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Ellen Wu
Associate Professor of History, Indiana University Bloomington
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Ellen Wu
Associate Professor of History, Indiana University Bloomington
AREAS OF EXPERTISE
AREAS OF TEACHING
Asian American history, US immigration history
PUBLIC ENGAGEMENT
BIO
Ellen D. Wu, Ph.D., is Associate Professor of History and Director of the Asian American Studies program at Indiana University Bloomington. As an historian of the modern United States, she researches, teaches, and write about race and immigration in American life. Her multiple-award winning first book is The Color of Success: Asian Americans and the Origins of the Model Minority (Princeton University Press, 2014). Dr. Wu’s work has been featured in a variety of scholarly and public-facing platforms, including Modern American History, goop,Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, NPR’s Code Switch, TIME, TruTV’s comedy show Adam Ruins Everything, and the new PBS documentary series Asian Americans. She is currently writing Overrepresented: The Surprising History of Asian Americans and Racial Justice (forthcoming, Princeton University Press)
EXTENDED PROFILE
Ellen D. Wu, Ph.D., is Associate Professor of History and Director of the Asian American Studies program at Indiana University Bloomington. As an historian of the modern United States, she researches, teaches, and write about race and immigration in American life. Her first book, The Color of Success: Asian Americans and the Origins of the Model Minority (Princeton University Press, 2014) received the First Book Award and an Honorable Mention for the Theodore Saloutos Book Award from the Immigration and Ethnic History Society along with the History Book Award from the Association for Asian American Studies.
Dr. Wu’s work has been featured in a variety of scholarly and public-facing platforms, including Modern American History, goop, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, NPR’s Code Switch, TIME, TruTV’s comedy show Adam Ruins Everything, and the new PBS documentary series Asian Americans.
Her research has been supported with fellowships from the Ford Foundation, National Endowment for the Humanities, the University of Texas at Austin’s Institute for Historical Studies, and the University of Chicago’s Center for the Study of Race, Politics, and Culture. For this 2020-2021 academic year, Wu is a Ford Foundation Senior Fellow.
She is currently writing Overrepresented: The Surprising History of Asian Americans and Racial Justice (forthcoming, Princeton University Press), a deep dive into the history of how “minority” rights have both strengthened and fractured ties between Asian Americans and other people of color—and divided the Asian American community itself
Dr. Wu serves on the Indiana Advisory Committee to the United States Commission on Civil Rights, the board of the Immigration and Ethnic History Society, and Bloomington Indiana’s Immigration Justice Task Force. She is a founding member of the new Indiana chapter of the National Asian Pacific American Women’s Forum. In 2017, the Indiana Minority Business Magazine named her a “Champion of Diversity.”
RESEARCH
2020 “Overrepresentation: Asian Americans and the Conundrums of Statistical Mirroring,” invited essay, in Difference Without Domination, eds. Danielle Allen and Rohini Somanathan (University of Chicago Press).
2019 “It’s Time To Center War in U.S. Immigration History,” invited “Soapbox” feature essay, Modern American History 2, no. 2 (July 2019): 215-235.
2014 The Color of Success: Asian Americans and the Origins of the Model Minority, Princeton University Press, in the series “Politics and Society in Modern America.”
AWARDS
2020-2021 Ford Foundation Senior Fellowship , 2015-2015 National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship, 2015 Immigration and Ethnic History Society First Book Award , 2015 Immigration and Ethnic History Society Theodore Saloutos Memorial Book Award, Finalist
INTERVIEWS
goop, “The Complex History—and Ongoing Realities—of the ‘Model Minority’ Stereotype,” July 9, 2020.
Factually! with Adam Conover, “The Model Minority Myth,” October 30, 2019.
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