Edward Chamberlain, Ph.D.
About
Degrees
Research and Educational Specialty
I am researcher and educator at the University of Washington. In my research, I work with the approaches of Ethnic Studies, Food Studies, and Gender Studies. This work is interdisciplinary and builds bridges that ultimately connect a diverse set of people and places. This academic work connects cultural experiences across creative expression, exploring issues of diversity, equity and inclusion. More recently, I have examined how performance, visual art and writing have depicted several communities across the United States and beyond. This work is based on the research I began in the American Studies program at Indiana University Bloomington.
Introduction
My research and classes focus on the storytelling of identity, culture, and social justice. One of my new publications is a book titled: Imagining Latinx Intimacies: Connecting Queer Stories, Spaces, Sexualities. This book was published by Rowman and Littlefield International in August 2020. This research speaks to the creative work of diverse cultures from the Americas including the peoples of Chile, Puerto Rico, Mexico, and the mainland U.S. Presently, I am also working on several research projects that involve a range of subjects including the culture of food, digital media, nature, and social movements. In terms of service, I am currently serving on the Latino/a Studies Minor Steering Group, which coordinates academic programming to provide a range of educational opportunities for students.
Current Research
My current research project is a book-length study concerning the intersections of food, ethnicity, and sexual identity in several forms of creative expression. This study offers an examination of the creative work of cultural groups in the Americas and neighboring countries in the 20th and 21st centuries. Taking an integrative approach, this book will offer an examination of how artists and intellectuals have responded to the cultural ideals of embodiment, identity, nourishment, and family experience. This project is based on several popular forms of media and writing such as cookbooks, film, new media, personal writing, and television.
Scholarly Interests
• Ethnic studies and Gender Studies
• Food Studies across the Americas
• Latina/o and Latinx cultural expression
• Digital culture and cultural diversity
• Intersections of the arts and popular culture
Teaching
As an educator at the university, I endeavor to create inclusive and supportive learning environments. I seek to create courses that are accessible and engaging for all students. Generally, I teach six courses at U.W. Tacoma. In the recent past, I have taught a range of courses that focus on subjects such as culture, diversity, gender, identity, and writing. I have taught the following courses in prior years -
• TAMST 210: American Cultures and Perspectives
• TAMST 250: Science Fiction in American Culture
• TAMST 350: American Food Studies
• TAMST 430: Queer Performances
• TCORE 104: Introduction to the Humanities
• TLAX 225: Latinx Cultural Expressions
• TLIT 220: Literature and the Arts
• TLIT 311: Themes in American Literature: Masculinities
• TLIT 331: Immigrant and Ethnic Literature
• TWOMN 205: Introduction to Masculinities
Affiliations
• Association for the Study of Food & Society
• Latina/o Studies Association
• Latin American Studies Association
• Modern Language Association
• Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association
Academic Service
• Book review editor for the interdisciplinary journal Food and Foodways
• Faculty member contributing to the Latino/a Studies Minor Steering Group at U.W. Tacoma
• Reviewer for several research journals in the fields of Food Studies and Latinx/a/o Studies
• Co-chair for the UW Tacoma Arts Celebration, funded by U.W. Strategic Initiative Fund, 2017-2020
• Coordinator for the American Studies Major at U.W. Tacoma, Autumn 2019 to Spring 2021
• Co-organizer for the Staff Recognition Pie Party at U.W. Tacoma, Autumn 2019 to 2022
• Community Service: Periodically, I apply my knowledge of civic engagement to community projects in Pierce County, WA.
Honors and Awards
• Award from the Faculty Assembly COVID-19 Relief Initiative ($1,679) for research in June 2023.
• Award from the Scholarship & Teaching Fund ($2000) at the University of Washington, May 2022.
• Award from the Scholarship & Teaching Fund ($2,000) at U.W. for research, May 2021.
• Award from the Scholarship & Teaching Fund ($1,588) at U.W. for research, May 2019.
• Multi-year Grant from the Strategic Initiative Fund ($77,000), in collaboration with U.W. faculty, June 2017.
• Diversity and Inclusion Seed Grant ($2,000) awarded by the UW Office of Diversity, summer 2017.
• Award from Scholarship & Teaching Fund ($1,786) at University of Washington for research work, May 2017.
• Travel grant ($600) for the Latin American Studies Association for the 2012 Conference, May 2012.
• Virginia LaFollette Gunderson Award for Best Essay ($300), from the I.U. Department of American Studies, April 2008.
• Distinguished Teaching Award, from the Department of Comparative Literature at I.U. Bloomington, April 2008.
• Foreign Language & Area Studies Fellowship ($25,000), awarded by the I.U. Center of Latin American & Caribbean Studies, April 2007.
• "Healing Movements Across America: Connections of Gender, Place, and Struggle in the Pandemic Cinema of COVID-19 and HIV/AIDS," The Routledge Companion to Cultural Text and the Nation. Edited by Sheera Talpaz and Anuradha Needham. Routledge, 2025.
• “Recasting the Culinary Arts: Cooking, Ethnicity, and Family in the Queer Novels of Bryan Washington and Bill Konigsberg,” Significant Food: Critical Readings to Nourish American Literature. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2024. 204-216.
• "Serving Hotcakes and Hashtags" How Two Resort Towns Entice Queer Tourists with Food and Drink on Social Media.” Food, Culture, and Society: An International Journal of Multidisciplinary Research (Dec. 2023): web.
• “LGBTQ+ Latinx Poetry as Life Writing.” The Routledge Handbook of Latinx Life Writing. Edited by María Villaseñor and Christine Fernandez. Routledge, 2024. 279-289.
• “Feeding Social Change: The Queer Digital Essays of Eva Reign, Mayukh Sen, and Andy Baraghani as Transformative Portraiture of Contemporary Food Struggle and Intersectional Experience.” Prose Studies (2023): 1-10.
• "Social Failure and Personal Best: An Autoethnography of Food and Gender in the Life of a Queer Youth," Queering Nutrition and Dietetics: LGBTQ+ Reflections on Food through Art, eds. Phillip Joy and Megan Aston, Routledge, 2022. 121-126.
• “Performing the Blues: Illuminating How Color Schemes Relate to Detention, Gender, and Migration in Superstore and The Infiltrators,” PopMec Research (December 14, 2021): 1-10.
• "From Father to Humanitarian: Charting the Intimacies and Discontinuities of Ricky Martin's Social Media Presence," Caribbean Migrations: The Legacies of Colonialism, ed. Anke Birkenmaier, New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2020. 87-102.
• Imagining Latinx Intimacies: Connecting Queer Stories, Spaces, and Sexualities, London: Rowman & Littlefield International Publishers, 2020. 181 pages.
• "Rethinking the Monstrous: Gender, Otherness, and Space in the Cinematic Storytelling of Arrival and The Shape of Water," CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture, 21.7 (2019): 1-11.
• "A Constellation of Intimacies: Parallels Between the Struggles of Today and Tomorrow in Cunningham’s Specimen Days,” Writing from Below, 2018. web.
• "Beyond the Domestic Sphere: Desire, Intimacy, and Other Feelings in Collections of Queer Testimonios,” Pacific Coast Philology, 2018. 255-271.
• “Mixing and Mingling Queerly: The Activist Sociality of Mentoring in the Personal Narratives of Coloma and Lorde,” Lateral – Journal of the Cultural Studies Association, May 2016. web.
• “Revealing the Family’s Strife: Maternal Absence and Social Struggle in the Writing of Staceyann Chin and Patricia Powell,” The CEA Critic – Journal of the College English Association 78.1 (March 2016): 59-77.
• “Queer Hybridity and Performance in the Multimedia Texts of Arroyo and Lozada,” CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture 16.5 (December 2014): 1-9.
• “Spectacles of Otherness, Sexuality and Space in Guillermo Reyes’s Madre and I: A Memoir of Our Immigrant Lives.” Otherness: Essays and Studies 4.2 (April 2014): 131-156.
• "Domestic Masculinity,” The Social History of the American Family: An Encyclopedia. Eds. Marilyn Coleman and Lawrence Ganong. Los Angeles: Sage, 2014.
• "AIDS Literature," Encyclopedia of Contemporary LGBTQ Literature of the United States. Ed. Emmanuel Nelson. Westport: Greenwood Press, 2009.
• “Queering the Space of Home: Counterpublics, Sexuality and Transnationalism in Kincaid’s My Brother.” English Language Notes 45.2 (Winter 2007): 77-88.