studies at Claremont Graduate University, and a B.A. in Anthropology at the University of California, Los Angeles. Her research has focused on Asia/Asian American studies, cultural anthropology, and Cultural Studies. Her current research examines the barriers/bridges to Southeast Asian American students, Asian restaurants, and a Hong Kong corporation. Recently she created seven ASAM courses and an educational certificate. In her community work she has conducted, coded and transcribed over 40 oral histories of Southeast Asian Americans who live in Central Valley. She also recently co-edited and contributed to American Chinese Restaurants Society, Culture and Consumption (Routledge 2019) which had a co-hosted webinar event.

Interests: Labor, Transnational corporations, Student Success, Diversity in Higher Education, Asian/Asian Americans

Email: jenbanh@csufresno.edu 

Publications:

Banh, Jenny and Melissa King. (2017). Anthropology of Los Angeles: Places and Agency in an Urban Setting. Lanham: Lexington Books.

Banh, Jenny and Haiming Liu. (2020). American Chinese Restaurants: Society, Culture and Consumption. Abingdon, Oxon; New York, NY: Routledge.

Banh, Jenny. “I Have an Accent in Every Language I Speak!”: Shadow History of One Chinese Family’s Multigenerational Transnational Migrations. Genealogy 2019, 3, 36." Genealogy (Basel) 4, no. 96 (2020): 96.

Franklin Ng is a Professor Emeritus of Anthropology and Asian American Studies. He is the editor of the Asian American Encyclopedia (1995), author of Taiwanese Americans (1998), and the coauthor of Asian American Issues (2004). He is also the editor of the Routledge series, Studies in Asian Americans: Reconceptualizing Culture, History, and Politics. From 2004 to 2006, he served as president of the Association of Asian American Studies. He currently serves on the editorial board of the Amerasia Journal, The Journal of American Ethnic History, and Chinese America: History and Perspectives, and was the former editor of the Journal of American-East Asian Relations.

Yang Sao Xiong is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology and the Asian American Studies Program. His research examines the racial and political incorporation of immigrants in the U.S., particularly how immigrant and refugee groups seek inclusion and influence in American society by interacting with the U.S. political system. His new book, Immigrant Agency: Hmong American Movements and the Politics of Racialized Incorporation (Rutgers University Press, 2022) examines Hmong former refugees’ grassroots movements in the United States between the 1990s and 2000s and shows how despite being one of America’s most economically impoverished ethnic groups, Hmong Americans were able to make sustained claims on and have their interests represented in public policies. Xiong is currently working on a book-length project on Hmong Americans in the Central Valley. He was a co-guest editor of the special issue on Hmong American and Diaspora Studies: Perspectives and Prospects (2019) published in the UCLA Amerasia Journal. He completed his BA in sociology and Asian American Studies from the University of California, Davis, and obtained a Ph.D. in sociology from
UCLA.

Isabella (Izzy) Lo is a Lecturer in the Department of Anthropology, Department of English, and ASAM lecturer at Fresno State.

Email: izzy.lo@mail.fresnostate.edu

Chai Phannaphob is a Lecturer in the Department of Literacy, Early, Bilingual and Special Education and ASAM lecturer at Fresno State.

Email: cphannaphob@mail.fresnostate.edu