UW Press launches new book series: Critical Filipinx Studies

A new book series will examine the lives of the Filipino diaspora, including Filipino Americans and how they impact the rest of the world, with emphasis on LGBTQ and feminist experiences.

Critical Filipinx* Studies is a new book series from the University of Washington Press, edited by Robyn Magalit Rodriguez, founding director of the Bulosan Center for Filipinx Studies. 

Based on cultural studies, ethnic studies, and women’s, gender, and sexuality studies, this series is necessarily a feminist and queer project. 

“I’m looking for vibrant interdisciplinary projects or projects rooted in various disciplines, including critical ethnic studies, Asian American studies, history, cultural studies, geography, and women’s, gender, and sexuality studies," says Acquisitions Editor Mike Baccam.

This series lifts up the decolonizing identities and cultural productions of people who claim roots to the Philippines and illuminates how Filipinos in America and across the diaspora experience and imagine their everyday lives.

It emphasizing work by scholar-activists who adopt a stance of care—ethical and political commitment—toward the people whose lives animate their work, it traces interracial solidarities, as fraught as they may be, to disrupt racial capitalism’s impulse to both homogenize and propagate “multicultural” difference.

“I can think of no better partner than the UW Press in launching this historically significant book series in Critical Filipinx Studies. UW has published important texts in Asian American Studies and will continue to be at the cutting edge of Asian American Studies scholarship with this series,” explains Robyn Magalit Rodriguez.

This series will publish books that engage with some of the following questions: What are the experiences of Filipinx migrants and what about these experiences sheds light on the nature of global racial capitalism? How do Filipinx people resist imperial and neocolonial structures and imagine and organize toward non-extractive, regenerative futures? How are Filipinx people represented across multiple forms of media and in what ways do they counter these representations? How do Filipinx people construct an alternative global archipelago of being and belonging?

Proposals for single-authored books across disciplines, from monographs to other compelling nonfiction books that appeal to a broader audience, are welcome for submission. The UW Press will also consider groundbreaking anthologies. Queries may be sent to Robyn at robyn@drrobynrodriguez.com and to Mike at mbaccam@uw.edu.

"I’m also particularly drawn to books that are theoretically rich but accessible to readers outside of academia. I’d love for these books to be on the shelves at local independent bookstores and public libraries,” adds Baccam.

* Out of respect for the originators of this press release we use the term "Filipinx" liberally in this article. The term "Filipinx" is a term used among some U.S. academics and progressives who don't want to affix a gender to things and people from the Philippines which, by definition, the Spanish-rooted terms "Filipino" and "Filipina" does. 

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