Rate My Professor Kariann Yakota

Kariann Yokota is an Associate Professor of History at the University of Colorado Denver's College of Liberal Arts and Sciences. She graduated summa cum laude with a B.A. in History, specializing in Asian American Studies, earned an M.A. from the Asian American Studies Department with a thesis on interethnic relations titled "From Little Tokyo to Bronzeville and Back," and obtained her Ph.D. in History, all from UCLA. Before joining CU Denver, she was an Assistant Professor of History and American Studies at Yale University. During her tenure at CU Denver, she served as Chair of the History Department from July 2016 to May 2018. Yokota teaches courses on immigration, ethnicity, and identity in the United States, as well as early American history and material culture. She has also contributed to online education through the Coursera course "Asian American History and Identity: An Anti-Racism Toolkit."

Her scholarly work centers on immigration and ethnicity, with expertise in Colonial and Early America, Ethnic Studies, Transatlantic History, Transpacific History, Material and Visual Culture, Cultural Studies, American Studies, and Asian American Studies. She authored the acclaimed book Unbecoming British: How Revolutionary America Became a Postcolonial Nation (Oxford University Press, 2011), which examines postcolonial identity through material culture. Other publications include "Oral Histories as Living Histories" (Amerasia Journal, 2002) and "Transatlantic and Transpacific Connections in Early American History" (Pacific Historical Review, 2014). Yokota has received fellowships such as the Kate B. and Hall J. Peterson Fellowship from the American Antiquarian Society (1999-2000) for her project on early republic postcolonial identity, and fellowships at Christ Church College and the Rothermere American Institute at Oxford University. She was elected to the American Antiquarian Society in 2015 and serves on editorial boards including the Journal of the Early Republic and Commonplace: The Journal of Early American Life. Currently, she is working on Pacific Overtures, a history of U.S. relations in the Asia-Pacific region.