Robert Lee studies the history of Asians in the United States, racial formations, and relations between Asia and America. Three books include: Dear Miye, Letters Home from Japan 1939-1946 (Stanford, 1995; Japanese edition - Asahi, 1999); Orientals: Asian Americans in Popular Culture (Temple, 1999, Japanese and Chinese editions, 2006); and Displacements and Diasporas: Asians in the Americas (Rutgers 2005).

I am currently creating a digital mapping project on the history of anti-Asian violence. I work on vernacular photography and the self representation of Chinese in America in the early to mid-century 20th Century.  I also work on the Transpacific popular culture and social movements including the transmission of food, martial arts and visual cultures. 

Recent grants include;  A three year grant from the Taiwan Ministry of Education, a Fulbright fellowship 2014 to the Chinese University of Hong Kong, research grants from the John Nicholas Brown Center for Public Humanities, the Group Research Project Grant, Office of the Dean of the College; Thomas J. Watson Institute for International Studies Travel Grant; Richard R. Solomon Grant for Faculty Research; Wayland Collegium Grant to support Diasporas and Displacements Symposium; Thomas J. Watson Institute for International Studies Grant to support Diasporas and Displacement Symposium.

Selected Publications

Race, Nation and Empire in American History; Essays in the New Ethnic Studies. Edited with Matthew Guterl and James Campbell , University of North Carolina Press,  2009

Displacements and Diasporas, Asians in the Americas.  Edited with Wanni Anderson, Rutgers University Press, 2009

Orientals: Asian Americans and the Popular Discourse of Race in America, Temple University Press, 1999. 271p., photos.index. (American Studies Association, John Hope Franklin Prize, best book in American Studies, 1999;American Political Science Association, best book on the social construction of race, 1999; Northeast Popular Culture/American Culture Association, Best Book, 1999..)

Dear Miye, Letters Home from Japan 1939-1946. Stanford University Press, 1995, c.464 p., photos. index. Edited with introduction and annotations. Association for Asian American Studies, Special Book Award,1996.

Robert G. Lee received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Association of Asian American Studies in 2020

He received a the inaugural "Bob Lee Community Leadership Award" from the Brown University Asian American Alumni Association in 2019

He has received four Best Book/Special Book awards:

Dear Miye, Letters Home from Japan 1939-1946 (Editor, Stanford University Press, 1995) received the Special Book Award (1996) from the Association for Asian American Studies.

Orientals, Asian Americans in Popular Culture (Temple University Press, 1999) received three Best Book awards – from the Northeast Popular Culture/American Culture Association, the American Political Science Association, and the American Studies Association and first Honorable Mention for the John Hope Franklin Prize from the American Studies Association.  

American Studies Association
International Committee
Program Co-Chair
John Hope Franklin Book Prize Committee

Association for Asian American Studies
History/Social Sciences Prize Committee
Executive Board Member,
Secretary-Treasurer

Organization of American Historians

American Historical Association

At Brown, Robert G. Lee has taught several undergraduate and graduate-level courses that explore Asian American themes. Some recent courses include "Race, Immigration, and the Law", which examines Asian American struggles against exclusion and how they shaped American definitions of citizenship, race, and constitutional rights; "Asian American History" which focuses on the changing patterns of immigration, labor, community building, and civil rights struggles; "America and the Asian Pacific: A Cultural History", which explores the role of trade, migration and cultural exchange across the Pacific in the shaping of American culture and society; and "Asian American Political Movements to 1970", a research seminar that looks at political movements in Asian immigrant communities in the United States and the Caribbean before the emergence of 'Asian America' in the late 1960s.
With Evelyn Hu-Dehart,  he developed a seminar on Transpacific History that was taught simultaneously in real time between Brown and the Chinese University of Hong Kong.  He and Professor Hu-Dehart subsequently taught the course between Brown and the Nanyang University of Technology in Singapore. 

Ph.D. Dissertations directed/co-directed/read by Robert G. Lee are:

Director

1. Mark Tseng-Putterman, The Internationalists, Asian/American Politics in the Shadow of Cold War Empire,
2. Angela Yuan-Yuan Feng, Chinese/ American Writers as Public Intellectuals, H.T. Tsang, Lin Yutang, Maxine Kingston, and Ha Jin
3. Julian Saporiti, The No-No Boy Project (completed 2022)
4. Maria Hwang, Mixing Work and Pleasure in Hong Kong: Women’s Migration, Sex Work, Border Control, and the Politics of Trafficking (completed 2018)
5. Annette Rodriquez, The Lynching of Indians and Mexicans in the United States: Making Visible U.S. Terrorscapes (completed 2016)
6. Erin Curtis, Food, Ethnicity and Citizenship: Cambodians, Donuts and Los Angeles (completed 2016)
7. Brent Fujioka, Four-Color Creatures: Monstrosity in American Comic Books and Japanese Manga, 1938 to Present (completed 2015)
8. Thomas Chen, Making Boston’s Chinatown:Race, Place, and Culture in the Postwar Metropolis (completed 2014)
9. Heather Lee, Consuming Labor: Migration and Mobility of Chinese Restaurant Workers in New York City, 1894-1965  (completed 2014)
10. Jin Suk Bae, Immigration and the Varieties of Korean Identity in New York, (completed 2012)
11. Jessica Johnson, Theologies of Refuge in the Racial State:Race and Religion in U.S. Refugee History, 1945-1990 (completed 2012) Shortlisted for the Gabriel Prize
12. Oscar Campomanes, Figures of the Unassimilable: American Empire, Filipino American Postcoloniality, and the US-Philippine War of 1898-1910  (completed 2011).
13. AikoTakeuchi, Controlling Female Fertility: The Trans-Pacific Politics of Reproduction and Eugenics, 1920-1955 (completed 2010)
14. Ani Mukerji, Moscow’s Community of Color: A Study of Anticolonial Thought and Practice in the Interwar Period (completed 2010) Short listed for the  Gabriel Prize
15. Caroline Frank, China As Object And Imaginary In The Making Of An American Nation,1690-1790 (completed 2008) Awarded  Ralph Gabriel Prize for best dissertation in American  Studies  by the American Studies Association
16. James Gatewood, City Lights Books: The History of A Community  (completed 2008) (co-director,)
17. Karen Inouye, Trauma and Wartime; An Interdisciplinary Study of the Historical and Psychological Effects of Internment Across Four Generations of Japanese Americans (Completed 2008) (co-director)
18. Suzanne Wiedeman, Berlin-Shanghai—San Francisco, Ethnic Identity, Cultural Memory, and Nation in the (Re)Making of the Shanghailander Community, (Completed 2005)
19. Carla Tengan, Cultivating Communities Japanese American Gardeners in Southern California, 1960-1980  (Completed 2005) , (co-director)
20. Themis Chronopoulos,Disorderly Space, Power Relations and the Post-war Decline of New York City (Completed 2004) (co-director)
21. Jennifer Jang, Redressing the Pained Body, The Politics of Sentimentality in Asian American Literature (Completed 2003) (co- director)
22. Brian Locke, Brothers in Arms: Representations of Asian American Masculinity in United States Popular Culture and US National Identity. (competed 2001) (co-director)
23. Suzette Min, Flanerie and Asian American Visual Production (completed 2000) (co-director)
24. Mari Yoshihara, Women's Asia, American Women and the Gendering of American Orientalism, 1893-1945 (completed 1997)
25. Joanne Melish, Emancipation and the Cultural Construction of Race in New England 1780-1840(completed 1996) (co-director) Honorable  mention Gabriel Prize for best dissertation in American  Studies  by the American Studies Association
26. Melanie McAlister, Staging the American Century: Race, Gender and Nation in U.S. Representations of the Middle East, 1945-1992  (completed 1996) (co-director) Awarded Gabriel Prize for best dissertation in American Studies by the American Studies Association
27. Matthew Jacobsen, Special Sorrows: Irish-, Polish-, and Yiddish - American Nationalism and the Diasporic Imagination (completed 1992) (co-director) Awarded Gabriel Prize for best dissertation in American Studies by the American Studies Association

 

Reader

1. Pia Sahni, Dressing the Diaspora: Fashion, Clothing and Belonging in South Asian Diasporic Popular Culture
2. Patrick Chung, Building Global Capitalism, One Alliance at a Time: The Evolution of the U.S.-South Korean Alliance, 1953-2012 (History)
3. Colleen Tripp, Pacific Sensations and Oriental Cartographies: The Making of an American West and Pacific Orientalism in U.S. Print Culture, 1840-1920
4. Felicia Salinas, Latina Imprints and Impressions: A Study of Contemporary Popular Fiction for Latina Readers, completed 2012
5. Christopher Lamberti,  Riot Zone: Chicago 1919, completed 2012-- History.
6. Jooyoung Lee, Mutated Ideas: The complex role of “American” knowledge in the Making of Modern South Korea completed 2011 -- History
7. Shiho Imai, Coming of Age in the Culture of Consumption: Visions of Abundance among Second Generation Japanese Youths in Honolulu, 1920-1940 completed 2007—History
8. Melanie Kohnen, Out of the Closet?  The Discourse of Visibilty, Sexuality and Queer Representation in American Film, Television and New Media , 1969 to the Present completed 2009