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Assistant Professor
Office: Herter 633
Telephone: (413) 545-6762
Fax: (413) 545-6137
E-mail: rtchu@history.umass.edu
Degree: Ph.D., University of Southern California (2003).
Field(s) of interest: Philippine Colonial History, Pacific Empires, Modern Chinese History, Chinese Diaspora, Asian-Pacific America
Research Interests and Professional Activities:
Richard Chu's main research focuses on the Chinese diaspora, in particular, on the Chinese and the Chinese mestizos in the Philippines from the 19th century to the present. His first book manuscript "'Catholic,' 'Sangley,' 'Mestizo': Negotiating Ethnic Identities in the Philippines, 1870-1925" examines the social, business, and religious lives of Chinese-mestizo families as a way to implicate the hegemonic practices of the U.S. empire and Chinese and Filipino nationalisms in effacing the Chinese from the nationalist historiography of the Philippines.
His second book project, an offshoot from his first, is called "Building a Nation, Effacing a Race: The Making and Unmaking of Filipino and Chinese Identities in the Philippines," and for which he received a University Faculty Research Grant. He also received a grant from the Institute of Asian American Studies at UMass Boston to do research on the Filipino-Americans in Boston/ Massachusetts.
His publications include "Rethinking the Chinese Mestizos of the Philippines"(Centre for the Study of the Chinese Southern Diaspora, The Australian National University 2002), "The 'Chinese' and 'Mestizos' of the Philippines: Towards a New Interpretation" (Philippine Studies Journal 2002), and "Guilt Trip to China" (University of California Press 2001). He received the Young China Scholars Award given by the China Times Cultural Foundation in 2000, and his research has been funded by various fellowships such as the Chin-Ben See Memorial Fund, the Ahmanson Foundation, and Centre For Intercultural Studies at University of Santo Tomás (Manila).
While he was the China Project Associate of the Stanford Program on International and Cross-Cultural Program, he wrote several curriculum units on Chinese history and civilization for grades 6-12 teachers. He currently holds a Five-College post in Pacific Empires, and is chair of the Five College Asian-Pacific American Studies Program (Fall 2006; co-chair Spring 2007). He teaches courses on Pacific empires, Philippine colonial history, Asian American history, the Chinese diaspora, and world history.
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