About

Victor Bascara is an Associate Professor in the UCLA Department of Asian American Studies. He previously held the position of Associate Professor of Asian American Studies and English at the University of Wisconsin – Madison. He earned his doctorate from the Department of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University. His research examines various manifestations of formal and informal colonialism, with a particular emphasis on Asian American cultural politics. His current research includes a comparative study of the early 20th-century histories of the Universities of Puerto Rico, Hawai'i, and the Philippines, and he is completing a monograph on the relationship between U.S. imperialism and isolationism in the interwar period (c. 1919-1941). Bascara is also co-editing a special issue of Amerasia Journal on Asian American cultural politics across platforms, including literature, film, and new media. He has taught a wide range of courses related to Asian American literature and culture, contemporary Asian American communities, war and Filipino American experience, technology and social movements, empire and sexuality, and research methodologies. Bascara has served as faculty advisor for courses on Filipino American student activism and Pacific Islander education, and has held roles such as Undergraduate Advisor, Graduate Advisor, and Vice Chair for the Asian American Studies Department. His service extends to various UCLA centers, including the Asian American Studies Center, the Center for the Study of Women, and the Center for Southeast Asian Studies. His ongoing collaborative initiatives include a multi-campus and international project on the legacies of Pacific Island militarization, including a symposium held at the University of the South Pacific in Fiji. His educational background includes a B.A. and M.A. from the University of California, Berkeley, and a Ph.D. from Columbia University.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Computer Science
• History
• Medicine
• Mathematics
• Archaeology
• Geography

Selected publications

• Neoliberalism

  2025-01-01

  other1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Mediterranean Basin, The

  2025-01-01

  other1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Acknowledgments

  Cornell University Press eBooks · 2023

  • Medicine
  DOI

• On History, Development, and Filipinx American Studies:

  Fordham University Press eBooks · 2022-06-07

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Eight. On History, Development, and Filipinx American Studies: Emergent, Dominant, and Residual

  Fordham University Press eBooks · 2022-06-02

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Departures

  2022 · 28 citations

  • Computer Science
  • Computer Science
  PublisherDOI

• On History, Development, and Filipinx American Studies: Emergent, Dominant, and Residual

  Fordham University Press eBooks · 2022-04-05

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  This essay discusses the uneven vectors utilized in the work of historicizing. Itprobes the uses and misuses of arcs of “development” and “progress” in plotting courses of history, while simultaneously undoing unquestioned unilinear forms in such an emplotment. Taking cues from eminent historian Reynaldo Ileto, cultural theorist Raymond Williams, and mining the critical work of scholars positioned within Filipinx/American Studies, it tackles the possibilities of re-formulating Filipinx American history as dynamically and simultaneously emergent, dominant, and residual.

  PublisherDOI

• Series Preface

  2021-05-27

  other1st authorCorresponding

  A summary is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content.

  PublisherDOI

• Index

  Cambridge University Press eBooks · 2021-05-27

  paratext1st authorCorresponding

  A summary is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content.

  PublisherDOI

• Introduction

  Cambridge University Press eBooks · 2021-05-27

  book-chapter1st authorCorresponding

  The period from 1930 to 1965 marks a span of dramatic transformation within the United States, from the Great Depression to the new social movements of the 1960s. For Asian American history, the start of this period is deeply marked by Asian exclusion, formalized in 1882 with the Chinese Exclusion Act, and, by its end, the emergence of today’s Asian America, remade after the passage of the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965, the legislative culmination of multiple efforts to repeal exclusion. On the global stage, these years witnessed dispersed shifts of power that literally remapped the decolonizing world: from the decline of territorial colonialism in the 1930s to the rise of third-world liberation in the 1960s. And in the middle of this period, World War II erupted, sharpening political alignments that would be hastily redrawn in the about-face of the Cold War, which ignited hotspots in Asia after World War II. This volume seeks to draw out the national and global dimensions of the literary output in this period of transitions, realignments, remappings, and remakings.

  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Keith L. Camacho

  Center for Asian American Media

  2 shared

• Josephine Nock-Hee Park

  California University of Pennsylvania

  2 shared

• Lane Ryo Hirabayashi

  Center for Asian American Media

  2 shared

• Milo Alvarez

  University of Guam

  1 shared

• Lisa Nakamura

  1 shared

• Dahlia Morrone

  University of Guam

  1 shared

• Heidi Perez

  University of Guam

  1 shared

• Hōkūlani K. Aikau

  1 shared

Awards & honors

• Annual Award for Excellence in Graduate Mentoring and Teachi…
• Pacific Rim Research Program Faculty Initiative Grant, UC Of…
• Center for New Racial Studies research grant, University of…
• Golden Key Honor Society honorary member induction (2011)
• UCLA Burkle Center for International Relations Faculty Worki…