Research Interests:

I am interested in how Filipinos in America live their lives as migrants caught up in a network of transnational connections. I am studying the political and cultural dynamics of the Filipino community in Daly City, California -- in particular, the emotional dimensions of immigration and their articulations in public and private discourse. I am also interested in photographs published in travel accounts and government documents of the early American colonial period in the Philippines. I argue that photography is an instrument unusually effective for the presentation of colonialist ideology, and so I am examining its role in the legitimation of the American colonial enterprise.

Bibliography:

Vergara, Benito M. 2002. Review of Henry Yu’s “Thinking Orientals": Migration, contact, and exoticism in modern America. Journal of American Ethnic History 21:3. Vergara, Benito M. 2000. Betrayal, class fantasies, and the Filipino nation in Daly City. In Cultural compass: Ethnographic explorations of Asian America, edited by Martin Manalansan. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. {Reprinted from The Philippine Sociological Review: Special Issue on Filipinos as Transnational Migrants. Vol. 44:1-4 1996.] Vergara, Benito, M. and P. N. Abinales. E ds. 1999. Nationalism without guilt. Pilipinas, Journal of the Association for Asian Studies Philippine Studies Group: Special Issue on Postwar Philippine Nationalism 32. Vergara, Benito M. 1999. Review of Maria P.P. Root’s "Transformation and identity". The Journal of Asian Studies 58:2. Vergara, Benito M. 1995. Displaying Filipinos: Photography and colonialism in early 20th Century Philippines. Quezon City: University of the Philippines Press. [