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 Positions: asia critique, American Literature, Cultural Studies, American Quarterly, and other venues. He is currently editing two edited collections forthcoming in 2024: Transpacific, Undisciplined (University of Washington Press), co-edited with Lily Wong and Chien-ting Lin, and Made in Asia/America: Why Video Games Were Never (Really) About Us (Duke University Press), co-edited with Tara Fickle.

Chris writes creative works under his matrilineal name, Kawika Guillermo. 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 video game, Stamped: an anti-travel game, will be released in August 2023 by Analgesic Productions, and his first prose-poetry book, Nimrods: a fake-punk self-hurt anti-memoir, is forthcoming in September 2023 by 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.

“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 31, no. 1 (2023): 91-116.

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

Patterson, Christopher and Y-Dang Troeung. “Organic and Inorganic Chinas: Desire and Fatigue in Global Hong Kong.” Amerasia Journal 45.3 (Jan 2020): 280-298.

Books and edited collections

Guillermo, Kawika. Nimrods: a fake-punk self-hurt anti-memoir. Duke University Press, 2023.

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, 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

For All Flowers Bloom

Winner of the 2021 Reviewers Choice Gold Award for Best General Fiction/Novel

For Stamped: an anti-travel novel

Winner of the 2020 Association for Asian American Studies (AAAS) Book Award in Prose

Award-Winning Finalist in the Fiction: Literary category of the 2019 Best Book Awards sponsored by American Book Fest

For Transitive Cultures: Anglophone Literature of the Transpacific

Winner of the 2020 Shelley Fisher Fishkin Prize for International Scholarship in Transnational American Studies

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.