Kent Ono

kaono@uiuc.edu

Research Professor of Communications

Director and Professor of Asian American Studies

Primary areas of interest: Rhetorical studies, media and cultural studies, film studies, Asian American history




Kent A. Ono was born in Casper, Wyoming (USA), in 1964. His research emphasizes critical and theoretical analysis of print, film, and television media, specifically focusing on representations of race, gender, sexuality, class, and nation. Kent has contributed essays to numerous journals and anthologies in communication, Asian American studies, and cultural studies, in addition to co-authoring Shifting Borders: Rhetoric, Immigration, and California's Proposition 187 (2002, Temple University Press) and co-editing Enterprise Zones: Critical Positions on Star Trek (1996, Westview Press).

He has been nominated for numerous teaching and advising awards and was a co-recipient of a Ford Foundation Diversity of Education Grant from 1990-1991. He was co-founder of the Cultural Studies Graduate Program at UC Davis and was its first director, serving from 1999-2002. He served as interim director of the MURALS undergraduate research program for underserved student populations from 1999-2000.

Professor Ono also founded the Asian American Cultural Politics Research Cluster at UC Davis in 1997. He was principal founder of a journal, called Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies; 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 was principal conference planner for "Communication and Cultural Politics," July 2000 in Iowa City, IA.

Currently, Kent lives in Champaign, IL, with his partner, Sarah Projansky, and his daughter, Yasmin Projansky Ono.


Selected Recent Research:

2002 Projansky, Sarah and Kent A. Ono. Making Films Asian American: Shopping for Fangs and the Discursive Auteur. In David Gerstner and Janet Staiger (Eds.) Authorship: Trafficking with Hollywood. New York: Routledge. In Press.

2002 Ono, Kent A. and John M. Sloop. Shifting Borders: Rhetoric, Immigration, and California's "Proposition 187. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.

2001 Ono, Kent A. and Derek Buescher. Deciphering Pocahontas: Unpackaging the Commodification of a Native American Woman. Critical Studies in Media Communication, 18 (1): 1-21.

2000 Ono, Kent A. Re/membering Spectators: Meditations on Japanese American Cinema. In Darrell Hamamoto and Sandra Liu (Eds.) Countervisions: Asian American Film Criticism. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, pp. 129-149.

2000 Ono, Kent A. To Be a Vampire on Buffy The Vampire Slayer: Race and ("Other") Socially Marginalizing Positions on Horror TV. In Elyce Rae Helford (Ed.) Fantasy Girls: Gender in the New Universe of Science Fiction and Fantasy Television. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, pp. 163-186.