Charlotte J Brooks
Professor
Weissman School of Arts and Sciences
Department: History
Areas of expertise: 20th Century US history, Asian American history, republican China and the Chinese overseas
Email Address: charlotte.brooks@baruch.cuny.edu
- Biography
- Research and Creative Activity
- Honors and Awards
Originally from California, Charlotte Brooks earned her B.A. in Chinese history from Yale University and worked in China and Hong Kong after college. She received her M.A. and Ph.D. in U.S. history from Northwestern University and taught at the University at Albany-SUNY, before coming to Baruch College. A scholar of race, immigration, and urban history, she has published widely on Asian American history, especially Chinese American history.
Prof. Brooks' newest book is the forthcoming The Moys of New York and Shanghai: A Chinese American Family in War and Revolution (University of California Press). It follows the six extraordinary Moy siblings and their spouses on a kaleidoscopic journey through world war, revolution, social transformation, and discrimination in two nations over a tumultuous half century.
She is also the author of three other books. American Exodus: Second Generation Chinese Americans in China, 1901-1949 (University of California Press, 2019) explores the lives and choices of the thousands of Chinese American citizens who left the United States for China to escape racism and build careers. Between Mao and McCarthy: Chinese American Politics in the Cold War Years (University of Chicago Press, 2015) is a comparative study of Chinese American political activism in New York and San Francisco between World War Two and the late 1960s. Alien Neighbors, Foreign Friends: Asian Americans, Housing, and the Transformation of Urban California (University of Chicago Press, 2009), uses Asian Americans’ experiences with housing discrimination to explore the startlingly rapid racial transformation of mid-century urban California. Prof. Brooks’ articles have also appeared in numerous journals, including the Journal of American History, the Journal of American Ethnic History, and the Journal of Urban History, and her work has been reprinted in The Best American History Essays.
Education
Ph.D., History, Northwestern University
M.A., History, Northwestern University
B.A., History, Yale University
Books
Brooks, C. (2019). American Exodus: Second Generation Chinese Americans in China, 1901-1949. Oakland, California, University of California Press.
Brooks, C. (2015). Between Mao and McCarthy: Chinese American Politics in the Cold War Years. Chicago, Illinois, USA, University of Chicago Press.
Brooks, C. (2009). Alien Neighbors, Foreign Friends: Asian Americans, Housing, and the Transformation of Urban California. Chicago, Illinois, University of Chicago Press.
Brooks, C. The Moys of New York and Shanghai: A Chinese American Family in War and Revolution.
Journal Articles
Brooks, C. (2020). New Old Sources for Chinese American History: US Consular Reports and Form 430 Applications. Chinese America: History and Perspectives, (2020).
Brooks, C. (2015). The Rise and Fall of a Front Group: The National Chinese Welfare Council, 1957-1991. Chinese America: History and Perspectives, 29(1). 47-59.
Brooks, C. (2015). Chinese American Politics in the Cold War Years. History Now, 42.
Brooks, C. (2014). The Chinese Third Force in the US: Political Alternatives in Cold War Chinese America. Journal of American Ethnic History, 34(1). 53-85.
Brooks, C. (2011). The War on Grant Avenue: Business Competition and Ethnic Rivalry in San Francisco's Chinatown, 1937-1942. Journal Of Urban History, 37(3). 311-330.
(2004). Sing Sheng vs. Southwood: Housing, Race, and the Cold War in 1950's California. Pacific Historical Review, 73(3). 463-494.
Brooks, C. (2000). In the Twilight Zone Between Black and White: Japanese American Resettlement and Community in Chicago, 1942-1945. Journal of American History, 86(4). 1655-1687.
Book Chapters
Brooks, C. (2018). Immigration to American Cities, 1925-2017. In Guilfoyle, T. (Ed.), Oxford Research Encyclopedia of American History (p. 8000 words). New York, New York. Oxford University Press.
Brooks, C. (2016). Sing Sheng vs. Southwood: Housing, Race, and the Cold War in 1950's California. In Nicolaides, B., & Wiese, A. (Eds.), The Suburb Reader New York. Routledge.
Brooks, C. (2006). Sing Sheng vs. Southwood: Housing, Race, and the Cold War in 1950's California. In Appleby, J. (Ed.), The Best American History Essays 2006 (pp. 173-200). New York. Palgrave Macmillan.
Media Contributions
Brooks, C. (2021). 1905-1906: Chinese Businesspeople Boycott American Goods..
(2020). Toynbee Prize Foundation blog.
(2020). The Metropole.
(2019). Chicago Tribune.
(2019). New York Times.
(2019). Washington Post.
(2019). PBS "Finding Your Roots," Season 5.
(2019). PBS/WGBH American Experience.
Presentations
Brooks, C. Teaching Asian American History. Professional Development Workshop. Perth Amboy, NJ: Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History.
Brooks, C. (2021, June 30). Comment on "“Chinese Exclusion and Chinese Students: The Impact of Xenophobia on U.S.-China Educational Exchanges, 1882-1943,". Annual meeting. Online: Society for the History of American Foreign Relations.
Brooks, C. (2021, May 31). Historical Perspectives on Anti-Asian Racism. Anti-Asian Racism: Past, Present and Change for an Inclusive Future. New York, New York (via Zoom): Baruch Asian Heritage Alumni Network.
Brooks, C. (2021, April 28). Cold War in Chinatown. Stanton Sharpe Lecture Series. Dallas, TX (via Zoom): Center for Presidential History and Southern Methodist University History Department.
Brooks, C. (2021, March 12). Wan-go Weng's Chinese America. Pacific Crossings: Wan-go Weng and His Film Collection at Columbia. New York (via Zoom): Columbia University.
Brooks, C. (2020, June 30). American Exodus. TalkStory Sunday Talks. Washington DC (via Zoom): 1882 Foundation.
Brooks, C. (2020, February 21). American Exodus. Friday Evening Lecture Series. New York, NY: Asian American and Asian Research Institute of CUNY.
Brooks, C. (2020, May 31). American Exodus. MOCATalks. New York, New York (via Zoom): Museum of Chinese in America.
Brooks, C. (2019, July 23). Comment on "Searching Asian American Histories". Inheritance and Innovation: An International Symposium on Migration, Ethnicity and the History of American Civilizations. Changchun, Jilin, China: Northeast Normal University.
Brooks, C. (2019, April 22). By Choice and Coercion: The Problem of Dual Citizenship in Modern China. Cornell Contemporary China Initiative Lecture Series. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University.
Brooks, C. (2018, June 26). The Cold War: A Closer Look. Professional Development Workshop. Hunterdon HS, New Jersey: Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History.
Brooks, C. (2018, March 23). Comment on "Wonders of the Weak: Fraught Self-Fashioning by and against Chinas in the Cold War". Association for Asian Studies Annual Meeting. Washington, DC: Association for Asian Studies.
Brooks, C. (2017, April 13). Promise and Peril: How Interdisciplinarity Has Shaped the Practice of Asian American History. Association for Asian American Studies Annual Meeting. Portland, OR: Association for Asian American Studies.
Brooks, C. (2016, July 7). Interest Group Politics and the National Interest. New York University Multinational Institute of American Studies. New York, NY: US State Department.
Brooks, C. (2016, September 22). Comment on Seiji Shirane's "From Japanese Subjects to Chinese Nationals". Modern China Seminar. New York, NY: Columbia University.
Brooks, C. (2016, April 2). Chinese American Traitor: The Search for Shanghai Broadcaster Herbert Moy. CUNY China/East Asia Talk Series. New York, NY
Brooks, C. (2016, February 18). Citizenship, Extrality, Expatriation: Chinese American Citizens in China's Treaty Ports. Advanced Research Collaborative. CUNY Graduate Center: CUNY.
Brooks, C. (2015, November 8). Chinese American "Returnees". MOCA Talks. New York, NY: Museum of Chinese in America.
Brooks, C. (2015, November 13). Between Mao and McCarthy. Friday Evening Lecture Series. New York, NY: Asian American and Asian Research Institute of CUNY.
Brooks, C. (2015, June 30). Chinese American Loyalty in World War Two. SHAFR Annual Meeting. Arlington, VA: Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations.
Brooks, C. (2015, March 31). Between Mao and McCarthy. San Francisco, CA: Chinese Historical Society of America.
Brooks, C. (2015, April 17). 'Herbie Moy Hated All White Men': Exploring Chinese American Allegiances During World War Two. OAH Annual Meeting. St. Louis, MO: Organization of American Historians.
Brooks, C. (2015, May 2). US-China Relations. Saturday Academy. New York, NY: Gilder-Lehrman Institute of American History.
Brooks, C. (2014, December 7). The Excluded: Chinese Immigration to the Tri-State Area in the Early Twentieth Century. Port of Entry to a Continent: Hoboken and the Federal Immigration Process, 1892-1924. Hoboken, NJ: Hoboken Historical Museum.
Brooks, C. (2014, October 11). Tammany’s Tong: The On Leong Merchants Association and Chinese American Politics in Prewar New York. Seventh Biennial Urban History Association Conference. Philadelphia, PA: Urban History Association.
Brooks, C. (2014, March 14). Making Homes. The Migrant Metropolis. College Park, MD: University of Maryland and the Smithsonian Institution.
Brooks, C. (2013, October 16). Between Mao and McCarthy: Chinese American Liberalism in the Cold War Years. Robert F. Allabough Class of 1934 Memorial Lecture. Hanover, NH: Dartmouth College Dept. of History.
Brooks, C. (2013, June 24). Immigration and Cultural Conflict. New York University Multinational Institute of American Studies, New York, New York, June 2013. New York, New York: US State Department.
Brooks, C. (2013, April 30). The Forgotten Liberals: Chinese American Political Activists in the Early Cold War Years. Reno, NV: University of Nevada, Reno.
Brooks, C. (2012, November 1). Hold These Truths panel. Play "Hold These Truths". New York, NY, USA: Epic Theatre Company.
Brooks, C. (2012, October 28). Comment on "Historicizing the Global City: Race, Space, and Capital in Twentieth-Century Urban America". Sixth Biennial Urban History Association Conference. New York, NY: Urban History Association.
Brooks, C. (2012, June 25). Immigration and Cultural Conflict. New York University Multinational Institute of American Studies. New York, New York: US State Department.
Brooks, C. (2012, April 21). Rethinking Right and Left: Political Complexity in Cold War Chinatown. Organization of American Historians Annual Meeting. Milwaukee, WI: Organization of American Historians.
Brooks, C. (2012, March 8). Chinese Immigration. Undesirables in America. Las Cruces, NM: Confucius Institute, New Mexico State University.
Brooks, C. (2012, September 5). Teaching Asian American History as American History. New York, NY: Stuyvesant High School.
Brooks, C. (2011, March 18). Interracial Connections and American Empire. Organization of American Historians Annual Meeting. Houston, Texas: OAH.
Brooks, C. (2011, October 14). Asian Americans Today. Northeast Sisterhood Conference. Queens College, CUNY: Alpha Kappa Delta Phi.
Brooks, C. (2011, June 27). Immigration and Cultural Conflict. NYU Multinational Institute of American Studies. New York, NY: U.S. State Department.
Brooks, C. (2010, October 21). Community Activism. Fifth Biennial Urban History Association Conference. Las Vegas, Nevada
Brooks, C. (2010, October 14). Alien Neighbors, Foreign Friends. Department of Asian Pacific American Studies. New York, NY: New York University.
Brooks, C. (2010, September 30). Heart Mountain Removal, Resettlement, Redress, Reflections: A Community Rediscovery. HEART MOUNTAIN, WYOMING: Removal, Resettlement, Redress, and Reflections: A Community Conference. Los Angeles, California: Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation and Japanese American National Museum.
Brooks, C. (2010, November 18). A Voter Cannot Be Neutral, Nor Should He Be': The Chinese American Democratic Club of San Francisco and Cold War Party Politics. American Studies Association Annual Meeting. San Antonio, Texas
Brooks, C. (2009, October 31). Diverse Suburb: History, Politics, and Prospects. Conference at Hoftra University. Hempstead, New York
Brooks, C. (2009, October 31). Alien Neighbors, Foreign Friends. Asian and Asian American Research Institute of CUNY. New York, New York
Brooks, C. (2009, October 31). Alien Neighbors, Foreign Friends. Columbia University Seminar on Twentieth-Century Politics and Society. New York, New York
Brooks, C. (2008, November 30). Housing Policy: Race, Community, and Activism. Researching New York Conference. Albany, New York
Brooks, C. (2008, March 31). 'The Orientals Whose Friendship Is So Important': Asian American Identity in the Early Cold War Era. Organization of American Historians Annual Meeting. New York, New York
Brooks, C. (2007, April 30). In the Wake of White Flight: Japanese Americans and Suburbanization in Postwar Los Angeles. Association for Asian American Studies Conference. New York, New York
Brooks, C. (2006, October 31). The War on Grant Avenue: Chinese Americans and Japanese Americans in San Francisco. Western History Association Conference. St. Louis, MO
Brooks, C. (2006, October 31). The War in China and the Fight for Chinatown. Third Biennial Urban History Association Conference. Tempe, AZ
Brooks, C. (2006, November 30). Housing: More Than Shelter. Researching New York Conference. Albany, NY
Brooks, C. (2006, April 30). Asian American Intellectuals as Both Subject and Objects of Study. Organization of American Historians Annual Meeting. Washington, DC
Brooks, C. (2005, November 30). Researching Westchester's Surburban Roots. Researching New York Conference. Albany, NY
Brooks, C. (2004, October 31). As Long As Prejudice is Tolerated, No Minority is Safe: The Struggle Against Housing Discrimination in postwar San Franscisco. Second Biennial Urban History Association Conference. Milwaukee, WI
Brooks, C. (2003, November 30). Money Matters. Researching New York Conference. Albany, NY
Brooks, C. (2001, October 31). 'Gee, But They're Japanesey': The Chicago Nisei Confront 'Assimilation' 1942-1947. Association of Asian American Studies "East of California" Conference. Oberlin, OH
Other Scholarly Works
Brooks, C. (2016). Zhongzu qishi zai jiujinshan! (Racial discrimination in San Francisco). The Suburb Reader, Second Edition.
Brooks, C. (2005). "Japanese Americans" (507 words) and "Tongs" (186 words).
Brooks, C. (2002). Knowledge Note: Communist China, 1949-Present.
Brooks, C. (2002). Knowledge Note: Immigration and Multiculturalism.
Brooks, C. (2002). Knowledge Note: Talks at the Yenan Forum on Art and Literature.
Brooks, C., & Hawes, J. (2001). "Japanese American Families During World War II" and "Department of Housing and Urban Development". The Family in America: An Encyclopedia.
Brooks, C., & Ciment, J. (2001). Asian American. Encyclopedia of the Great Depression and the New Deal. 71-73.
Reviews
Brooks, C. (1970,January 1). Citizens, Immigrants, and the Stateless: A Japanese American Diaspora in the Pacific. Journal of Asian Studies. Association for Asian Studies.
Brooks, C. (2019,December 1). Review of Winning the Third World: Sino-American Rivalry during the Cold War. American Historical Review. Bloomington, IN: American Historical Association.
Brooks, C. (2019,April 1). Review of The Chinese Must Go: Violence, Exclusion, and the Making of the Alien in America. Pacific Historical Review. Portland, OR,USA: Pacific Coast Branch, American Historical Association.
Brooks, C. (2017,May 1). Review of Asia First: China and the Making of Modern American Conservatism. Pacific Historical Review. Portland, OR: Pacific Coast Branch, American Historical Association.
Brooks, C. (2016,April 1). Alien Nation: Chinese Migration in the Americas from the Coolie Era through World War II (The David J. Weber Series in the New Borderlands History) . American Historical Review. Bloomington, IN: American Historical Association.
Brooks, C. (2014,November 1). Garden of the World: Asian Immigrants and the Making of Agriculture in California's Santa Clara Valley. Southern California Quarterly. Historical Society of Southern California.
Brooks, C. (2014,April 1). Citizens of Asian America: Democracy and Race During the Cold War. Political Science Quarterly. New York, NY: Academy of Political Science.
Brooks, C. (2013,December 1). Jim and Jap Crow: A Cultural History of 1940s Interracial America. Journal of American History. Organization of American Historians.
Brooks, C. (2013,March 1). Chinese Chicago: Race, Transnational Migration, and Community Since 1870. Journal of American History. Bloomington, Indiana,USA: Organization of American Historians.
Brooks, C. (2012,January 1). Contemporary Chinese America: Immigration, Ethnicity, and Community Transformation. Journal of American Ethnic History. Immigration and Ethnic History Society.
Brooks, C. (2012,January 1). Racial Beachhead: Diversity and Democracy in a Military Town. American Historical Review. Bloomington, Indiana,USA: American Historical Association.
Brooks, C. (2012,February 1). Brokering Belonging: Chinese in Canada's Exclusion Era. Social History. Social History.
Brooks, C. (2010,May 1). The New Nativism: Proposition 187 and the Debate over Immigration. Social History. Social History.
Brooks, C. (2009,January 1). Twenty-First Century Gateways: Immigrant Incorporation in Suburban America. Journal of American Ethnic History. Immigration and Ethnic History Society.
Brooks, C. (2009,August 1). Making a Non-White America: Californians Coloring Outside Ethnic Lines, 1925-1955. Pacific Historical Review. Pacific Coast Branch, American Historical Association.
Brooks, C. (2009,February 1). San Francisco's International Hotel: Organizing the Filipino American Community in the Anti-Eviction Movement. Pacific Historical Review. Pacific Coast Branch, American Historical Association.
Brooks, C. (2008,January 1). Colored Property: State Policy and White Racial Politics in Suburban America. Journal of American Ethnic History. Immigration and Ethnic History Society.
Brooks, C. (2005,March 1). Becoming Old Stock: The Paradox of German-American Identity. Reviews in American History.
Brooks, C. (2005,March 1). Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America. Journal of American History. Organization of American Historians.
Brooks, C. (2002,December 1). By Order of the President: FDR and the Internment of Japanese Americans. Journal of American History. Organization of American Historians.
Research Currently in Progess
Brooks, C.(n.d.). Selling America in China, 1890-1937. In Progress.
This project explores the lives and activities of the thousands of American entrepreneurs, diplomats, and adventurers who traveled to China in the late Qing and republican years. Few succeeded in accumulating great wealth, but many stayed on for decades, founding small businesses, peddling their “American expertise,” and occasionally reinventing themselves on the China coast. But while such people comprised around half of the American population in China before World War II, they have largely disappeared from histories of foreign activity there. Instead, scholarship about American entrepreneurship and community in prewar China has focused on two large US corporations—Standard Oil and British-American Tobacco—and the hundreds of Protestant missionaries who sought to convert the Chinese. In contrast, a growing body of work about other expatriate groups in China shows that British, Japanese, and other foreign communities there often developed into “settler societies” with distinct identities. China’s Americans also formed a distinct group, whose social, political, and economic influence on the country’s foreign enclaves increased during and after World War I. The men and women at the center of that group and of my study included shopkeepers, importers, prostitutes, and penniless retirees; Chinese American entrepreneurs selling their bicultural knowledge; Foreign Service staffers caught between their sympathy for local Americans and a State Department increasingly at odds with such expatriates; and an eccentric commercial attaché who ended each day by rating its success on a scale from one to ten. At a time when Washington saw China as insignificant to US strategic interests, these expatriates played an unusually large role in shaping America’s China policy. Furthermore, they did so in the context of prolonged Chinese government instability, overweening British economic power, and growing Japanese imperialism. This project will examine their efforts to promote not just US products, styles, and services, but also what they saw as US values. And it will also explore the way other foreigners and Chinese citizens, especially in China’s coastal cities, perceived and responded to the Americans.
| Honor / Award | Organization Sponsor | Date Received | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fellow | New York Academy of History | 2016 | The New York Academy of History is a professional organization devoted to the study and teaching of the history of the City and State of New York. Membership is by invitation. Elected Fellows are historians, independent scholars, public historians, museum curators and administrators, educators, archivists, and others with a demonstrated record of achievement and publications. |
| Presidential Excellence Award for Scholarship | Baruch College, CUNY | 2014 | |
| Honorable Mention, 2010 Frederick Jackson Turner Award (for author's first book on some significant phase of the American history) | Organization of the American Historians | 2010 | |
| Eugene M. Lang Junior Faculty Research Program Fellowship | 2009 | ||
| College Travel Fund Award | University of Albany | 2006 | |
| Dr. Nuala McGann Drescher Affirmative Action/Diversity Leave Program Recipient | SUNY Joint Labor-Management Committee | 2006 | 2006-2007 |
| Individual Development Award | SUNY Joint Labor-Management Committee | 2006 | |
| College Travel Fund Award | University of Albany | 2005 | |
| Louis Knott Koontz Memorial Award | Pacific Coast Branch, American Historical Association for "Sing Sheng vs. Southwood" | 2005 | |
| Faculty Research Assistance Program B Grant | University of Albany | 2005 | |
| Mellon Post-Doctoral Fellowship in the Humanities | Barnard College (declined) | 2003 | |
| Finalist and Hagley Museum and Library/Rutgers-Camden Alternate | Woodrow Wilson Postdoctoral Fellowship in the Humanities | 2002 | |
| Northwestern University Graduate School Dissertation Year Fellowship | 2002 | ||
| Social Science Research Council International Migration Dissertation Fellowship | 2001 | ||
| Teaching Assistant Fellow | Searle Center for Teaching Excellence | 2000 | |
| University Fellowship | Northwestern University | 1997 |