Profile

Angie Chuang

Assistant Professor
School of Communication

  • Angie Chuang is a full-time professor of Journalism. Her research and teaching focuses on race and identity issues in the news media. She joined the SOC faculty in 2007 after a thirteen-year career in newspaper journalism, as a staff writer at The Oregonian, The Hartford Courant, and the Los Angeles Times.

    Her scholarship and commentary on themes of American Otherness, the negotiation of American versus foreign identity through news media representations, has appeared in Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, TheRoot.com, and the Poynter Institute's website.

    Prof. Chuang developed one of the first regional newspaper race and ethnicity issues beats in 2000. Her reporting, including stories from Afghanistan, Vietnam, and the post-Katrina Gulf Coast, won many national and regional awards, including one from the Columbia University School of Journalism Workshop on Journalism, Race & Ethnicity. She developed an SOC course, Race, Ethnic and Community Reporting, based on her reporting experiences.

    Prof. Chuang also oversees an SOC partnership with New America Media, the nation’s largest collaborative for ethnic media.

  • Degrees

    BA Stanford University (with honors and distinction, Phi Beta Kappa); MA Stanford University
  • DOWNLOAD CV (PDF)

  • OFFICE

  • SOC - School of Communication
  • Mary Graydon - 330B

  • CONTACT INFO

  • (202) 885-2151 (Office)
  • Send email Profile UserID

  • FOR THE MEDIA

  • To request an interview for a
    news story, call AU Communications
    at 202-885-5950 or submit a request.

Partnerships & Affiliations

  • New America Media

    Liaison for partnership with American University School of Communication

  • The Washington Post

    Race, Ethnic and Community Reporting class partnership with PostLocal

Teaching

  • Fall 2013

Scholarly, Creative & Professional Activities

Selected Publications

"The Immigrant Muslim American at the Boundary of Insider and Outsider: Representations of Faisal Shahzad as 'Homegrown' Terrorist," Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, March 2013

"First Gay, Latino Inaugural Poet’s ‘América’ Tells Every Immigrant’s Story," New America Media, January 2013

"Representations of Foreign versus (Asian) American Identity in a Mass-Shooting Case:Newspaper Coverage of the 2009 Binghamton Massacre," Journalism & Mass Communication Quarterly, June 2012

"Learning to Pray," Travelers Tales Solas Award Winner 2012, also published in Best Womens' Travel Writing Vol. 8 (2012). Excerpt from forthcoming book, The Four Words for Home (Willow Books, 2014).

"Haiti’s ‘Orphans’ and the Transracial Adoption Dilemma," The Root, February 9, 2010

"Hung?: From the nutty mass murderer to the stereotypical street thug, how the media emasculate Asian and black men," The Root, July 9, 2009

"Reporting on the Intersection of Race and Gay Marriage," The Poynter Institute Diversity at Work column, May 19, 2009.

Interviewing: A Practical Guide for Citizen Journalists, Knight Citizen News Network / J-Lab, co-produced and written with Prof. Lynne Perri of AU SOC, March 2009.

"Racial rifts: Obama's candidacy a Rorschach test for nation's minorities," Newhouse News Service / The Oregonian, July 16, 2008.

Announcements

Prof. Chuang's forthcoming book, The Four Words for Home, was the Willow Books Literature Awards Grand Prize Winner in Prose. It will be published by Willow Books in Spring 2014.

The latest edition of DC Interesections, the website for the Race, Ethnic and Community Reporting class has launched. Featuring multimedia stories by AU students on Northern Virginia's religiously diverse Indian immigrant community, Caribbean influences on Anacostia's arts scene, and a close-up look at change on Petworth's Georgia Avenue.

Media Appearances

"Boston bombers and the myth of the brotherly duo," quoted in The New Republic, April 20, 2013.

"Are they illegal or undocumented?," quoted in La Opinión, June 20, 2012.

"Journalism Embraces Ethnic Media," featured in Diverse: Issues in Higher Education, August 3, 2010.

"Is Obama the only black official in D.C.?," quoted in McClatchy News Service, September 27, 2009.

"NABJ: Economy's Cuts Felt Deeply by Minorities," quoted in TV Week, August 2009.

"Angie Chuang: Reporters as truth-seekers and storytellers," profiled in Asian Fortune, June 30, 2009.

AU Expert

Area of Expertise: Representations of racial and ethnic minorities in news media; ethnic media; ethnic community reporting; newspaper writing

Additional Information: Angie Chuang was a staff writer for 13 years at major U.S. regional newspapers, including seven years as the race and ethnicity reporter at the Oregonian. She developed the beat, which was launched upon the release of the 2000 census. Chuang wrote stories about local Afghan and Iraqi refugees in the post-9/11 world and how growing Latino and Asian immigrant communities altered Oregon’s political and cultural landscape, and the socioeconomic shifts in Portland’s African American community due to gentrification. During her tenure at the Oregonian, she traveled to Afghanistan, Vietnam, and the post-Katrina Gulf Coast in pursuit of stories, as well as travelling to Japan, Singapore, and Azerbaijan. She developed a community-reporting model aimed at giving underrepresented sources a voice.  The model helped reporters address the challenges of language barriers and distrust of the press based on negative past experiences.  She lectured across the nation about these methods in venues ranging from her own newspaper to universities and conferences.

Chuang is working on a narrative nonfiction book about her coverage of, and travel with, an Afghan immigrant family in the wake of September 11 attacks. An excerpt of the book will appear in the 9/11 10th anniversary issue of the Asian American Literary Review. Other excerpts have appeared in Best Women's Travel Writing 2011 (Solas House), Tales From Nowhere (Lonely Planet Publishing, 2006), Consequence Magazine, The Lindenwood Review, and other publications.
 
At AU, Chuang is pursuing research related to representations of race in the news media, minority journalists, and ethnic media in  Washington, D.C. She oversees a partnership with New America Media, the nation's oldest and most influential ethnic-media collaborative. She has presented papers on foreign versus American identity in representations of immigrant Americans such as Faisal Shahzad, the Times Square bomber, and Jiverly Wong and Seung-Hui Cho, shooters responsible for massacres in Binghamton, N.Y., and Virginia Tech. Her papers received awards for one of the top faculty contributions at the 2010 and 2011 Association of Education in Mass Communication and Journalism conference.
 
Chuang’s work has been recognized by the Columbia University School of Journalism "Let's Do It Better" Workshop (2004), the Pacific Northwest Newspaper Association, the Society of Professional Journalists Northwest, the Society of American Travel Writers, and the Oregon Newspaper Publishers Association. Before writing for the Oregonian, she was a staff writer for the Hartford Courant,a reporting trainee for the Minority Editorial Training program at the Los Angeles Times,and a reporter for the Contra Costa Times in Walnut Creek, Calif.

Media Relations
To request an interview please call AU Media Relations at 202-885-5950 or submit an interview request form.

AU News and Achievements