Research Interests

• International Migration
• Comparative Race and Ethnic Studies
• Gender
• East Asian Studies
• Asian American Studies
• Human Trafficking
• Japanese Popular Culture

Courses Taught at Texas A&M

• SOCI/WGST 207: Introduction to Gender and Society
• SOCI 317: Race and Ethnic Relations
• SOCI/WGST/ASIA 463, INTS 481, SOCI 685: Gender in Asia
• SOCI/ASIA 489, SOCI 685: Race and Ethnicity in East Asia and Beyond
• SOCI 617: Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnic Relations
• SOCI/WGST 661: Sociology of Gender

Bio

Dr. Kazuko Suzuki is the author of the award-winning book, Divided Fates: The State, Race, and Korean Immigrants’ Adaptation in Japan and the United States, which compares adaptation patterns of three Korean diasporic groups. The book demonstrates how contexts of reception, including different conceptualizations of ‘race’ in relation to nationhood, affect the adaptation of immigrants of the same ethnic/national origin. It also shows how ‘race’ can be fabricated by the state or the dominant group even when the phenotype and skin color of the dominant and minority groups are similar.

Dr. Suzuki was a Visiting Associate Professor of Sociology at Yale University and was an affiliated faculty member in the Program of Ethnicity, Race and Migration and the Council of East Asian Studies during the 2017-18 academic year. She was born in Japan. After working for a Japanese company for several years, she came to the United States for her graduate education. She received a Ph.D. in Sociology from Princeton University in November 2003. Currently, she is an Associate Professor of Texas A&M University.

She specializes in International Migration, Race and Ethnic Relations (both U.S. domestic and international comparisons), Gender and Sexuality, and East Asian (Japanese) Studies. She has fieldwork experience in Japan and Russia, as well as in the United States. She is interested in “invisible” social oppression against minority groups such as immigrants, racial minorities, and women in Asia.

Her research interests include: modes of incorporation and immigrant adaptation from an international comparative perspective; historical and regional analysis of ‘race’ beyond the Western paradigm, as well as cross-disciplinary analysis of ‘race’; human trafficking in women to the U.S. and Japan; and gender and sexuality in Japanese popular culture media, in particular Yaoi/BL.

She has research and teaching experience at various institutions such as the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (CASBS) and the Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity (CCSRE) at Stanford University, the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS) in Princeton, the Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race (CSER) and the Weatherhead East Asian Institute (WEAI) at Columbia University. She was also an Abe Fellow of the Social Science Research Council (SSRC).

Representative Publications

• Suzuki, Kazuko and Diego von Vacano, eds. 2018. Reconsidering Race: Social Science Perspectives on Racial Categories in the Age of Genomics with preface by Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Oxford University Press.
• Suzuki, Kazuko. 2017.  “A Critical Assessment of Comparative Sociology of Race and Ethnicity.” Sociology of Race and Ethnicity Vol. 3 (3): 287-300.
• Suzuki, Kazuko. 2016. Divided Fates: The State, Race, and Korean Immigrants’ Adaptation in Japan and the United States. Lanham: Lexington Books/Rowman and Littlefield Publishers.
  • Winner of the 2017 Book Award on Asia/Transnational from the Asia and Asian American Section of the American Sociological Association.
• Suzuki, Kazuko. 2015. “What Can We Learn from Japanese Professional BL Writers?: A Sociological Analysis of Yaoi/BL Terminology and Classifications,” in Boys Love Manga and Beyond: History, Culture and Community in Japan, edited by Mark McLelland, Kazumi Nagaike, Katsuhiko Suganuma, and James Welker. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi: 93-118.
  • One of the five nominees of “Best Academic/Scholarly Work” of 2016 Eisner Award.
• Suzuki, Kazuko. 1998. “Pornography or Therapy? Japanese Girls Creating the Yaoi Phenomenon.” In Millennium Girls:  Today’s Girls Around the World, edited by Sherrie A. Inness. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield: 243-267.