Cindy I-Fen Cheng

Position title: Robinson Edwards Professor of American History

Pronouns: she/her/hers

Phone: 608.265.2522

Address:
Office: 5106 Mosse Humanities & 306 Ingraham
Mailbox: 5022 Mosse Humanities
Office Hours: Tuesday 12:15-1:15pm, Thursday 12:15-1:15pm, and by appointment

Joint Appointment: Asian American Studies

Biography

I am a historian of post-1945 United States with interests in immigration, citizenship, and Asian American history and culture. I am the award-winning author of Citizens of Asian America: Democracy and Race during the Cold War (2013) and editor of The Routledge Handbook of Asian American Studies (2016). My articles have appeared in the American Quarterly, Journal of Asian American Studies, Modern American History, and other academic journals and anthologies. My current book project, Skid Row Refuge: Central American Asylum Seekers and the 1980s Homelessness Crisis in the United States (under contract with University of Washington Press) examines how the resettlement of Central American asylum seekers in Skid Row, Los Angeles reshaped the meaning of homelessness and its advocacy during the 1980s.

Education

Ph.D., University of California, Irvine
M.A., University of California, Irvine
B.S., University of California, Los Angeles

Books

Cindy I-Fen Cheng (Editor). The Routledge Handbook of Asian American Studies. Routledge, 2016.
Cindy I-Fen Cheng. Citizens of Asian America: Democracy and Race During the Cold War. NYU Press, 2014.

Selected Publications

“Words Matter, So Does the Context of History: On the Homeless and the Unhoused” in Modern American History 8:1 (2025): 94-107. https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/modern-american-history/article/words-matter-so-does-the-context-of-history-on-the-homeless-and-the-unhoused/7DE970E084C2FE460229D77474F3EBBF
“Identities and Places: On Writing the History of Filipinotown, Los Angeles” Journal of Asian American Studies 12:1 (2009): 1-33.
“Out of Chinatowns and into the Suburbs: Chinese Americans and the Politics of Cultural Citizenship in Early Cold War America” American Quarterly 58:3 (December 2006): 1067-1090.

Advisor To

Selected Awards

Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation, H.I. Romnes Faculty Fellowship, 2018
University of Wisconsin-Madison Distinguished Teaching Award – Chancellor’s Inclusive Excellence Award, 2017
The Ronald E. McNair Post-Baccalaureate Achievement Program Award for Service as Outstanding Mentor, 2014
Certificate of Special Congressional Recognition of Outstanding and Invaluable Service to Community for Ronald McNair Post-Baccalaureate Achievement Program, 2013-2014

History Courses

History/Asian American Studies 160: Asian American History: Processes of Movement and Dislocation – Syllabus 2025 (pdf)
History/Asian American Studies 161: Asian American History: Settlement and National Belonging – Syllabus 2025 (pdf)
History 600: War and Forced Displacement
History 600: U.S. Cold War Culture