A University of Colorado Boulder professor is one of this year’s National Humanities Center fellows, the organization recently announced.
Emmanuel David, an associate professor in the Department of Women and Gender Studies, is one of 33 fellows chosen. This opportunity provides scholars a chance to pursue an individual research project, which, for David, will be a book project, titled, “Trans-American Orientalism: The Asia-Pacific Encounters of Transgender Pioneer Christine Jorgensen, 1961–1969.”
Additionally, each fellow will have the opportunity to share ideas in seminars, lectures and conferences at the National Humanities Center. David earned his PhD in sociology from CU Boulder in 2009 and spent time as an assistant professor at Villanova University and a Fulbright scholar in the Philippines before coming to CU Boulder as an assistant professor in 2013.
He researches gender, sexuality and globalization, with a specific focus on the Philippines. This book project continues that research by focusing on Christine Jorgensen (1926-1989), a WWII veteran and pioneer in the transgender movement, and her little-known performance tour across Asia and the Pacific in the early 1960s, which brought her to places like Hawaii, Australia, Hong Kong, Macau and the Philippines.
