JoAnna Poblete received her M.A. and Ph.D. in U.S. History from UCLA. She completed her undergraduate degree in History at UC Davis with a minor in Asian American Studies. Before coming to the University of Wyoming, she was a Carolina Postdoctoral fellow at UNC Chapel Hill, where she received a Postdoctoral Scholars Award for Research Excellence. She has also taught for UCLA Asian American Studies.
Her research focuses on issues of U.S. empire. Specifically, she looks at the impact of government structures and labor migration policies on the everyday lives of people who have come under U.S. authority, such as Filipinos, Puerto Ricans and American Sāmoans. Her first book manuscript is titled Intra-Colonial Migrants: Filipino and Puerto Rican Laborer in Hawai‘i, 1900-1940. She is also working on her next book project on immigration, tuna canneries and U.S. authority in the unincorporated U.S. territory of American Sāmoa.
Her recent publications include "Bridging Indigenous and Immigrant Struggles: A Case Study of American Sāmoa" in American Quarterly (2010) and "Multi-tasking Mediators: Intra-colonial leadership in Filipino and Puerto Rican Communities in Hawai‘i, 1900 to 1928," in the 2012 anthology Transnational Crossroads. She also has a forthcoming article titled “The S.S. Mongolia Incident: Medical Politics and Filipino Colonial Migration in Hawai'i” in the Pacific Historical Review (May 2013).
Courses:
Comparative U.S. Colonialisms, American Encounters II, U.S. Foreign Relations, U.S. from 1890 - 1929, Departmental Proseminar, U.S. from 1865
