 |
Tyrus Miller
Dean, School of Humanities Tyrus Miller is Dean of the School of Humanities at the University of California, Irvine. He brings to the position more than twenty years as an interdisciplinary scholar in the humanities; extensive administrative experience in a variety of roles from undergraduate liberal education to graduate education to institutional management; and a rich engagement with humanities research as a scholar and strategic university leader. Prior to his coming to UCI, he served as Vice Provost and Dean of Graduate Studies and as Co-Provost of Cowell College at UC Santa Cruz, and as the Director of the UC Education Abroad Program’s Study Center in Budapest, Hungary. He earned his Ph.D. in English from Stanford University, an M.A. in Creative Writing from Johns Hopkins University, and a concurrent B.A./M.A. in Humanities from Johns Hopkins. He is an internationally recognized scholar of 20th-century art, literature, and culture, with a specialization in the innovative modernist and avant-garde literary and artistic movements of Europe and the United States. In addition, he has written extensively on the art and culture of socialist and post-socialist East-Central Europe. His publications encompass diverse but interconnected interests in literature, cultural and social theory, philosophy, film studies, and visual and performing arts. He is author of Late Modernism: Politics, Fiction, and the Arts Between the World Wars; Singular Examples: Artistic Politics and the Neo-Avant-Garde; Time Images: Alternative Temporalities in 20th-Century Theory, History, and Art; and Modernism and the Frankfurt School. He has edited Given World and Time: Temporalities in Context and A Cambridge Companion to Wyndham Lewis. He is also the translator from Hungarian and editor of György Lukács, The Culture of People’s Democracy: Hungarian Essays on Literature, Art, and Democratic Transition and series co-editor of Brill Publisher’s Lukács Library series. |
 |
Nasrin Rahimieh
Nasrin Rahimieh is Howard Baskerville Professor of Humanities in the Department of Comparative Literature. She is the Editor-in-Chief of the journal, Iranian Studies. At UC Irvine, she served as Maseeh Chair and Director of the Samuel Jordan Center for Persian Studies and Culture from 2006 to 2014. She served as Equity Advisor in the School of Humanities (2022-203), Director of the Humanities Core Program (2019-2022), Chair of the Department of Comparative Literature (2016-2019), and Acting Director of the Graduate Program in Culture and Theory (2015-2016). Prior to coming to UC Irvine, she was Dean of the Faculty of Humanities at McMaster University (2003-2006), Associate Dean of the Faculty of Arts at the University of Alberta (1999-2002) and President of the Association for Iranian Studies (2006-2008). She received her B.A. in French and German from Dalhousie University in 1981, MA in German also from Dalhousie University in 1983, and PhD in Comparative Literature from University of Alberta in 1988. Her teaching and research are focused on modern Persian literature, the literature of Iranian exile and diaspora, contemporary Iranian women’s writing, and post-revolution Iranian cinema. Among her publications are Iranian Culture: Representation and Identity (2015), Forugh Farrokhzad, Poet of Modern Iran: Iconic Woman and Feminine Pioneer of New Persian Poetry (2010 and 2023) co-edited with Dominic Parviz Brookshaw, Missing Persians: Discovering Voices in Iranian Cultural History (2001), the English translation of the late Taghi Modarressi’s last novel, The Virgin of Solitude (2008), and Oriental Responses to the West (1990). Her current project is on contemporary Iranian women’s literature. |
 |
Yong Chen
Yong Chen is Professor of History and Chancellor’s Fellow at UCI, where he served as the Associate Dean in the Office of Research and Graduate Studies (1999-2004). He is the author of Chop Suey, USA: The Story of Chinese Food in America (Columbia University Press, 2014); Chinese San Francisco 1850-1943 (Stanford, 2000) and The Chinese in San Francisco (Peking University Press, 2009), and co-editor of New Perspectives on American History (Hebei People’s Publishing House, 2010). He was also the co-curator of “‘Have You Eaten Yet?’: The Chinese Restaurant in America” in Atwater Kent Museum, Philadelphia (2006), and the Museum of Chinese in the Americas, New York City (2004–05). He serves on the National Landmarks Committee of the advisory board of the National Park Service of the United States. |
 |
Judy Tzu-Chun Wu
Judy Tzu-Chun Wu is a professor of Asian American studies and a Chancellor's Fellow at UCI. Her research and teaching focus on analyzing intersecting social hierarchies, such as those based on race, gender, sexuality, and citizenship. She is particularly interested in understanding how individuals form identities and navigate/protest social inequalities. She received her Ph.D. in U.S. history from Stanford University and joined the UCI faculty in 2015. She authored Dr. Mom Chung of the Fair-Haired Bastards: the Life of a Wartime Celebrity (University of California Press, 2005) (Click here to see a digital narrative about this remarkable woman);Radicals on the Road: Internationalism, Orientalism, and Feminism during the Vietnam Era (Cornell University Press, 2013). Her current book project, a collaboration with political scientist Gwendolyn Mink, explores the political career of Patsy Takemoto Mink, the first woman of color U.S. congressional representative and the namesake for Title IX. Wu also co-edited Women's America: Refocusing the Past, 8th Edition (Oxford 2015), Gendering the Trans-Pacific World (Brill 2017), and Frontiers: A Journal of Women's Studies (2012-2017). She is the current co-editor of Women and Social Movements in the United States, 1600-2000 (Alexander Street Press) and the editor for Amerasia Journal (Taylor and Francis). Wu is an award-winning mentor and teacher who utilizes oral histories and digital media to include new voices and tell stories in new formats that engage the public. |
 |
Fatimah Tobing Rony
Fatimah Tobing Rony is Professor of Film and Media Studies at the University of California, Irvine. In the Department of Film and Media Studies, she served as Director of Undergraduate Studies from 2001-2012, and as Chair of Film and Media Studies in 2005-2006, Fall of 2008, and 2019-2022. She received her BA in Art from Williams College, her Ph.D. in the History of Art from Yale University, and her MFA in Direction/Production in Film from UCLA. Her first book The Third Eye: Race, Cinema, and Ethnographic Representation (Duke University Press, 1996), winner of the 1998 Katherine Kovacs Book Award from the Society of Cinema and Media Studies, is a study of representations of the “ethnographic” in scientific and popular cinema. Her second book How Do We Look: Resisting Visual Biopolitics (Duke University Press, 2022) traces the legacy of visual biopolitics--the representation of the Indonesian woman--into the twenty-first century of globalization. As a filmmaker, Rony directed and produced thirteen films which have screened in film festivals and museums all over the world, two of which are distributed by Women Make Movies. Rony co-directed the feature film Chants of Lotus [Perempuan Punya Cerita] (2008), which was distributed and exhibited in major theaters in Indonesia. Her short animation film Annah la Javanaise was an Official Selection of the 2020 Annecy International Festival for Animated Film, in Annecy, France, and has won fifteen international film festival awards. In 2022-2023, she was an Affiliated Researcher at the University of Paris I, Panthéon/Sorbonne, in Paris, France. |
 |
Tomas Figueroa
Tomas Figueroa serves as the School of Humanities' most senior-ranking staff member, overseeing the operations of the school. Previously, he served as chief administrative officer for UCI’s Office of the Chancellor and Office of the Provost & Executive Vice Chancellor. |