About

SHORT VERSION: Kathy Yep is a tenured Full Professor of Asian American Studies at Pitzer College (of the Claremont Colleges). She is fascinated by how people with limited resources create empowerment and change. With a focus on feminist pedagogies, community-based learning, and cultural politics, her writing has appeared through Harper Collins and Temple University Press, in numerous peer-reviewed journals, and in public outlets like the Los Angeles Times. A certified mindfulness facilitator through UCLA MARC, a visiting teacher through insightLA, and a practitioner of Dayan Qi Gong since the 1990s, Dr. Yep examines culturally relevant and embodied approaches to liberatory education. Awarded the Claremont Colleges 2020 Diversity Mentor Award and as the Associate Dean of Faculty in Academic Affairs , Dr. Yep integrated contemplative practices and transformative justice frameworks to launch a pilot Bias Education Support Team. Most recently, she was a visiting scholar at UCLA in 2021 and a faculty fellow at Naropa University in 2020.  Raised in Northern California, Professor Yep received her B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. in Ethnic Studies from the University of California, Berkeley. 

LONG VERSION: Kathy Yep is a tenured Full Professor of Asian American Studies at Pitzer College (of the Claremont Colleges).  She is fascinated by how people with limited resources create empowerment and change. With a focus on feminist pedagogies, community-based learning, and cultural politics, her writing has appeared in numerous peer-reviewed journals and public outlets like the Los Angeles Times. She is the author of Outside the Paint: When Basketball Ruled at the Chinese Playground (Temple University Press) and co-author of Dragon’s Child: A Story of Angel Island with Dr. Laurence Yep (Harper Collins). A certified mindfulness facilitator through UCLA MARC, a visiting teacher through insightLA, and a practitioner of Dayan Qi Gong since the 1990s, Dr. Yep examines culturally relevant and embodied approaches to liberatory education. As a visiting scholar at the UCLA Semel Institute, the Lenz Foundation Faculty Fellow at Naropa University, and community partner of Interfaith Movement for Human Integrity, she co-developed a train the trainer curriculum of mindful movement (qi gong) to nourish community cultural wealth and to mediate historical trauma. A member of an advisory group for the “Your Path to Our Health” grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, she has spoken at institutions such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,  the National Center for Bioethics in Research and Healthcare and AARP. As the inaugural Associate Dean of Faculty in Academic Affairs addressing Diversity, Equity, and Inclusiveness, Dr. Yep integrated contemplative practices and transformative justice frameworks to launch a pilot Bias Education Support Team. Dr. Yep received the Claremont Colleges 2020 Diversity Mentor Award, which “honors faculty members who provide consistent and meaningful support and encouragement to historically underrepresented students, staff or colleagues.” From the Bonner Foundation to the Project Pericles Mellon Faculty Fellowship, she has received funding to teach liberatory education to and with immigrant and refugee elders. Raised in Northern California, Professor Yep received her B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. in Ethnic Studies from the University of California, Berkeley. She was a University of California President’s Post-Doctoral Fellow at the University of California, Santa Cruz. She is living beyond thyroid cancer (27 years). She loves dancing, playing tennis with her husband/partner, and sharing a household with a very large cat who thinks he is a dog.

Yep AAAS 2022 CV