Before coming to OSU, she taught in the Department of Asian American Studies at UC Santa Barbara, the English Department at Colorado College, and the Department of English at Emory University where she held a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship. Her previous research includes Asian American literature of the 1960s and 70s, the WWII Japanese American internment, and race/gender in Asian American studies. Her current work focuses on pedagogical concerns in Ethnic Studies and the experiences of faculty of color at predominantly white institutions. She has also started to work in film, particularly community-based documentaries and experimental film.