In Model Modernity: The Making of Asiatic Racial Form 1882-1945, Colleen Lye connects the current stereotype of the Asian American as a “model minority” with the response of pre-World War II liberal culture to crises of globalization. Reading late nineteenth and early twentieth century writers such as Jack London, Frank Norris, John Steinbeck, and Pearl S. Buck in terms of U.S.-Asian relations, Professor Lye draws attention to the significance of the U.S.-Asian border to American national culture, arguing that the formal characteristics of literature are made more legible when read within the context of political economy. Colleen L ye received her Ph.D. at Columbia and joined the English Department at Berkeley in 1997.