Assistant Professor

Race, Ethnicity, & Migration Studies

Leland Tabares (he/him) is an Assistant Professor of Race, Ethnicity, and Migration Studies at Colorado College. His book project, Professionalizing Asian America: Race and Labor in the Twenty-First Century, examines how Asian Americans’ increasing representation in a diverse range of contemporary industry professions—from the university and the modern restaurant industry to the Silicon Valley tech industry and digital media platforms like YouTube and TikTok—enculturates new meanings of race, generationality, and solidarity. His work is published in Profession, Journal of Asian American Studies, Arizona Quarterly, Verge: Studies in Global Asias, ASAP/J, Lateral: Journal of the Cultural Studies Association, Hyphen, and The Recipes Project. His book chapter on automation, generative AI, and the future of work in techno-Orientalist science fiction is published in Techno-Orientalism 2.0: New Intersections and Interventions (Rutgers UP).

Professor Tabares has also made contributions to his field through his editorial and service work. He was the Managing Editor for Verge: Studies in Global Asias (University of Minnesota Press), an award-winning journal in Asian and Asian American Studies. Verge won the 2020 PROSE Award from the Association of American Publishers and the 2016 award for Best New Journal from the Council of Editors of Learned Journals. He served on the Executive Board for the Association for Asian American Studies, co-leading the mentorship and membership committees and coordinating professional development workshops for junior faculty. Currently, he serves on the Delegate Assembly for Professional Issues on Race and Ethnicity in the Profession for the Modern Language Association and is Co-Chair for the Circle for Asian American Literary Studies.

Prior to Colorado College, Professor Tabares taught at Washington University in St. Louis, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Pennsylvania State University, and Loyola University New Orleans. His pedagogy has been awarded funding through the Mellon Foundation and the Institute for Citizens & Scholars. Professor Tabares was named the 2024 Lloyd E. Worner Teacher of the Year at Colorado College.

Selected Publications

“Working Futures After Asians: Automation, AI, and the Global Labor Economy.” Techno-Orientalism 2.0: New Intersections and Interventions, edited by David S. Roh, Betsy Huang, Greta Niu, and Christopher T. Fan, Rutgers University Press (2025).

“Unhappy Asians: Decolonizing the Good Life in Lee Sung Jin's Beef.” ASAP/J (2023).

“Consider the Crawfish: The Politics of Viet-Cajun Fusion in the Gulf Coast.” Verge: Studies in Global Asias 9.2 (2023).

“A&Q: Recipes for Messiness.” Co-authored with Stephen Suh, Ruslan Yusupov, Erica Maria Cheung, and Jennifer R. Shutek. Verge: Studies in Global Asias 9.2 (2023).

“Danny Bowien’s Post-Authentic Asian America.” The Recipes Project (November 2021).

“Misfit Professionals: Asian American Chefs and Restaurateurs in the Twenty-First Century.” Arizona Quarterly 77.2 (Summer 2021).

“Gish Jen’s Resistant Possibilities: On Black Fugitivity, Coalitional Care, and Baseball.” Hyphen (October 2020).

“Professional Amateurs: Asian American Content Creators in YouTube’s Digital Economy.” Journal of Asian American Studies 22.3 (October 2019).

“Professionalization and the Precarious State of Academic Freedom for Graduate Student Instructors.” Profession (Winter 2019).

“The Contexts of Critique: Para-Institutions and the Multiple Lives of Institutionality in the Neoliberal University.” Lateral: Journal of the Cultural Studies Association 6.1 (Spring 2017).

Courses Taught

CC120 American Frontiers: From the Wild West to the Apocalypse

RM185 Introduction to the Comparative Study of Race and Ethnicity

RM200 Introduction to Asian American Studies

RM200 Techno-Orientalism

RM200 Eating Asian America: Race and Food

RM200 Asian American Activism

RM212 Theories of Race and Ethnicity

RM215 Research Design: Method and Theory

RM300 Asian American Popular Cultures: Race and Representation

RM300 Race and Capitalism

RM300 The Model Minority

RM300 Graduate School Preparation for Humanities Students

RM499 Senior Project