Dianne Shen/이은희(she/her) is an archivist and curator living in Honolulu and the San Francisco Bay Area. She specializes in Asian American visual culture, vernacular photography, aesthetics, and ethnoarchitecture history from the twentieth century to contemporary.

She is a Asia Pacific Leadership Fellow at the East-West Center and doctoral student in American Studies at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa. Her projects center cultural recovery and community archiving praxis in museum collections.

  • Ph.D. in American Studies — University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa (Expected 2028)

    M.A. in East Asian Area Studies — University of Southern California

    B.A. in International Studies & History — University of California, Irvine

  • Asian American visual and material culture

    Asian American history, people’s movements, immigration, settler colonialism

    Museum studies

    History of collecting

    Public memory, physical and imaginary sites of memory

    Race, gender, and sexuality of Asians in America

    Asian diaspora in California and the Pacific, 1910 - 1930

    Korean textiles, furniture, and hanok architecture

    Contemporary art and cinema of Asia

    American power, imperialism, elitism, racism and colonialism

    Aesthetic movements: American Japonisme, Chinoiserie, Hollywood Japanism, Sharawadgi, Japandi, Newtro, Seoul vintage, Orientalism, Kitsch, reinterpretation of traditional heritage, memory, nostalgia, romanticism, travelogues, travel culture, East/West cultural transmission and exchange

  • “YAMASHIRO: Imagined Home and the Aesthetics of Hollywood Japanism”

    Review of Japanese Culture and Society, Volume 32, University of Hawai’i Press, pp. 132-152

    "I am an American" / "We are not American": Visual Records of AANHPI

    Digital Report: Crossing the Pacific: The Asian American Experience in U.S. Society and Discourse: Insights and Analysis from the Salzburg Global American Studies (2024)

  • East-West Center Gallery

    Los Altos History Museum

    The Broad Museum

    Metropolitan Water District of Southern California

    Christie’s

    The J. Paul Getty Museum

향수(鄕愁)/ 정지용

넓은 벌 동쪽 끝으로
옛이야기 지줄대는 실개천이 휘돌아 나가고,
얼룩백이 황소가
해설피 금빛 게으른 울음을 우는 곳.

――그 곳이 차마 꿈엔들 잊힐 리야.

질화로에 재가 식어지면,
비인 밭에 밤바람 소리 말을 달리고,
엷은 졸음에 겨운 늙으신 아버지가
짚베개를 돋워 고이시는 곳.

――그 곳이 차마 꿈엔들 잊힐 리야.

흙에서 자란 내 마음
파아란 하늘 빛이 그리워
함부로 쏜 화살을 찾으러
풀섶 이슬에 함초롬 휘적시던 곳.

――그 곳이 차마 꿈엔들 잊힐 리야.

전설(傳說) 바다에 춤추는 밤 물결 같은
검은 귀밑머리 날리는 어린 누이와
아무렇지도 않고 예쁠 것도 없는,
사철 발 벗은 아내가
따가운 햇살을 등에 지고 이삭 줍던 곳.

――그 곳이 차마 꿈엔들 잊힐 리야.

하늘에는 성근 별
알 수도 없는 모래성으로 발을 옮기고,
서리 까마귀 우지짖고 지나가는 초라한 지붕,
흐릿한 불빛에 돌아앉아 도란도란거리는 곳.

――그 곳이 차마 꿈엔들 잊힐 리야.