Richard S. Kim

Research Interests

20th century U.S. history, Asian American history, transnationalism and diaspora, race and ethnicity, and social and political movements.

Profile

Richard S. Kim is a Professor in the Department of Asian American Studies. He received his Ph.D. in U.S. History from the Department of History at the University of Michigan.  He also obtained a M.A. in Asian American Studies from UCLA.  His research and teaching interests include Asian American history, 20th century U.S. history, immigration, transnationalism and diaspora, race and ethnicity, and social and political movements.

He is the author of The Quest for Statehood: Korean Immigrant Nationalism and U.S. Sovereignty, 1905-1945 (Oxford University Press, 2011), which examines the consequences and implications of diasporic political activity in a U.S. setting. He also co-produced Freedom Without Justice: The Prison Memoirs of Chol Soo Lee (University of Hawai'i Press, 2017), which chronicles the experiences of Chol Soo Lee, a young Korean immigrant, who was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment and later to Death Row for a murder he did not commit in the early 1970s. Building upon Lee's memoir, Kim is currently working on a book project that focuses on the extraordinary, yet largely forgotten, grassroots pan-Asian social movement that helped secure Lee's historic release from Death Row in 1983. In 2014, Kim received the UC Davis Chancellor Fellows Award in recognition of his outstanding research, teaching, and service.