Nayan Shah

Nayan Shah is Professor of American Studies and Ethnicity at University of Southern California. He received his doctoral degree in history at the University of Chicago and previously worked as a professor of history at University of California, San Diego and Binghamton University.

Nayan Shah
Education	Ph.D. History, University of Chicago, 1995 M.A. History, University of Chicago, 1990 B.A. History, Economics and Religion, Swarthmore College, 1988
Occupation	Professor of American Studies and Ethnicity at University of Southern California Professor, University of California, San Diego, 2012- Associate Professor, University of California, San Diego, 2000-2012 Assistant Professor, Binghamton University, 1995-2000

Research and Teaching

Shah's research and teaching focuses on the struggles over state authority in relation to the politics of race and gender. His research is most well known for its reconceptualization of how racial meanings are constituted through the articulations of gender and sexuality in state politics and culture.

Shah's first book, Contagious Divides: Epidemics and Race in San Francisco's Chinatown, examined the history of San Francisco Chinatown through the prism of public health and policy. It won the Association of Asian American Studies History Book Prize in 2002.[1]

In Stranger Intimacy: Contesting Race, Sexuality, and the Law in the North American West, Shah explored the contestations over the meanings of state power and citizenship through the social relationships that arose among South Asian migrants in northwestern United States and Canada in the twentieth century. "Stranger Intimacy" received the American Historical Association Pacific Branch Norris and Carol Hundley Award for Most Distinguished Book on any historical subject.[2]

In his 2005 article in American Quarterly, Between "Oriental Depravity" and "Natural Degenerates": Spatial Borderlands and the Making of Ordinary Americans, Shah reveals the instability of 1920's Californian American normative masculinity through an investigation of "the social interactions between white adolescent males and Asian migrants."[3]

Shah currently serves as editor for the GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian and Gay Studies.[4]

References

1. Wu, Judy Tzu-Chun. "Journal of Asian American Studies 6.2 (2003) 209-210". Project Muse. Retrieved 15 December 2014.
2. Shah, Nayan (2011). Stranger Intimacy: Contesting Race, Sexuality, and the Law in the North American West. Berkeley: University of California Press. Retrieved 29 December 2012.
3. Shah, Nayan (2005-10-10). "Between "Oriental Depravity" and "Natural Degenerates": Spatial Borderlands and the Making of Ordinary Americans". American Quarterly. 57 (3): 703–725. doi:10.1353/aq.2005.0053. ISSN 1080-6490.
4. Shah, Nayan. "University of Southern California Faculty Profile". Retrieved 29 December 2012.