Justin Phan, PhD
Assistant Professor
Global Asian Studies
Contact
Building & Room:
1022 UH
Address:
601 S. Morgan St.
Office Phone:
Email:
About
Justin Quang Nguyên Phan is an Assistant Professor in Global Asian Studies at the University of Illinois, Chicago. His research and teaching interests are in Global Asias, critical ethnic and race studies, feminist theories and epistemologies, queer diaspora, critiques of empire and militarism, and visual culture.
His current book manuscript, Embodied Nonalignment: Vietnamese Diasporic Aesthetics and Cold War Mediations, aims to theorize how Vietnamese diasporic cultural productions refract Cold War legacies through diasporic genealogies of nonalignment. By looking at mobilizations of Global Asias, settler colonialism in Southeast Asia, Afro-Asian connections, and critical refugee studies, Embodied Nonalignment employs visual and performance analysis, interviews, and archival research to demonstrate how Vietnamese and Vietnamese diasporic artists unsettle Cold War, colonial, and postcolonial nationalist frameworks in favor of the everyday calls for freedom and liberation.
Before joining UIC, Justin received their PhD from the Department of Ethnic Studies and MA from the SEATRiP Program (Southeast Asia: Texts, Rituals, and Performance) at the University of California, Riverside. He was also a McNair Scholar at University of California, Davis where he earned his BA in Women’s and Gender Studies, Asian American Studies, and Sociology.
Their work has been supported by a Foreign Language and Area Studies scholarship at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, as well as by the Center for Ideas and Society at UC Riverside and the Critical Refugee Studies Collective. He has an essay published in an exhibition catalog with the RAW Material Company about Tuấn Andrew Nguyễn’s installation art, and a forthcoming essay with Asian Diasporic Visual Cultures in the Americas.
Education
Doctor of Philosophy Ethnic Studies, 2021
University of California, Riverside
Masters of Arts Southeast Asian Studies, 2018
University of California, Riverside
Masters of Arts Ethnic Studies, 2018
University of California, Riverside
Bachelor of Arts with Honors, 2015
University of California, Davis
Women and Gender Studies, Asian American Studies, Sociology