Micheline Soong PH.D.
College of Liberal Arts - Department of English and Applied Linguistics
MICHELINE M. SOONG is Professor of Comparative Literature at Hawai'i Pacific University. Her teaching and research interests encompass post-colonial and indigenous narratives in the literatures of East Asia, and Hawai'i and the Pacific. She co-edited the 2019 anthology Buddhisms in Asia: Traditions, Transmissions, and Transformations by SUNY Press.
EDUCATION:
1999 Ph. D., Comparative Literature, University of California Los Angeles
1991-1992 Stanford Inter-University Center for Japanese Language Studies (Yokohama, Japan)
1991 M.A., Comparative Literature, University of California Los Angeles
1987 B.A., Chinese, University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa (With Distinction, Phi Beta Kappa)
TEACHING INTERESTS:
Transnational Cultural Studies
1) Japanese and Chinese Literatures, American Zen Buddhist Studies
2) Post-Colonial and Indigenous Literatures Of Hawai‘i and The Pacific
3) 20th-Century American Women Writers of Color
4) World Literatures in English Translation
COURSES RECENTLY TAUGHT AT HPU:
AMST 2000: Topics in American Studies: An American Childhood: Texts, Narrative, and Media
WRI 1200: Research, Argument and Writing
ENG 1101: Representations of Pacific Life
ENG 2000: The Art of Literature: Children’s Literature
ENG 2100: Ways of Reading: Film, Literature and Culture
ENG 2500: World Literature
1) Exploring Arabic, Persian, and Islamic-influenced Literatures
2) Ancient, Contemporary, Speculative
ENG 3130: Special Topics in World Literature:
1) Reading Ruth Ozeki's A Tale for the Time Being
2) Re-Reading Lolita in Tehran
3) Asia-Pacific Diaspora Literature: Korea and Okinawa
4) Women in Buddhist Asia and Japan
ENG 3135: Japanese Literature: Competing Voices in Japanese Literature
ENG 3223: Special Topics in Asian Literature: Buddhist Literature: Traditions and Transformations
ENG 3251: Sex, Power, Narrative
ENG 3226: Special Topics in Literatures of Hawai‘i and the Pacific:
1) Hawai‘i Writers
2) Pidgin Literature
3) The Works of Brandy Nālani McDougall
ENG 4910: English Program Capstone
RECENT SCHOLARLY ACTIVITIES:
CO-EDITED ANTHOLOGY
2019 Buddhisms in Asia: Traditions, Transmissions, and Transformations, co-editors Nicholas Brasovan and Micheline Soong, SUNY Press, 2019.
BOOK CHAPTER
2021 “Talking Story with Lee A. Tonouchi, 'Da Pidgin Guerrilla' on Pidgin in the local literatures of Hawai'i” by Micheline M. Soong and Lee A. Tonouchi, in Routledge Handbook of Pidgin and Creole Languages. Co-editored by Umberto Ansaldo and Miriam Meyerhoff. Routledge, 2021, pp. 250-266.
RECENT BOOK REVIEWS
2023 Japanese Tales of Lafcadio Hearn, Edited and introduced by Andrei Codrescu, Foreword by Jack Zipes. Marvels and Tales: Journal of Fairy Tale Studies. Issue 37, Vol. 2 (2023): 325-7.
2021 A Garden of Marvels: Tales of Wonders From Early Medieval China by Robert Ford Campany, in Marvels and Tales: Journal of Fairy Tale Studies. vol. 35 no. 2, 2021, pp. 375-378. https://digitalcommons.wayne.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1626&context=marvels
Project MUSE muse.jhu.edu/article/853545
ENCYCLOPEDIA ENTRY
2014 “Hawaii/Local Literature.” Asian American Society: An Encyclopedia. Ed. Mary Yu Danico. 4 vols. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE Reference with the Association for Asian American Studies. September 2014. DOI: https://sk.sagepub.com/reference/asian-american-society-an-encyclopedia/n148.xml.
RECENT CONFERENCE WORK:
2022 “What Does Ryukyuan-centric Studies Looks Like from Hawai'i?” 27th Japan Studies Association Annual Conference. Virtual. 6-8 January 2022. Roundtable discussant and moderator.
RECENT GRANTS & AWARDS:
2026 HPU-administered NEH faculty research grant awarded Spring 2026 FY 2026-2027 Round 1: $3,000.00 for project entitled: "Establishing Scholarship that Explores the Connection Between Ainu, Okinawan, and Proto-Polynesian Shared Values Characterized by the Native Hawaiian Concept of "Malama 'Āina" and Buddhist Concept of Pratītyasamutpāda "interdependent co-arising."
2026 Spring 2026 HPU Trustees Faculty Grant Award $2,500 for S26 ENG 1101 to fund student learning enrichment for students’ community leaders interview project. Additional goal for students to demonstrate engagement with HPU’s General Education Program ILOs 1) civic engagement and 2) sustainability for assessment
2025 Spring 2025 HPU Trustees Faculty Grant Award $2,500 for student learning enrichment through funding extra- and co-curricular activities in the Hawaii and the Pacific courses within the HPU General Education Program. I served as the grant proposer and grant administrator. Funds disbursed in Fall 2025.
ONE OF THE MOST INFLUENTIAL WRITERS ON MY CAREER: URSULA K. LE GUIN
