Colleen Lye

Title: 
Associate Professor and Chair of Asian American Research Center (AARC)
Biography: 

Colleen Lye (Ph.D., Columbia) is Associate Professor of English and Chair of the Asian American Research Center (AARC) at 91 Berkeley, where she teaches courses on historical materialism and critical theory,Asian American Studies, and 20th and 21st century literature. She is affiliated with the Designated Emphasis in Critical Theory and the Department of Rhetoric. Lye currently serves on the editorial boards of Representations,Inter-Asia Cultural Studies and Postmodern Culture. Besides these venues, her writing has appeared in Modern Languages Quarterly, PMLA, South Atlantic Quarterly, American Literature, American Literary History, Interventions, Novel, Positions, The Journal of Asian American Studies, Public Books and Commune.

'ǴǰAmerica's Asia (Princeton 2005) received the Cultural Studies Book Award from the Association of Asian American Studies, and was named a finalist for the John Hope Franklin Prize from the American Studies Association and a Choice Outstanding Academic Title. She coedited a 2022 Cambridge anthology on value theory and literature, as well as numerous special journal issues on the topics of peripheral realism, forms of Asia, financialization, and the humanities and university struggles. The dossier The Struggle for Public Education in California (coedited with Christopher Newfield) appeared in a special issue of South Atlantic Quarterly that won MLA's Council of Editors of Learned Journals (CELJ) Award for Best Special Issue of 2011.

Lye is writing a book on Asian American intellectual contributions to historical materialism in the United States in the global sixties.

Current Research: 

The long sixties; realism and naturalism; critical theory; critical university studies.

Role: 

Books

Selected Publications

Edited Volumes

Special Issue: . Eds. with C.D. Blanton and Kent Puckett. Representations 126 (Spring 2014)

Special Issue: . Eds. with Jed Esty and Joseph Cleary. Modern Languages Quarterly 73:3 (Fall 2012)

Special Issue: ,Eds. with Christopher Newfield and James Vernon. Representations 116 (Fall 2011).

.

Special Issue: . Ed. with Christopher Bush. Representations 99 (Summer 2007).

Writing and Speaking

"" In the Moment: Critical Inquiry blog, September 16, 2022.

"," American Literary History 34:1 (Spring 2022): 237-255

"," Novel Dialogues 2.7 (December 16, 2021).

"," Novel: A Forum on Fiction 49:2 (August 2016): 343-357.

"," Interventions (2015): 1-15

"," Verge 1:1 (Spring 2015): 230-254.

"." The Routledge Companion to Asian American and Pacific Islander Literature. Ed Rachel Lee (London and New York: Routledge, 2014)

"." With Jed Esty. Modern Language Quarterly 73:3 (Fall 2012): 269-288.

“,” A Companion to American Literary Studies. Eds. Caroline Levander and Robert Levine. (Oxford: Blackwell,  2011).

"," Journal of Asian American Studies 14.2 (June, 2011): 249-282

“,” PMLA 123:5 (October 2008): 1732-1736.

“,” Representations 104 (Fall 2008): 92-101.

“,” (Special Issue: Forms of Asia. Eds. Colleen Lye and Christopher Bush) Representations 99 (Summer 2007): 1-12.

Contact

427 Wheeler

Spring 2026 Office Hours

Tuesdays 12:45-1:15 pm; Thursday 2-3 pm (drop-in in person)
Email to make an appointment for other times.

Classes Taught