Amy Sueyoshi
Amy Sueyoshi
(
She/They
)
Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs
Office Hours:
Bio:
Amy Sueyoshi is Provost and Vice President of Academic Affairs at San Francisco State University. She previously served as dean of the College of Ethnic Studies at the same institution, the first and longest standing college of its kind. She is a historian by training with an undergraduate degree from Barnard College and a Ph.D. from University of California at Los Angeles. Her research area lies at the intersection of Asian American Studies and Queer Studies. She has authored two monographs Queer Compulsions: Race, Nation, and Sexuality in the Affairs of Yone Noguchi and Discriminating Sex: White Leisure and the Making of the American “Oriental.” Her essay “Breathing Fire: Remembering Asian Pacific American Activism in Queer History” was a part of the award-winning National Park Service LGBT Theme Study published in 2017. A survey by the same title will be coming out with University of Washington Press in December 2026. Amy is also a founding co-curator of the GLBT History Museum, seeded the intergenerational Dragon Fruit Oral History Project at API Equality Northern California, and is the co-founder of the biennial Queer History Conference hosted by the Committee on LGBT History. She is the recipient of numerous awards including the Clio Award for their contribution to queer history, San Francisco Pride Community Grand Marshal, and the Phoenix Award for her service to the Asian and Pacific Islander queer women and transgender community.
Selected Awards and Grants
Paul E. Buchanan Award for Excellence in Field Work, Interpretation, and Public Service, Vernacular Architecture Forum, 2018.
APIQWTC Phoenix Award, 2018.
San Francisco Pride Community Grand Marshal, 2017.
Organization of American Historians’ Summer Residency in Japan, 2014.
Houston Distinguished Visiting Professor, 2014.
Willie Walker Award for Community Service, GLBT Historical Society, 2013.
Peg Brand Distinguished Lecturer, Indiana University, 2013.
UCLA Institute of American Cultures Postdoctoral Fellow, 2007-2008.
Huntington Library Mayers Fellow, 2006-2007.
Social Science Research Council JSPS Postdoctoral Research Fellowship, 2005.
Visiting Scholar, Research Center for Human Rights, Osaka City University, July 2003.
Japan Foundation Language Program for Researchers, Six-month course, 2003.
George and Sakaye Aratani Graduate Fellowship, 1999, 2001.
Project 88, University fellowship with stipend and tuition remission, 1996-2000.
Selected Community Work
2017 San Francisco Pride Grand Marshal
Short Documentary on Grand Marshals
Three-minute Documentary on Amy Sueyoshi
GLBT Historical Society and GLBT History Museum
Founding Co-curator of GLBT History Museum, 2008.
Board of Directors Co-chair, 2009-2012.
Board of Directors, 2007-2013.
Program Committee Co-chair, 2009-2010.
Videos Promoting the GLBT Historical Society and GLBT History Museum
News Up Now: Uncensored Pillow Talk
Fortieth Anniversary of San Francisco Pride
APIQWTC (Asian Pacific Islander Queer Women and Transgender Community)
Phoenix Committee Chair, 2016 - 2018
Dragon Fruit Historical Preservation Project Founder and Director, 2011- 2012.
Scholarship Program Founder and Committee Chair, 2007-2014.
Videos Promoting APIQWTC
API Equality (Asian Pacific Islander Equality Northern California)
Dragon Fruit Oral History Project Founder and Adviser, 2012-present.
Dragon Fruit Historical Preservation and Oral History Project
Asian Pacific Islander queer women and transgender activist history from the 1970s and 1980s is at risk of being lost. No archive actively collects their materials and queer elders in the community are approaching their seventies. Dragon Fruit Project trains volunteers to collect and record their own community's history, deposit collected materials and recorded oral histories at the GLBT Historical Society archive, and exhibit their activism at the GLBT History Museum in the Castro District of San Francisco as a significant first step in preserving their history.
Publications
Books
Discriminating Sex: White Leisure and the Making of the American “Oriental,” (Champaign, University of Illinois Press, 2018)
In the late 1890s, “wide and open” San Francisco appeared to be a place where men and women could configure their intimate lives in expansive and unconventional ways. Yet as whites explored and enacted new norms of romance and womanhood, increasing freedoms would be less accessible for Asians in America. Discriminating Sex details how middle class white expansion of their own gender and sexual norms conflated Chinese and Japanese - initially seen as two distinct races - and formed the pan-Asian “Oriental,” a deeply sexual racialized stereotype, more than a hundred years ago.
Scheduled Readings
Sonoma State University, Queer Studies Lecture Series, February 12, 2018
Woodbury University, Cabaret Volatire, April 5, 2018
GLBT History Museum, April 12, 2018
University of Toronto Centre of Sexual Diversity, April 23, 2018
Read about Discriminating Sex in SFSU news and Instinct Magazine.
Listen to the author talk about Discriminating Sex at New Books Network and KPFA's Against the Grain.
See also Uncensored Pillow Talk!
Queer Compulsions: Race, Nation, and Sexuality in the Affairs of Yone Noguchi (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2012)
Introduction reprinted in Journal of Transnational American Studies 4, no. 1 (2012), available at http://escholarship.org/uc/acgcc_jtas.
Poet Yone Noguchi, more famously as known as the father of acclaimed artist Isamu Noguchi, enmeshed himself in several duplicitous affairs at the turn of the century. As Yone wrote passionate letters of love to western writer Charles Warren Stoddard, he proposed marriage to Alabama’s first historian Ethel Armes and impregnated editor Léonie Gilmour. Private fantasies and frustrated intimacies attest to how even the most seemingly selfish acts of sexuality are bound up in socio-cultural norms.
Queer Compulsions in Hyphen Magazine: Asian American Unabridged
Selected Articles, Essays, and Edited Collections
“Jendā, shakaiundō, soshite rezubianu de arukoto ni tsuite” ジェンダー、社会運動、そしてレズアンであるおことについて [Gender, Activism, and Sexuality], Okinawa Jendāgaku 沖縄ジェンダー学 [Okinawa Gender Studies], ed. Ikue Kina (Tōkyō: Ōtsuki Shoten, 2016): 177-208.
“What Western History Means to Me,” Western Historical Association Newsletter: Special Issue – Queer History in the West (Spring 2013): 25-28.
“InnovAsian in Pornography: Asian American Masculinity and the Porno Revolution,” in 21st Century Sexualities: Contemporary Issues in Health, Education and Rights, ed. Gilbert Herdt and Cymene Howe (New York: Routledge, 2007), 78-80.
Guest Editor, Amerasia Journal- Special Issue: Asian Americans and the Marriage Equality Debate 32, no.1 (2006).
To be reprinted in Contingent Maps: Rethinking the North American West and Western Women’s History (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2014), in press.
“Sexuality and Asian Pacific Islander History,” Asian Pacific American Collective History Project, 2004 [online]; available from http://apachp.net/; Internet.
Opinion-Editorials
“For a More Queer-Friendly Japanese America,” Nichi Bei Weekly, 29 July 2010 – 4 August 2010, p. 2.
“Threat to Asians,” San Francisco Chronicle, 21 April 2010, p. A15, http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/04/21/ED461D26VA.DTL
Works in Progress
Queer Asian Pacific Islander History: An Introduction
While Asian Pacific American history and queer history have grown tremendously as disciplinary fields, queer Asian Pacific Islanders remain strangely absent despite their more than 150-year presence in America. This textbook project synthesizes existing works in queer API studies across disciplines to craft a narrative that underscores the central role of API queers in the making of a modern gay American identity in the 19th century and in the activation of radical social movements in the 20th century.
Presentations
Selected Conference Papers
“Queer Contortions: New Directions in the History of Race, Sexuality, and the Body,” paper presented at annual meeting for the American Historical Association, Washington, D.C., 2018.
“Reading Against the Grain: Doing Western LGBTQ History,” paper to be presented at annual meeting for the Western History Association, San Diego, CA, 2017.
“Orgies, Manservants, and Mess Hall Workers: Asian American Homos, 1900-1950.” Panel Chair and accepted paper presentation at annual meeting for the American Historical Association – Pacific Coast Branch, Waikoloa, HI, 2016.
“Sexing the Border: Embodied Transnationalism and the Performance of Gender.” Panel Chair and paper presented at annual meeting for the Association for Asian American Studies, Chicago, IL, 2015.
“Radicalizing Higher Education.” Panel Chair and paper presented at summit of Association of Public Land Grant Universities – Commission on Access, Diversity, and Excellence, Boston, MA, 2014.
“Outlaws and Outliers: Queering Movements beyond Liberal Reform.” Paper presented at annual meeting of the Association for Asian American Studies, San Francisco, CA, 2014.
“Managing Masculinity: Morality, Degeneracy, and the Creation of an Asian America,” Paper presented at annual meeting of the Organization of American Historians, Atlanta, GA, 2014.
“Queer Love and Anxiety.” Paper presented at annual meeting of the National Women Studies Association, San Francisco, CA, 2012.
“Reconsidering Race, Nation, and Sexuality in the Affairs of Yone Noguchi: Conversations with Queer Compulsions Author Amy Sueyoshi.” Roundtable at annual meeting of Association for Asian American Studies, Washington, D.C., 2012.
“Longing to Belong: Queer Sexuality and Citizenship in San Francisco.” Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Studies Association, Washington, D.C., 2009.
“The Right to Sexual Orientation.” Comments presented at SFSU Rights Conference, San Francisco, CA 2009.
“Striking Back at the Empire: Radicalizing Asian American Studies from the Margins.” Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Asian American Studies Association, Honolulu, HI, 2009.
“Homo-Coming: Sexuality, Race, and Intimacy in the Japanese Writings of Yone Noguchi.” Paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Historical Association, Washington, D.C., 2008.
“Race-ing Love: The Meaning of Intimacy Among Yone Noguchi’s Interracial Affairs.” Paper presented at the annual meeting of the Asian American Studies Association, New York City, NY, 2007.
“The Problem of Ethnic Studies: New and Not-So-New Directions in the Field.” Panel Co-Chair and paper presented at the annual meeting of the National American Ethnic Studies, San Francisco, CA, 2006.
Selected Invited Talks
Panelist, “Queer History and Race: A State of the Field Roundtable,” Roundtable at the annual meeting of Organization of American Historians, Sacramento, CA, April 2018.
Speaker, “Diversity Matters and Matters of Diversity: Women in Higher Education,” University of the Ryukus, Nishihara, Japan, August 2017.
Panelist, “Queer Scholars and Scholarship on the Job Market,” Roundtable at the annual meeting of American Historical Association, Denver, CO, January 2017.
Speaker, “Career Design and Gender,” University of the Ryukus, Nishihara, Japan, July 2015.
Panelist, “Curating Activism in LGBT History,” Plenary panel at the annual meeting of American Library Association, San Francisco, CA, June 2015.
Panelist, “Ethnic Studies Congress,” Plenary panel at the annual meeting of the National Association for Ethnic Studies, Mills College, Oakland, CA, April 2014.
Panelist, “Disciplines of Desire and Identity -- Exploring Queer & Asian-American Scholarship,” Princeton University, Princeton, NJ, April 2014.
Panelist, “Queer Labor Matters: Roundtable on Jobs and Careers for LGBTQ Historians,” Roundtable at annual meeting of the Organization of American Historians, Atlanta, GA, April 2014.
Panelist, "Queer Rebels: Asian American Activists and Artists," San Francisco, CA, May 2013.
Panelist, “Beyond Bigotry: Understanding DOMA, Prop 8, and the Queer Rights Movement,” Pomona College, Claremont, CA, April 2013.
Panelist, “Queer Compulsions,” American Anthropological Association, San Francisco, CA, November 2012.
Speaker, “Meaning and Method of History,” Queer Ancestors Project – Chrysalis Print Studio, San Francisco, CA, November 2012.
Speaker, “Fortieth Anniversary,” San Francisco Pride Main Stage, San Francisco, CA, June 2010
Panelist, “Comments on Still Black: A Portrait of Black Transmen,” Frameline 33, San Francisco, CA, June 2009.
Panelist, “Future of LGBT Activism,” annual meeting for National Council for Research on Women, New York City, NY, June 2009.
Keynote Speaker, “Miss Morning Glory is not Transgender,” Asian American Sexualities Conference, Center for the Study of Race, Politics, and Culture, University of Chicago, Chicago, IL, March 2009.
Keynote Speaker, “Managing Whiteness in the Classroom: A Few Practical Tools,” Saint Ignatius College Preparatory In-service Training, San Francisco, CA, October 2008.
Keynote Speaker, “Storying the Silences, Filling in the Pages,” Cal Queer and Asian Conference, University of California at Berkeley, Berkeley, CA May 2008.
Lecturer in Japanese, “Homo-coming,” Osaka Ichiritsu Daigaku Jinken Mondai Kenkyū Sentā, Osaka, Japan, August 2005.
Panelist, “Asian American On-Screen Sexuality Panel,” Visual Communications Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film and Video Festival 2004, Los Angeles, CA, May 1, 2004.
Lecturer, “Mindful Masquerades: Que(e)rying Japanese Immigrant Dress in Turn-of-the-Century San Francisco,” Women’s Studies Lecture Series, San Francisco State University, San Francisco, CA, February 4, 2004.
Lecturer in Japanese, “Noguchi Yonejirō ni Okeru ‘love,’ ” Osaka Ichiritsu Daigaku Jinken Mondai Kenkyū Sentā, Osaka, Japan, July 2003.
Lecturer in Japanese, “Kokoro ni Shiteno Masukarēdo,” Kindai Jyoseishi Kenkyūkai, Kyoto, Japan, July 2003.