Meet Your Treasurer

Tom Sarmiento

Associate Professor of English,

Kansas State University

Thomas Xavier Sarmiento (they/he) is Associate Professor of English and Affiliated Faculty Member of Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies at Kansas State University. Tom specializes in diasporic Filipinx American literature and media cultures, queer-feminist theories, and cultural representations of the US Midwest. Their research appears in the journals Alon: Journal for Filipinx American and Diasporic Studies; Amerasia Journal; MELUS: Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States; and Women, Gender, and Families of Color and in the edited collections Asian American Feminisms and Women of Color Politics, Curricular Innovations: LGBTQ Literatures and the New English Studies, The Oxford Encyclopedia of Asian American Literature and Culture, Q & A: Voices from Queer Asian North America, Race in American Television: Voices and Visions that Shaped a Nation, The SAGE Encyclopedia of Filipina/x/o American Studies, and Sparked: George Floyd, Racism, and the Progressive Illusion. They are a past president of MAASA.

Tom has also recieved the following awards and honors: Visiting Faculty Fellow, Suzy Newhouse Center for the Humanities, Wellesley College, 2022–23; Award for Excellence in Teaching, Department of English, Kansas State University, 2022; American Studies Association Ralph Henry Gabriel Prize for Best Dissertation in American Studies, American Ethnic Studies, or American Women’s Studies Nominee, Department of American Studies, University of Minnesota, 2015; Ford Foundation Diversity Fellowship Alternate & Honorable Mention, Dissertation Competition, 2013.

Current Work:

“PhilippinExcess: Cunanan, Criss, Queerness, Multiraciality, Midwesternness, and the Cultural Politics of Legibility,” in Q & A: Voices from Queer Asian North America (https://tupress.temple.edu/books/q-a-2), edited by Martin F. Manalansan IV, Alice Y. Hom, and Kale B. Fajardo, Temple UP, 2021, pp. 318–30

“The “America” that American Studies analyzes is not monolithic nor static and removed from the global; this dynamism leaves open the potential for alternative cultures to emerge that cultivate inclusion, belonging, and accountability.”

Email at: tsarmiento@ksu.edu