Epifanio San Juan Jr., also known as E. San Juan Jr. (born December 29, 1938, in Santa Cruz, Manila, Philippines),[1] is a known Filipino American literary academic, Tagalog writer, Filipino poet, civic intellectual, activist, writer, essayist, video/film maker, editor, and poet whose works related to the Filipino Diaspora in English and Filipino writings have been translated into German, Russian, French, Italian, and Chinese. As an author of books on race and cultural studies,[2] he was a "major influence on the academic world". He was the director of the Philippines Cultural Studies Center in Storrs, Connecticut in the United States.[1] In 1999, San Juan received the Centennial Award for Achievement in Literature from the Cultural Center of the Philippines because of his contributions to Filipino and Filipino American Studies.[3]
San Juan received his elementary education in the Philippines at the Bonifacio Elementary School. He took secondary education at Jose Abad Santos High.[1] He graduated as a magna cum laude from the University of the Philippines Diliman in 1958.[3] He received his master's degree in 1962.[1] He obtained a PhD degree from Harvard University in 1965 with the help of a Rockefeller fellowship and Harvard teaching fellowship].[1] He was a fellow of the Rockefeller Study Center in Bellagio, Italy.
He became a professor of the English language, Comparative Literature, Ethnic Studies, American Studies and Cultural Studies in the United States, Europe, the Philippines, and Taiwan. From 1961 to 1963, San Juan was appointed as a fellow and English-language tutor at Harvard University.[1] Among the other universities in the United States where he taught include the University of California at Davis, the University of Connecticut at Storrs, and the Brooklyn College of the City University of New York. In the Philippines, he taught in the University of the Philippines in 2008, and at the Ateneo de Manila. Other universities include the Bowling Green State University, Wesleyan University, the Universities of Leuven and Antwerp in Belgium,[4] and the National Tsing Hua University in the Republic of China (Taiwan).[3]
From 1998 to June 15, 2001,[2] San Juan was a professor and the chairman of the Department of Comparative American Cultures in Washington State University. He was the executive director of the so-called Working Papers Series when he published essays on Cultural Studies and Ethnic Studies. In 2009, he became a fellow at the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research of Harvard University.[3] He was also a Fulbright lecturer, fellow, and professor at the Center for the Humanities of Wesleyan University in Connecticut,[2] the Institute for the Advanced Study of the Humanities at the University of Edinburgh, and at the Institute for the Study of Culture and Society in Ohio.[1]
In 2009-2010 he was a fellow of the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute, Harvard University, visiting professor of American Studies in Leuven University, Belgium (2003)and professor of English Comparative Literature, University of the Philippines (2008). Currently (2012=2013) he is a fellow of the Harry Ransom Center, University of Texas, Austin; and director of the Philippines Cultural Studies Center, Storrs, CT, & Washington DC, USA. He was appointed professorial lecturer (2015-2016)in cultural studies, Polytechnic University of the Philippines, Manila, Philippines.
Apart from writing about the Filipino Diaspora, San Juan's works include essays on race, social class, subalternity, and the U.S. Empire. His works were first published in 1954 on the pages of The Collegian New Review. After winning awards, his poems were anthologized in Godkissing Carrion/Selected Poems: 1954-1964 in 1964, in The Exorcism and Other Poems in 1967, and The Ashes of Pedro Abad Santos and Other Poems in 1985.[1] His literary milieu extends to "media pieces" related to the current political landscape, the human rights abuses and extrajudicial killings in the Philippines, racial polity in the United States, social justice, global mechanism of racialization and its impact on immigrant workers of the global South, essays on Marxism, human liberation, and exposés related to the "resurrection" of the "contours" of the American empire.[3]
In 1966, he made translations of Amado V. Hernandez's poetry resulting to the work entitled Rice Grains: Selected Poems of Amado V. Hernandez. In 1975, he introduced the literary writings of Carlos Bulosan, a Filipino labor organizer and writer, resulting to the publication of Carlos Bulosan and the Imagination of the Class Struggle, the first full-length critical assessment of Bulosan's works, which was followed twenty years later by On Becoming Filipino: Selected Writings by Carlos Bulosan and The Cry and the Dedication in 1995. He was also the author of the "first collection in English translation" of the essays written by Georg Lukács, a Hungarian philosopher and founder of the Western Marxist tradition.[3]
In 2007, San Juan authored a book of poems, the Balikbayang Mahal: Passages of Exile.[3] His other works are Racism and Cultural Studies, Working through the Contradictions, In the Wake of Terror, US Imperialism and Revolution in the Philippines,[4] Beyond Postcolonial Theory (1995), and Hegemony and Strategies of Transgression (1998).[5]
Recent books include "In the Wake of Terror: Class, Race, Nation and Ethnicity in the Postmodern World" (Lexington); "Working Through the Contradictions" (Bucknell University Press). "Critique and Social Transformation" (Edwin Mellen Press), "From Globalization to National Liberation" (University of the Philippines Press)."Balikbayang Sinta: E San Juan Reader" (Ateneo U Press), "Critical Interventions: From Joyce and Ibsen to Kingston and C.S. Peirce" (Saarbrücken: Lambert), and "Rizal in Our Time: revised edition" (Anvil). His new volumes of poetry include "Balikbayang Mahal: Passages in Exile,""Sutrang Kayumanggi," "Mahal Magpakailanman," Diwata Babaylan," and "Bukas Luwalhating Kay Ganda"(all available in amazon.com). The UST Publishing House will issue in 2013 his collection "Ulikba at iba pang bagong tula."
During May 1964, he won the Spanish Siglo de Oro Prize after writing a literary review and criticism of the poetry of Gongora.[1] In 1992, San Juan's Racial Formations/Critical Transformations: Articulations of Power in Ethnic and Racial Studies in the United States was awarded the Gustavus Myers Center's Outstanding Book Award for the Study of Human Rights in the United States. In 1993, the same work received the National Book Award in Cultural Studies from the Association for Asian American Studies. The book is regarded as a classic in Ethnic and Asian American Studies.[3] In 1999, San Juan Jr. received the Centennial Award for Achievement in Literature from the Cultural Center of the Philippines.[1] In 2001, San Juan's After Post-colonialism: Remapping Philippines-United States Confrontations won the Gustavus Myers Center for Human Rights's Outstanding Book Award on Human Rights[3] (also known as the Myers Distinguished Book Award).[1] In 2007, San Juan produced the books entitled In the Wake of Terror: Class, Race, Nation, Ethnicity in the Postmodern World, Imperialism and Revolution in the Philippines, Balikbayang Sinta: An E. San Juan Reader, and From Globalization to National Liberation: Essays.[3] San Juan's also received awards from the Association for Asian American Studies, and the Society for the Study of Multi-Ethnic Literatures in the United States.[1]