Biography

This project is a critical ethnography focused on the experiences of a community in the Philippines known as the Black Amerasians (the progeny of African American servicemen and Filipina women). Employing a range of methodologies—including autoethnography, visual ethnography, and oral histories—the project is based on nine months of fieldwork centered on communities of Black Amerasians living near Angeles City and Olongapo City, home to two of the largest former American military bases and to the Philippines’ highest concentrations of Black Amerasians. It examines how members of these communities form and negotiate their identities and shape the ways in which the larger Filipino community perceives them. The first academic study to document the lives of Black Amerasians in the Philippines, the project contributes to growing body of scholarship on Blackness in the Pacific.

Post-fellowship placement: Assistant Professor of Africana Studies at Chapman University