Biography

Christopher B. Patterson is an Associate Professor in the Social Justice Institute at the University of British Columbia. His research focuses on transpacific discourses of literature, games, and films through the lens of empire studies, queer theory and creative writing. His first book, Transitive Cultures: Anglophone Literature of the Transpacific (Rutgers University Press, 2018), won the American Studies Association’s 2020 Shelley Fisher Fishkin Prize for International Scholarship in Transnational American Studies. His most recent book, Open World Empire: Race, Erotics, and the Global Rise of Video Games (New York University Press, 2020) was a finalist for both the 2020 Speculative Fictions and Cultures of Science Book Award and the 2021 John Hope Franklin Publication Prize of the American Studies Association. His articles have appeared in American Literature, Cultural Studies, American Quarterly, and other venues. He is currently co-editing the anthology Made in Asia America: Why Video Games Were Never (Really) About Us, contracted with Duke University Press.

Under his matrilineal name, Kawika Guillermo, Chris writes fiction, creative non-fiction, and poetry. His debut novel, Stamped: an anti-travel novel (2018), won the 2020 Association for Asian American Studies Book Award for Creative Prose, while his follow-up, All Flowers Bloom (2020), won the 2021 Reviewers Choice Gold Award for Best General Fiction/Novel. His short stories and poetry have been published in over forty-five journals, e-zines, and magazines, including The Cimarron Review, WSQ: Women’s Studies Quarterly, and Feminist Studies. His first book of prose-poetry, Nimrods: a fake-punk self-hurt anti-memoir, is forthcoming from Duke University Press.

Chris received his Ph.D. in English from the University of Washington in 2013. Before coming to UBC in 2018, he worked as an Assistant Professor of English at the New York Institute of Technology in Nanjing, China, as a post-doctoral scholar at Chinese University of Hong Kong’s Cultural Studies Program, and as an Assistant Professor of Humanities and Creative Writing in Hong Kong Baptist University. From 2009-2013 he was a lead organizer for the Asian American Studies Research Collective in Seattle, and from 2011-2013 he was a program director and grant writer for the Seattle Asian American Film Festival (SAAFF). In 2013, Chris founded the podcast New Books in Asian American Studies, and in 2020, he founded The JAAS Podcast. He currently serves as the Managing Editor for decomp journal, the in-house literary and art journal of GRSJ, and as the Book Review Editor for The Journal of Asian American Studies. His commitment to teaching was recognized in 2018 when he was awarded Hong Kong Baptist University’s Arts Faculty Early Career Teaching Award.

“Open World Empire: Race, and the Erotics of Video games.” Academic project merging Queer Theory, Game Studies, and Transpacific Studies. (2013-Present)

“All Flowers Bloom.” Speculative Fiction novel. (2016-Present)

“Domesticating Brown.” Academic Project focusing on narratives of Southeast Asian domestic workers and other migrants. (2017-Present)

Selected Publications

Journal articles and editorials

Patterson, Christopher B. “Brown Theory: a storied manifest of our world.” Positions: asia critique. [Forthcoming 2023]

Patterson, Christopher B. “Making Queer Asiatic Worlds: Performance and Racial Interaction in North American Visual Novels.” American Literature 94, no. 1 (2022): 17-47.

Patterson, Christopher (50%), Tara Fickle (50%). “Asian/American Gaming.” Verge: Studies in Global Asias 7, no. 2 (2021): 19-55.

Patterson, Christopher B. “Queer, Brown, Migrant: Documenting the Hong Kong ‘Helper.’” Cultural Studies. Ed. John Erni, Audrey Yue, and Fran Martin. (2019)

Books and edited collections

Patterson, Christopher B. Open World Empire: Race and the Erotics of Video Games. New York University Press.

Guillermo, Kawika. All Flowers Bloom: a novel. Westphalia Press.

Patterson, Christopher B. Transitive Cultures: Anglophone Literature of the Transpacific. Rutgers University Press, March 2018.

Guillermo, Kawika. Stamped: an anti-travel novel. Westphalia Press, August 2018.

Short Fiction

Guillermo, Kawika. “Dreams That Are Not Your Own.” The Cimarron Review. February 2022.

Book chapters

Patterson, Christopher B. “The Programmatic, The Problematic, and the Radical Racial Tradition (Or, on being Stamped).” Creative Writing Scholars on the Publishing Trade. Eds. Marshall Moore and Sam Meekings. Routledge (August 2021): 127-139.

Patterson, Christopher B. “What is Asian America to Asia?: Two Transpacific Episodes.” Asian American Literature in Transition, 1996-2020. Eds. Betsy Huang and Victor Mendoza. Cambridge University Press (May 2021): 287-293.

Patterson, Christopher B. “What is Asian America to Asia?: Two Transpacific Episodes.” Asian American Literature in Transition. Eds. Betsy Huang and Victor Mendoza. Cambridge University Press. (Fall 2019)

Patterson, Christopher B, Shirley Geok-lin Lim, Weihsin Gui and Y-Dang Troeung. “The Obscure Anglophone: Literature in English from Southeast Asia,” Companion to English in Asia. Blackwell Press. [Forthcoming Fall 2019]

For Open World Empire: Race, Erotics, and the Global Rise of Video Games

Finalist for the 2021 John Hope Franklin Publication Prize of the American Studies Association Runner up for the 2020 Speculative Fictions and Cultures of Science Book Award

Christopher B. Patterson is an Assistant Professor in the Social Justice Institute at the University of British Columbia. His research focuses on transpacific discourses of literature, games, and films through the lens of empire studies, queer theory and creative writing. His first book, Transitive Cultures: Anglophone Literature of the Transpacific (Rutgers University Press, 2018), won the American Studies Association’s 2020 Shelley Fisher Fishkin Prize for International Scholarship in Transnational American Studies.