Current Postdocs

Joseph Wei

CRRES Postdoctoral Scholar, 2023-2025

Joseph Wei is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for Research on Race and Ethnicity in Society and a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of English at Indiana University. He received his PhD from the University of Virginia, and his scholarly interests include Asian American literature, critical refugee studies, literature and sociology, and oral history. As a CRRES fellow, he will primarily be working on a book manuscript titled Refugee Poetics, which draws on oral history alongside textual analysis to examine the poetry and literary organizations made by 1.5- and second-generation Vietnamese, Hmong, Lao, and Cambodian American poets. He is also creating an oral history archive of Asian American poets from the 1970s to the present with support from the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center. 

Olivia Ekeh

CRRES Postdoctoral Scholar, 2022-2024

Email:

oekeh@iu.edu

Olivia Ekeh is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Center for Research on Race and Ethnicity in Society and a Visiting Assistant Professor in the Department of African American and African Diaspora Studies at Indiana University. She received her Ph.D. in Afro-American Studies from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Broadly, her research centers on 20th Century Black history, music, and popular culture. At CRRES she will be working on a book manuscript focusing on the historical and aesthetic significance of the soul era from the mid 20th Century on the larger Black music tradition. Using historical methods combined with literary criticism and analysis, music and performance studies, the project explores the importance of quotidian or experiences of the everyday on music from the soul era of the 20th Century on post-soul and contemporary Black musicians. Her archival research is heavily indebted to the Archives of African American Music and Culture (AAAMC) supporting her endeavor to broaden the sphere of soul music’s historical legacy beyond the exclusive scope of the Civil Rights Movement and Black Power.