Diane Fujino is professor of Asian American Studies and director of the Center for Black Studies Research at UC Santa Barbara.  Her study of renowned activist Yuri Kochiyama (Heartbeat of Struggle: The Revolutionary Life of Yuri Kochiyama, Minnesota Press, 2005) situates her politics in the context of Malcolm X and Black radicalism in Harlem, Third World anti-colonial movements, and Asian American organizing, while also providing a racialized gendered analysis of leadership (in Want to Start a Revolution: Radical Women in the Black Freedom Struggle).  In Samurai Among Panthers: Richard Aoki on Race, Resistance and a Paradoxical Life (Minnesota Press, 2012), Fujino examines the impact of wartime incarceration, the early Cold War, Black Panther Party, Third Worldism, and Asian American Movement on Richard Aoki’s political ideology and practice.  Her edited volume, Wicked Theory, Naked Practice (Minnesota Press, 2009), examines the provocative ideas and Afro-Asian music of Fred Ho. 

She offers a historiography of Asian American Movement studies (Journal of Asian American Studies) and has also published in American Quarterly, Pacific Historical Review (forthcoming), Amerasia Journal, Kalfou, Journal of Civil and Human Rights, Social Justice, Journal of Men’s Studies and in anthologies such as AFRO/ASIA, Yellow Power, Yellow Soul, Teaching Asian America, Dragon Ladies, and Legacy to Liberation, among others. She is on the editorial boards of Kalfou and the Journal of Civil and Human Rights.

Her current book project examines Japanese American activism in the early Cold War, arguing that alternative pathways existed to the model minority trope that disciplined Black militancy and decolonial movements abroad—struggles that created possibilities for “deep solidarities” and radical democracy.  She continues to study the Asian American Movement of the 1960s-70s. 

On the Center for Black Studies Research and its work on engaged scholarship within the Black radical tradition, see http://www.research.ucsb.edu/cbs/.

Fujino teaches courses on the Asian American Movement, US Third World social movements, Japanese American history, Community Studies/Social Justice, Asian American gender and sexuality, and Asian Americans and the Black radical imagination.  She initiated the Community Studies and Peer Advising programs in Asian American studies at UCSB and also taught an experimental high school outreach course on Puerto Rican history and resistance, in conjunction with the international art exhibit, “Not Enough Space,” exhibited at La Casa de la Raza in Santa Barbara.  She serves on the boards of the MultiCultural Center, the Black Resource Committee, and La Casa de la Raza and formerly on the Scholars Committee of the Japanese American National Museum.  She was featured in “AOKI: A Documentary Film” and speaks on the history of Asian American, Afro-Asian, and Third World liberation struggles, including on Democracy Now!, KPFK, KPFA, WBAI, NPR, Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Oakland Tribute, Hypen magazine, Rafu Shimpo, and community and scholarly venues.