Karen Kuo’s research and expert range includes literary and cinematic studies and social and cultural theories of race, gender and sexuality. Her book, East is West and West is East: Gender, Culture, and Interwar Encounters between Asia and America. Temple University Press (November, 2012) examines the geopolitical imaginaries of US orientalism in film and literature during the interwar period. Her two current projects include an edited anthology on Taiwanese Americans, Remembering the Beautiful Island: Critically Considering Transnational Taiwanese/America, and a monograph on representations and discourses of reproduction and mental illness through Asian/American women’s narratives.

Kuo is an associate professor in the School of Social Transformation.