Zach Smith

Zach Smith is an Associate Professor at the University of Central Arkansas (UCA), where he serves as the Associate Director of the Center for Asian Languages and Cultures and Coordinator of the Interdisciplinary Asian Studies Minor Program. His research and teaching focus on modern China, Chinese diaspora in America, and Asian American history in the South.

• PhD from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (2015)
• Research areas: Cultural history of modern China, Chinese diaspora, citizenship, and belonging
• Teaches courses such as Modern China, Gender and Sexuality in East Asia, and Asian American History in the South

Zach’s research on popular literacy in Republican China has appeared in Twentieth-Century China and The Edinburgh History of Reading. He recently co-founded the Arkansas Chinese Heritage Project with the Chinese Association of Arkansas, a multidisciplinary oral history archive documenting Chinese communities in the Arkansas and Mississippi Deltas. Current projects include developing lesson plans, digital exhibits, and GIS StoryMaps about Chinese-owned grocery stores in Arkansas, alongside drafting a manuscript on Chinese merchant networks in the Jim Crow South.