Dr. Rebecca King O'Riain

Welcome to my personal web page. I completed my BA at Carleton College and my MA and PhD in Sociology at the University of California, Berkeley. I was an Associate Professor and Chair of the Sociology Department at the University of San Francisco until 2003 and joined the department of Sociology here at NUI, Maynooth in January of 2004.

Publications

I have an article out in the Handbook of Cultural Sociology edited by Laura Grindstaff, Ming-Cheng Lo and John Hall (eds). New York: Routledge entitled, “Post-Culture Wars Visions of Multiculturality.”

I finished up my project on transnational media practices of Polish, Chinese and Nigerian Immigrants in Ireland (along with my co-researchers Gavan Titley and Aphra Kerr) with the launch of a report entitled, Broadcasting -  In the New Ireland: Mapping and Envisioning Cultural Diversity. Dublin: Broadcast Authority of Ireland.
I published a chapter entitled “Media Perspectives on Chinese Migrants in Ireland” in Fanning, Bryan and Munck, Ronaldo (eds) Globalization, Migration and Social Transformation: Ireland in Europe and the World. London: Ashgate Publishers and I have a piece forthcoming with Gavan Titley and Aphra Kerr entitled, “Transnational Media Networks and the ‘Migration Nation’ in Gilmartin, Mary and White, Allen (eds) Migration in Ireland. Manchester: Manchester University Press.

I also did some work on studying discrimination in Ireland with Helen Russell, Fran McGinnity, and Emma Quinn of the Economic and Social Research Institute. 2009. The Experience of Discrimination in Ireland: Analysis of the QNHS Equality Module Report to the Equality Authority.

I am also working on an edited book with Stephen Small, Minelle Mahtani, Paul Spickard and Miri Song tentatively entitled Global Mixed Race which documents the on the ground experiences of people of mixed descent across a variety of social, political and geographic boundaries, attempting to understand how groups of people in other nations negotiate racial ‘hybridity’ and multiplicity of ethnic experience and identity by examining the impact of global forces on people of mixed descent across the globe.

I am pleased to announce that my book Pure Beauty: Judging Race in Japanese American Beauty Pageants is available from the University of Minnesota Press. It has also been reissued as a Kindle book available on amazon.com.

I have published in Sociology Compass. 
King-O’Riain, Rebecca Chiyoko. 2008. “Making the Perfect Queen: The Cultural Production of Identity in Beauty Pageants" Sociology Compass v.2, n.1: 74-83.

and also in Ethnicities.
King-O’Riain, Rebecca Chiyoko. 2007. “Counting on the Celtic Tiger: Adding Ethnic Census Categories in the Republic of Ireland.” Ethnicities. v.7, n.4:516-542.

 For more on my publications click here. Alternatively, you can download my CV by clicking here.   

Research

My current research extends my interests in globalization, transnationalism, race and mixed race. The research entitled, The Globalization of Love, examines the emotional basis of transnational links by analyzing the love practices of international families to contribute to the growing literature on transnationalism and love. It considers global conceptions of love and examines how they are the basis of intimate transnational networks between and across cultural differences and settings.  The role of love in the formation of migration networks and international families is a significant factor in shaping transnationalism with considerable corresponding effects that deepen transnationalism through networks of children, in laws, and intimate relations.

The project begins by examining love as a motivation for migration, how migration networks are shaped by love to deepen the intimate and emotional bonds among extended families of international couples and how this in turn reinforces a deeper version of transnationalism where family members may have left their ‘homeplace’ but are now tied intimately to people in several countries. Finally, I examine how transnational ties themselves change over time and how they may come to change our practices and conceptions of love.

Empirically, the project examines relationships based on the concept of ‘romantic’ and ‘familial’ love between people whose origins are literally worlds apart. As such it asks, what role do emotions play in how people feel about their mobility and their making of ‘home’ in an increasingly globalized world?

I am a member of the Globalization, Identities and Cultural Practices research cluster within the Department of Sociology and a research associate of the National Institute for Regional and Spatial Analysis (NIRSA).

I am supervising MA and PhD students in the areas of: skin colour and tanning practices, multiculturalism in Ireland, and family practices. I would welcome research contacts and PhD students in the areas of: race/ethnicity, mixed race, racialization, racial states, beauty, sociology of emotions, and interraciality studied through qualitative methodologies.

I recently had a conversation about my research in terms of ethical principles of research. 

 Teaching

I teach on the following modules

• Introduction to Social Research (2nd year)
• Structures of Inequality: Race, Class and Gender
  
• Social Worlds of Children (3rd year)
• Global Conceptions of Race and Ethnicity (3rd year)
• Globalization of Love (Special Topics 3rd year)
• 'Thinking 'bout Me? Text 143 :-) : Emotions and Technology in a Global World' (Special Topics 3rd year)
  
• Qualitative Methods (MA)
  
• Teaching and Learning in the Social Sciences (PhD students)
• Crafts and Logics of Social Research (PhD students)

For information on all undergraduate courses see here. For postgraduate courses see here.

 Other Activities

I am an active member of the American Sociological Association and the Association for Asian American Studies.