Ellen Wu
Department of History
Expert Bio
Ellen D. Wu is associate professor of history at Indiana University Bloomington. As a specialist in 20th-century U.S. history, she focuses her research, writing and teaching interests on Asian Americans, race and immigration. She is the author of the multiple-award-winning “The Color of Success: Asian Americans and the Origins of the Model Minority” (Princeton University Press, 2014).
Her work has been featured in a variety of public-facing venues, including The Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, NPR, PBS, Time, Limestone Post, Al-Jazeera English, Voice of America, C-SPAN’s American History TV and TruTV’s “investigative comedy” show “Adam Ruins Everything.”
Wu’s research has been supported with fellowships from the Ford Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the University of Texas at Austin’s Institute for Historical Studies, and the University of Chicago’s Center for the Study of Race, Politics and Culture. She is writing “Overrepresented: Asian Americans in the Age of Affirmative Action,” a history of race, policy and democracy since the 1960s.
Wu serves as a member of the Indiana Advisory Committee for the United States Commission on Civil Rights. She was named a “Champion of Diversity” by Indiana Minority Business Magazine in 2017.
Areas of Expertise
Asian Americans, race in the United States, U.S. immigration history.
Other Information
“The real reasons the U.S. became less racist toward Asian Americans”
“Adam Ruins Everything: How America created the ‘model minority’ myth”
“Asian Americans and the model minority myth”
“Hawaii as ‘racial paradise’? Bid for Obama Library invokes a complex past”
“Diver’s ambassador life showed bigotry is never far from the surface”
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