Rate My Professor Marie Lo

Marie Lo is Professor and Chair of the Department of English in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Portland State University, having joined the faculty in 2001. She earned a BA in English from McGill University and both an MA and PhD in Rhetoric from the University of California, Berkeley. Prior to her tenure at PSU, she engaged in grassroots community media, co-founding and co-producing APA Compass, an Asian Pacific American public affairs radio program, and continues as a regular contributor to The Asian Reporter with articles on topics including color blindness, homesteading, writers of color, and the historical context of Guantanamo Bay in Asian American narratives.

Lo's academic interests encompass Asian North American literature and culture, feminist theory, critical ethnic studies, settler colonialism, and empire. Her scholarship particularly focuses on the settler imperial genealogies embedded in contemporary US culture, and she is developing a manuscript exploring these themes. Her extensive publication record includes peer-reviewed articles and book chapters such as “The Philippine Craftsman: Empire, Education, and the 1915 Panama-Pacific International Exposition” (Journal of Modern Craft, 2022), “Space, Place, and Power in the Neoliberal Academy: Reflections on Asian American Women and Leadership in The Chair” co-authored with Patti Duncan and Reshmi Dutt-Ballerstadt (What Can Be? Emancipatory Change in US Higher Education, 2022), “Cultivating ‘Indian Country’: Settler Imperialism and Bich Minh Nguyen’s Pioneer Girl” (Journal of Global South, 2020), “Handcrafting Whiteness: Booker T. Washington and the Subject of Contemporary Craft” (ASAP/Journal, 2020), “Solidarity and Simultaneity in the Time of Permanent War” (Critical Ethnic Studies, 2019), “Plenary Power and the Exceptionality of Igorots: Settler Imperialism and the Lewis and Clark Exposition” (Amerasia Journal, 2017), “Motherhood and the Race for Sustainability” (Mothering in East Asian Communities, 2014), “The Currency of Visibility and the Paratext of ‘Evelyn Lau’” (Canadian Literature, 2008), and “Model Minorities, Models of Resistance: Native Figures in Asian Canadian Literature” (Canadian Literature, 2008). She has also authored book reviews for Canadian Literature and the Canadian Journal of Communication.

In 2023, Marie Lo received the Lois Moran Award for Craft Writing, recognizing a thoughtfully written and dynamic individual article or essay. She is currently on sabbatical until Fall 2026.