Faculty

Kent Ono

228 Gregory Hall
(217) 333-1549
kaono - at - uiuc.edu

Education

Ph.D., University of Iowa

Affiliations

Professor of Communications
Professor of Asian American Studies

Course Specialties

Media, Metaphor and Marginality
Rhetoric, Race and Media
Asian American Media and Film
Media Criticism

Background

Ono conducts critical and theoretical research of print, film and television media, specifically focusing on representations of race, gender, sexuality, class and nation. He has contributed essays to numerous journals such as Communication Monographs, Critical Studies in Media Communication, Western Journal of Communication, Philosophy and Rhetoric, Amerasia Journal, Journal of Asian American Studies, and Cultural Studies. In addition to co-authoring "Shifting Borders: Rhetoric, Immigration, and California's Proposition 187" (Temple University Press, 2002), he has co-edited "Enterprise Zones: Critical Positions on Star Trek" (Westview Press, 1996) and has edited "Asian American Studies after Critical Mass" (Blackwell, 2005) and "A Companion to Asian American Studies" (Blackwell, 2005). He is completing a book on films and videos about the incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II titled, "Forgetting to Remember: Representations of Japanese American Incarceration on Film and Video." A co-authored book with Vincent Pham titled, "Asian Americans and the Media," is set to be published by Polity Press in Fall 2008. Ono directed the Asian American Studies Program at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign from 2002-2007. He also directed the Cultural Studies Program at the University of California at Davis from 1999-2002. He founded the Asian American Cultural Politics Research Cluster at UC Davis in 1997. He wrote the proposal to create the journal, Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies. He helped propose, organize and chair the Critical and Cultural Studies Division of NCA from 2000-2001; chaired the Asian Pacific American Caucus of NCA in 1996-1997; co-chaired the Asian Pacific American Caucus of the Society for Cinema Studies (1999-2001); and has planned several conferences.

Research/Creative Endeavor

Ono's research areas include: rhetorical studies, media and cultural studies, film studies and Asian American studies.

Selected recent research includes:
"From Nationalism to Migrancy: The Politics of Asian American Transnationalism," Communication Law Review Vol. 5, Issue 1, 2005: www.commlawreview.org/latest.htm.
"Asian American Studies after 9/11," in Cameron McCarthy, Warren Crichlow, Greg Dimitriadis and Nadine Dolby (Eds.), "Race, Identity, and Representation in Education," 2nd ed. (Routledge, 2005).
"Retracing an Intellectual Course in Asian American Studies," in Kent A. Ono (Ed.), "A Companion to Asian American Studies" (Blackwell Publishers, Inc., 2005).
"Asian American Studies in Its Second Phase," in Kent A. Ono (Ed.), "Asian American Studies After Critical Mass" (Blackwell Publishers, Inc., 2003).
Projansky, Sarah and Kent A. Ono, "Making Films Asian American: Shopping for Fangs and the Discursive Auteur," in David A. Gerstner and Janet Staiger (Eds.), "Authorship and Film" (Routledge, 2003).

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