Grace M. Cho, Professor of Sociology at the College of Staten Island, has been named by New America to its 2026 list of Fellows. According to New America, “Each year, the Fellows Program supports a select group of innovative thinkers—including investigative journalists, scholars, filmmakers, and public policy analysts—who work outside the traditional think tank model. New America Fellows develop big, bold ideas that shape public conversations and address the most pressing issues of our day.” Cho was selected “for confronting America’s liberation story with the lived experiences of the Korean War.”
Cho was also named by New America as an ASU Future Security Fellow. New America said that “the ASU Future Security Fellows are a partnership between Arizona State University’s Future Security Initiative and New America’s Future Security and Fellows Programs. These fellowships, supported by ASU, empower experts from a variety of fields to examine the wide range of issues that will shape the future of security.”
Commenting on receiving the honor, Cho stated, “It was quite a surprise to learn that I had been selected as a New America Fellow and even more so that I was named the ASU Future Security Fellow. Because my work is a hybrid of personal writing and interdisciplinary scholarship, experimental in form, and critical in perspective, I never imagined that I’d be part of such a high-level conversation about national security. It’s an honor to have been chosen, and especially at this moment when traditional sources of funding are being dismantled. At a time when there’s tremendous anxiety about the state of the nation, it’s encouraging and exciting to be part of a program whose goal is to shape public discourse about America.”
Cho is the author of Tastes Like War, a finalist for the 2021 National Book Award in nonfiction and winner of the 2022 Asian Pacific American Literature Award in adult nonfiction, and Haunting the Korean Diaspora: Shame, Secrecy, and the Forgotten War, recipient of a 2010 book award from the American Sociological Association. Her writings have appeared in The Nation, Catapult, The New Inquiry, PoemMemoirStory, Contexts, Gastronomica, and elsewhere. She has received awards and fellowships from Yaddo, MacDowell, Marble House Project, Monson Arts, Convent Arts, the Center for the Humanities at The Graduate Center, CUNY and the Professional Staff Congress of CUNY. Cho’s current book project (under contract with Viking Press) is a hybrid work of creative nonfiction and interdisciplinary scholarship that examines the Korean War through the lens of her family’s experience of the war’s devastation and afterlife. Drawing on archival research, family interviews, investigation reports from the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Korea, and witness testimonies from South Korea’s bereaved families’ associations, it juxtaposes the official U.S. narrative of the Korean War—as a righteous war that gave South Koreans their freedom and protected U.S. interests—with a counter-narrative of genocide and ongoing violence.
According to its Website, New America is “dedicated to realizing the promise of America in an era of rapid technological and social change. At New America, our research and policy recommendations focus on five key thematic areas: education and work; family economic security and wellbeing; global politics for people and planet; political reform and civic engagement; and technology and democracy. In each area of our work, we put equity at the center; elevate stories of people closest to the public problems we seek to solve; invest in the next generation of leaders; and intentionally engage with local perspectives. Taken together, these efforts advance toward our vision of a more equitable America that lives up to its values.”
A full list of New America Fellows is available online.
By Terry Mares
