Angelina Chin

Professor of History; On leave for the 2024-2025 academic year
With Pomona Since: 2006
  • Expertise

    Expertise

    Angelina Chin’s teaching and research interests revolve around the themes of colonialism, political movements, diaspora, feminism, sexuality, and disability in modern East Asia. Her research focuses on the social histories of marginal people, identities and citizenship, as well as transregional networks in Hong Kong, Taiwan, China and Japan.

    In her first book, Bound to Emancipate: Working Women and Urban Citizenship in Early Twentieth-Century China and Hong Kong (2012), Chin explores the concept of “women’s emancipation” in early 20th-century South China and how lower-class women were both liberated and constrained by the social and political discourses on what women should become. In her second monograph, Unsettling Exiles: Chinese Migrants in Hong Kong and the Southern Periphery During the Cold War (2023), she argues that Hong Kong identity emerged from the collective trauma of exile and dislocation, as well as a sense of being on the margins of both the Communist and Nationalist Chinese regimes during the Cold War. You can read about this project in this interview.

    She is currently working on two projects on disability. One is about the blind workers' labor movements in Hong Kong since the 1960s. The other is a multimedia project on assistive technologies and devices for people with disabilities. She has collaborated with social scientists and engineers in Japan, including the Institute of Ars Vivendi at Ritsumeikan University, the Advanced Telecommunications Research Institute International (ATR), and the Department of Robotics at the Osaka Institute of Technology (OIT). You can read about some of her teaching collaborations.

    Research Interests

    • Global China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Japan
    • Migration and diaspora
    • Colonialism in East Asia
    • Citizenship
    • Gender and sexualities
    • History of technologies
    • Disability Studies
    • Political movements and activisms

    Areas of Expertise

    HISTORY

    • Modern East Asia
    • Cultural and social history
    • Gender and sexuality
    • Colonialism
    • Diaspora
    • China, Taiwan and Hong Kong
    • Disabilities in East Asia
    • Political movements in Asia
  • Work

    Work

    Unsettling Exiles: Chinese Migrants in Hong Kong and the Southern Periphery During the Cold War (NY: Columbia University Press, 2023).

    Bound to Emancipate: Working Women and Urban Citizenship in Early Twentieth-Century China and Hong Kong (MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2012).

    “Disability Rights Movement in Japan,” Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of Social and Political Movements. Wiley Blackwell Press, 2022.

    “Diasporic Memories and Conceptual Geography in Post-Colonial Hong Kong.” Modern Asian Studies, Vol.48, Issue 6, 2014.

    “Hong Kong and Diasporic China” in Border Crossing in Greater China: Production, Community and Identity. Jenn-Hwan Wang (ed.) Routledge, 2014.

    “Colonial Charity in Hong Kong: The Case of the Po Leung Kuk in the 1930s.” Journal of Women’s History 25(January 2013): 135-157.

    “Labor Stratifications and Gendered Subjectivities in the Service Industries of South China in the 1920s and 1930s: The Case of Nü Zhaodai.” Research on Women in Modern Chinese History 16 (2006) Dec. 2006: 125-178.

    “Loving Disability: ‘Patriotism’ in Postcolonial Hong Kong.” Asian Cultural Studies 34 (2008).

    Website: Assistive Technologies for People with Disabilities

  • Education

    Education

    Ph.D., History (Feminist Studies)
    University of California, Santa Cruz

    Master of Arts, History
    University of California, Santa Cruz

    Bachelor of Arts,
    University of California, Berkeley

    Recent Courses Taught

    • Chinese Diaspora
    • Writing Stories about the Body
    • Gender and Feminisms in Modern East Asia
    • Modern East Asia
    • Twentieth Century China
    • Political Movements in East Asia
    • Hong Kong and Taiwan History
    • Studying East Asian History through the Archives
  • Awards & Honors

    Awards & Honors

    • Stanford Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (CASBS) fellowship 2024-2025
    • Abe Foundation Collaborative Grant 2023-24. Title: “History and Future of Care Robots”
    • Japan Foundation Global Partnership Grant 2023-25. Title: “Sustainable Futures: Overcoming Disparities.” Co-PI and researcher (with Albert Park, Tom Le, and Seo Young Park)
    • Abe Research Fellowship 2019. Title: “Assistive Technologies for the Elderly and the Disabled in China and Japan”
    • Chiang Ching Kuo Foundation (Scholar’s Grant) 2015-16
    • Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship 2006-8