Nerissa Balce
Assistant Professor
I am interested in postcolonial theory and the cultures of 1898; race, American visual culture and feminist epistemologies; state violence and Filipino culture; and Asian American literature and culture.
Biography:
Nerissa S. Balce was born and raised in Manila, Philippines. She received a B.A. in Literature and an M.A. in Philippine Studies from De La Salle University, Manila. She worked as a journalist in Manila, writing articles on Philippine literature, politics, culture and the arts. She took doctoral studies at the University of California-Berkeley on a Fulbright scholarship, where she received a Ph.D. in Ethnic Studies. Before joining SUNY Stony Brook’s Department of Asian and Asian American Studies, she received a postdoc at the University of Oregon’s Department of Ethnic Studies and taught at the University of Massachusetts - Amherst’s Comparative Literature Program. At Stony Brook, she teaches undergraduate courses on Asian American literature and popular culture. Her essays have appeared in Social Text, Peace Review, Hitting Critical Mass and in anthologies such as "Positively No Filipinos Allowed": Building Communities and Discourse (Temple UP 2006) and Resource Guide to Asian American Literature (Modern Language Association 2001). Since 2006, she has given lectures in Philippine universities such as De La Salle University, Silliman University in Negros Oriental, the University of Santo Tomas, Ateneo de Manila, Philippine Women’s University and the University of the Philippines-Diliman. She is preparing a book manuscript on American imperialism as a visual language, and the gendered/racialized figure of the Filipino savage in early 20th century U.S. culture.
PUBLICATIONS:
1) “The Filipina’s Breast: Savagery, Docility and the Erotics of the American Empire.”
In Social Text, Duke U Press, June 2006. 89-110.
2) “Filipino Bodies, Lynching and the Language of Empire.” In Positively No Filipinos
Allowed: Mapping Filipino American Formations,edited by Antonio Tiongson, Ed
Gutierrez and Rick Gutierrez (Temple U Press 2006). 43-60.
3) “American Insecurity and Radical Filipino Community Politics After 9/11.” Co-
authored with Robyn Rodriguez. In Peace Review 16:2 June 2004. 131-140.
4) “Dogeaters by Jessica Hagedorn.” In Resource Guide to Asian American Literature,
edited by Sau-ling Cynthia Wong and Stephen H. Sumida. Modern Language Association, 2001. 54-65.
5) “Filipino American Literature.” Co-authored with Jean Vengua Gier. In New
Immigrant Literatures in the United States, A Sourcebook to Our Multicultural
Literary Heritage. Ed. Alpana Sharma Knippling. Connecticut: Greenwood Press,
1996. 67-89.
6) “Imagining the Neocolony.” In Critical Mass: A Journal of Asian American
Cultural Criticism. 2:2 Spring 1995. Berkeley: U. of California. 95-120.
