John Kuo Wei Tchen, [1] also known as Jack, is a historian of Chinese American history and the Inaugural Clement A. Price Chair in Public History and Humanities at Rutgers University. [2]
Tchen received his B.A. at the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1973. He did his M.A. at New York University in 1987 and finished his Ph.D. at NYU in 1992. [3] He was the founding director of the A/P/A Studies Program and Institute at New York University. In 1979–1980, Tchen co-founded the Museum of Chinese in America and continues to serve as its senior advisor. [4] In 2018, Tchen was named the Inaugural Clement A. Price Chair in Public History and the Humanities at Rutgers University and became Director of the Clement Price Institute on Ethnicity, Culture & the Modern Experience. [5]
Tchen received the Charles S. Frankel Prize from the National Endowment for the Humanities(1991), [6] and MLK Humanitarian Award from NYU (2012). [7] His monograph, New York Before Chinatown, was the winner of the History/Social Science Book Award from the Association of Asian American Studies in 2001. [8]
Tchen was featured in the film 9-Man (documentary) [9] and is a frequently called-upon expert on Chinatown and Asian American topics. [10] [11] [12]