New York University

John Kuo Wei Tchen is a historian and cultural activist. Since 1975, he has been studying interethnic and interracial relations of Asians and Americans, helping to build cultural organizations, and exploring how inquiry in the humanities and society can help deepen the quality of public life and policy. His teaching and research interests include cross-cultural and community studies; New York City history; Asians in the Americas; race, colonialism, and museums; dialogic theory; and radical pedagogy. Professor Tchen is the founding Director of the A/P/A (Asian/Pacific/American) Studies Program and Institute at New York University. Before coming to NYU, he was Director of the Asian/American Center at Queens College of the City University of New York, an Associate Professor in the Department of Urban Studies at Queens College, and a member of the Ph.D. faculty in sociology at the Graduate Center (CUNY). His most recent book, New York Before Chinatown (1999), is about orientalism and the formation of American identity in 19th-century New York City. He has also authored Genthe's Photographs of San Francisco's Old Chinatown (1984), which won an American Book Award (Before Columbus Foundation). In 1980, he cofounded the Museum of Chinese in America (New York City), which recently reopened at a new location designed by Maya Lin. He works on a range of exhibits, films, radio, and other public humanities projects, including a new report on Asian/Pacific American issues in U.S. higher education published by the College Board. He is currently working on a book about the unrecognized tradition that makes New York City a great place. In 1991, he was awarded the Charles S. Frankel Prize (now the National Humanities Medal) from the National Endowment for the Humanities, and in 1993, he received the City of New York Mayor's Award of Honor for Arts and Culture. In 1999, he was named one of the "A 100 List" for A Magazine's list of the 100 most influential Asian Americans in the past decade.