My name is Annelise Heinz. Since the fall of 2015, I have been an Assistant Professor of History at the University of Texas at Dallas, where I came after earning my doctorate at Stanford University.
My current book project, Mahjong in America: A Cultural History is a socio-cultural history of how the Chinese game mahjong became American, and how in doing so, it helped create modern America from the 1920s through the 1960s. By examining its trail across ethnic groups and through expatriates, entrepreneurs, immigrants, socialites, and housewives, mahjong tells the story of an American reorientation toward the Pacific in the twentieth century, the tensions between assimilation and cultural continuity that created identifiably ethnic communities, and how women leveraged a game to gain increasing, though contested, access to respectable leisure. It reveals the deeply American experience, sometimes desired and sometimes enforced, of simultaneously belonging and also standing apart.
My work focuses on the intersections of race, gender, and sexuality in American and transpacific history. Before beginning graduate work, I lived in Southwest China 2007-2008, teaching English to graduate students at Yunnan University. Previously, I worked in education and social work in Washington State. A native of Southern California, I earned my B.A. in History at Whitman College in 2003.
I built this website to reach out to those who have mahjong memories, and also in the hope that it could be a community resource for teaching history. I launched it in the Winter 2012 and it is a work in progress – thanks for checking back. Please drop me a line if you have questions, suggestions, or other resources to share.
My current book project, Mahjong in America: A Cultural History is a socio-cultural history of how the Chinese game mahjong became American, and how in doing so, it helped create modern America from the 1920s through the 1960s. By examining its trail across ethnic groups and through expatriates, entrepreneurs, immigrants, socialites, and housewives, mahjong tells the story of an American reorientation toward the Pacific in the twentieth century, the tensions between assimilation and cultural continuity that created identifiably ethnic communities, and how women leveraged a game to gain increasing, though contested, access to respectable leisure. It reveals the deeply American experience, sometimes desired and sometimes enforced, of simultaneously belonging and also standing apart.
My work focuses on the intersections of race, gender, and sexuality in American and transpacific history. Before beginning graduate work, I lived in Southwest China 2007-2008, teaching English to graduate students at Yunnan University. Previously, I worked in education and social work in Washington State. A native of Southern California, I earned my B.A. in History at Whitman College in 2003.
I built this website to reach out to those who have mahjong memories, and also in the hope that it could be a community resource for teaching history. I launched it in the Winter 2012 and it is a work in progress – thanks for checking back. Please drop me a line if you have questions, suggestions, or other resources to share.
