About

Augusto F Espiritu is a professor in the Department of History and the Department of Asian American Studies at Illinois College of Liberal Arts & Sciences. He has a background rooted in Manila, Philippines, and grew up in Inglewood, California, after immigrating to the United States with his family. He attended UCLA for his undergraduate, master's, and doctoral studies in history and Asian American studies. Espiritu has served as the head of the Department of Asian American Studies from 2012 to 2014 and maintains active research and teaching agendas, including international research stints in Spain, Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines. His teaching encompasses American history, with a focus on the history of American empire in Asia, the Pacific, and the Americas, as well as migration, transnationalism, race, and ethnicity. His research centers on the intellectual history of American empire, migration, nationalism, and transnationalism, with a current project examining resistance to American colonialism through the lens of Hispanicism in Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Philippines. Espiritu has received numerous awards and fellowships, including the Fulbright Research Fellowship, Mellon Faculty Fellowship, and the Arnold O. Beckman Award.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Art
• Sociology
• History
• Theology
• Mathematics
• Aesthetics
• Geography
• Anthropology
• Ancient history
• Law
• Philosophy

Selected publications

• The Field: Dialogues, Visions, Tensions, and Aspirations

  New York University Press eBooks · 2020 · 2 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding
  • Sociology
  • Political Science
  • Aesthetics
  PublisherDOI

• Acknowledgments

  New York University Press eBooks · 2020

  • Geography

  This has been a difficult book for me to write, and because it was, I had to rely on many people during all its stages.While I claim all its flaws and shortcomings, the people I acknowledge in these pages helped me conceptualize and clarify all its best and most interesting parts.First and foremost, I would like to acknowledge Liz Gonzalez, my first-rate research assistant; I would not have been able to come close to deadlines without her.I extend my appreciation

  DOI

• Chapter 6 American Empire, Hispanism, and the Nationalist Visions of Albizu, Recto, and Grau

  Duke University Press eBooks · 2020

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Political Science
  • Political Science
  • Art
  PublisherDOI

• 11. Inter-Imperial Relations, the Pacific, and Asian American History

  University of Hawaii Press eBooks · 2017-07-31

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Inter-Imperial Relations, the Pacific, and Asian American History

  University of Hawaii Press eBooks · 2017-07-31

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  Despite the turn toward diasporic, transnational, global, and comparative perspectives, this chapter argues that historians of Asian America have largely neglected and need to reflect upon inter-imperial relations--the relations of cooperation, competition, and conflict between empires, including subaltern attempts at creating spaces for maneuver and agency between them. With a focus on the development of the United States as an empire, this article identifies the key inter-imperial relations over time that have shaped the Asian American experience. An awareness of inter-imperial relations helps scholars to account for the political dynamics, the multiple sources of power, and the challenges to existing hegemonies that have structured Asian American lives. An approach sensitive to inter-imperial relations opens up the possibility of recognizing, and comparing, the simultaneous subaltern struggles that cut across nations and immigrant groups.

  PublisherDOI

• Pacific America

  University of Hawaii Press eBooks · 2017-07-31 · 1 citations

  book

  In recent times, the Asia-Pacific region has far surpassed Europe in terms of reciprocal trade with the United States, and since the 1980s immigrants from Asia entering the United States have exceeded their counterparts from Europe, reversing a longstanding historical trend and making Asian Americans the country's fastest growing racial group. What does transpacific history look like if the arc of the story is extended to the present? The essays in this volume offer answers to this question challenging current assumptions about transpacific relations. Many of these assumptions are expressed through fear: that the ascendance of China threatens a U.S.-led world system and undermines domestic economies; that immigrants subvert national unity; and that globalization, for all its transcending of international, cultural, and racial differences, generates its own forms of prejudice and social divisions that reproduce global and national inequalities.

  PublisherDOI

• Asian American Intellectual History

  Oxford University Press eBooks · 2016-03-07

  book1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• The Field: Dialogues, Visions, Tensions, and Aspirations

  New York University Press eBooks · 2016-12-31 · 1 citations

  book-chapterSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• <scp>P</scp>hilippines

  The Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of Race, Ethnicity, and Nationalism · 2015-12-30

  other1st authorCorresponding

  Racial consciousness in the Philippines emerged out of a long history of colonialism. For four centuries, a succession of western empires established their hegemony over the country. The two longest rulers, Spain and the United States, imposed their systems of racial hierarchy, which encompassed economic, political, and cultural realms as well as daily encounters that reinforced racial oppressiveness. Racial consciousness became especially acute in the diaspora when colonized Filipino travelers to the colonial metropole experienced prejudice, discrimination, and violence firsthand. The stories of such encounters heightened anticolonial sentiment and led to campaigns for Philippine independence. Still, even after independence, the Philippines has failed to escape the legacy of colonial racial hierarchies. Moreover, as globalization has led to the extension of the Filipino diaspora on several continents, overseas Filipinos have faced new racial conditions, which have led to a heightening of racial consciousness.

  PublisherDOI

• Book Review: Fojas and Guevarra, eds., Transnational Crossroads: Remapping the Americas and the Pacific by Augusto Espiritu

  Pacific Historical Review · 2015-02-01

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Book Review| February 01 2015 Book Review: Fojas and Guevarra, eds., Transnational Crossroads: Remapping the Americas and the Pacific by Augusto Espiritu Transnational Crossroads: Remapping the Americas and the Pacific, ed. Camilla Fojas and Rudy P. Guevarra, Jr. (: University of Nebraska Press, 2012. x + 478 pp. $45 paper) Augusto Espiritu Augusto Espiritu University Of Illinois At Urbana-Champaign Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Pacific Historical Review (2015) 84 (1): 127–128. https://doi.org/10.1525/phr.2015.84.1.127 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation Augusto Espiritu; Book Review: Fojas and Guevarra, eds., Transnational Crossroads: Remapping the Americas and the Pacific by Augusto Espiritu. Pacific Historical Review 1 February 2015; 84 (1): 127–128. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/phr.2015.84.1.127 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentPacific Historical Review Search This content is only available via PDF. © 2015 by the Pacific Coast Branch, American Historical Association2015 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Martin F. Manalansan

  4 shared

• Antoinette Burton

  2 shared

• Mithi Mukherjee

  2 shared

• J. L. Dowling

  Somerville Hospital

  1 shared

• Mark Perry

  Somerville Hospital

  1 shared

• Esther Lee

  1 shared

• Sundiata Keita Cha–Jua

  University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

  1 shared

• Adrian Burgos

  Somerville Hospital

  1 shared

Awards & honors

• Arnold O. Beckman Award
• Associate Fellow, Center for Advanced Study
• Outstanding Asian American Faculty/Staff Award
• Royal Morales Community Achievement Award
• Mellon Faculty Fellowship