Associate Professor
Ph.D., University of Colorado at Boulder
Research and Teaching Interests
- Asian American Studies
literature, film, popular culture - Citizenship Studies
neoliberal political economy, biopolitics, labor - Feminist Cultural and Media Studies
work, women’s health, consumer culture, postfeminist/postracial discourse - Feminist Theory
affect, gender, intersectionality, labor, reproductive justice, human rights - Literary Studies
contemporary women’s literature, genre, popular literary and visual culture - Medical Humanities
literature and visual culture of health, disability, care, philanthropy, illness - Transnational Studies
activism, labor, global public health, globalization, media
Selected Publications
Books (monographs)
- Asian American Women’s Popular Literature: Feminizing Genres and Neoliberal Belonging. Temple University Press, 2014.
- Women’s Labors: Postfeminist Fictions of Fertility, Family, and Domesticity, in progress.
Edited Volumes
- Contemporary Asian American Literature and Popular Visual Culture: New Reading and Teaching Practices, Special Issue Guest Editor, Asian American Literature: Discourses and Pedagogies 5.1 (2014).
Book Chapters and Articles
- “Neoliberal Maternal Discourse, Tiger Mothers, and Asian American Mother-Daughter Narrative,” Mothering in East Asian Communities: Politics and Practices. Patti Duncan and Gina Wong, eds. Demeter Press, 2014. 95–118.
- “What Julia Knew: Domestic Labor in the Recession-Era Chick Flick,” Gendering the Recession: Media and Culture in an Age of Austerity. Diane Negra and Yvonne Tasker, eds. Duke University Press, 2014. 107–135.
- “Romancing the Self and Negotiating Consumer Citizenship in Asian American Labor Lit,” Contemporary Women’s Writing 8.1 (March 2014): 17–35.
- “Traveling the Distances of Karen Tei Yamashita’s Fiction: A Review Essay on Yamashita Scholarship and Transnational Studies.” Asian American Literature: Discourses & Pedagogies 1 (Spring 2010): 6–15.
- “Buying Up Baby: Modern Feminine Subjectivity, Assertions of ‘Choice,’ and the Repudiation of Reproductive Justice in Postfeminist Unwanted Pregnancy Films,” Feminist Media Studies 9.4 (Dec. 2009): 209–225.
- “Representing Korean American Female Subjects, Negotiating Multiple Americas, and Reading Beyond the Ending in Ronyoung Kim’s Clay Walls,” Recovered Legacies: Authority and Identity in Early Asian American Literature, Floyd Cheung and Keith Lawrence, eds. Temple University Press, 2005. 265–293.
- “Intercollegiate Web Pedagogy: Possibilities and Limitations of Virtual Asian American Studies,” with John Cheng and Karen Chow, Asian.America.Net, Rachel C. Lee and Sau-Ling Cynthia Wong, eds. Routledge, 2003. 193–212.
Contact Dr. Thoma
pthoma@wsu.edu
509-335-4382
Avery 455
Past Courses
- Amer_St 524
- Amer_St 527
- Amer_St 590
- Women_St 101
- Women_St 120
- Women_St 200
- Women_St 300
- Women_St/Engl 309
- Women_St 338
- Women_St 406
- Women_St 481