Campus Directory

Division Humanities Division

Department/ College/ Unit Critical Race and Ethnic Studies
Literature Department

Title Professor

Affiliation Faculty

Other UCSC Campus Affiliation East Asian Studies
Feminist Studies Department
History of Art/Visual Culture
Cowell College
Legal Studies

Faculty Type Regular Faculty

Web Site

Office Hours for Students/ Office Hours By Zoom appt.

Mail Stop Humanities Academic Services

Summary of Expertise

Christine Hong is Professor of Critical Race and Ethnic Studies (CRES) and Literature at UC Santa Cruz where she organized alongside students for ethnic studies and served as the founding chair of CRES. She directs the Center for Racial Justice at UC Santa Cruz, serves on the board of directors of the Korea Policy Institute, an independent research and educational institute, and sits on the Ethnic Studies Council at the University of California. She is a core member of the Ending the Korean War Teaching Collective and the Institute for the Critical Study of Zionism. In greater Santa Cruz, she organizes with Pajaro Valley for Ethnic Studies and Justice and serves on the board of Santa Cruz Black. Her book, A Violent Peace: Race, Militarism, and Cultures of Democratization in Cold War Asia and the Pacific, was published by Stanford University Press in 2020.

Research Interests

Transnational Asian American literature and cultural criticism

African American literature 

Black radicalism

Comics studies

Critical ethnic studies

Critical Korean studies

Critical university studies

Korean diaspora 

Political education and liberationist pedagogies

Radical legacies of human rights

Third World solidarity

U.S. war and empire studies

Awards, Honors and Grants

Select Awards and Honors

2026-27 Mentorship/Service Impact Award, Committee on Career Advising, UC Santa Cruz

2025 Angela Y. Davis Award for Public Scholarship, American Studies Association

2024 Inspirator Award, Resource Center for Nonviolence, Santa Cruz

2022 Mary C. Turpie Prize, American Studies Association

2022 Book Award for Outstanding Achievement in Literary Studies, Association for Asian American Studies 

2015-16 American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS) Fellowship

2015 Excellence in Teaching Award, Committee on Teaching, UC Santa Cruz

2012-13 Institute for Humanities Research Fellowship, UC Santa Cruz

2011-12 UC Santa Cruz Hellman Fellow, Hellman Family Foundation, San Francisco

2011 Chancellor’s Achievement Award for Diversity, UC Santa Cruz

2009 Julien Mezey Dissertation Award, Association for the Study of Law, Culture, and the Humanities

2008-12 Korea Policy Institute Fellow, Korea Policy Institute, Los Angeles, CA

2007-09 Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellowship, UC Berkeley

Selected Publications

Santa Cruz in Color: A Local Ethnic Studies Archive, https://santacruzincolor.org/in-print/, vol. 1 (Fall 2025): 32 pages

Guest editor, White Terror, “Red” Island: A People’s Archive of the Jeju 4.3 Uprising and Massacre. Forum of The Abusable Past 5 (2021).

A Violent Peace: Race, U.S. Militarism, and Cultures of Democratization in Cold War Asia and the Pacific (Stanford University Press, 2020).

Co-editor along with Neda Atanasoski, No Liberation in Isolation. Inaugural digital issue of Critical Asian Studies 6:1 (2020): https://manifold.umn.edu/projects/ces-0601.

Guest editor along with Henry Em (Yonsei University), The Unending Korean War. Special issue of positions: asia critique 23:4 (2015).

Primary editor, The 70th Anniversary of the U.S. Division of the Korean Peninsula: A People’s History. Special Korea Policy Institute and The Asia-Pacific Journal joint series (2015).

Guest editor along with Hazel Smith (SOAS), Reframing North Korean Human Rights. Thematic issue of Critical Asian Studies 45:4 and 46:1 (2013-2014).

Selected Recordings

UC Ethnic Studies Council, The Lower Frequencies podcast, https://www.iheart.com/podcast/1333-the-lower-frequencies-272541389/

Courses Radical History of the Korean War
Demilitarizing the University
The Nuclear Pacific
Los Angeles 1992
Race, Labor, and Migration
The Black Pacific
Divided Memories in the Cold War Pacific Rim
Ethnic Studies in Theory, Praxis, and History
Human Rights in Theory: Racial Justice, Revolutionary Violence, and Decolonization
Race and Comics