Chien-Juh Gu

Dr. Chien-Juh Gu is a professor in the Department of Sociology at Western Michigan University.

She specializes in gender, social psychology and immigration. Gu has received numerous awards and grants. She is the first winner of the Gender Scholar Award at WMU. She also received, among other recognitions, the Junior Scholar Grant from the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation and the Faculty Research and Creative Activities Award from WMU. On students' nomination, she received a 2015-16 College of Arts and Sciences’ Faculty Achievement Award in Teaching. She also received a 2016-17 College of Arts and Sciences’ Faculty Achievement Award in Research and Creative Activity.

In her first book, "Mental Health among Taiwanese Americans: Gender, Immigration, and Transnational Struggles" (2006, LFB), Gu examines how immigration history, gender and social relations affect Taiwanese Americans' mental health. She provides a novel sociological theory to explore the complex dimensionality of social structure, identity and well-being. She also offers a refined concept of agency.

Gu's second book, "The Resilient Self: Gender, Immigration, and Taiwanese Americans" (2017, Rutgers University Press), is the first book to discuss the self in the study of gender and immigration. It is also the first book to document everyday racism encountered by highly educated immigrant women. Based on 45 life-history interviews and seven years of ethnographic observations, Gu illuminates the complexity of multi-faceted connections of gender, immigration, work, family, culture, race and ethnicity, citizenship, and the self as they are manifested in varied ways during the process of adaptation and in women's lived experiences.

Gu is the faculty adviser for the Alpha Kappa Delta International Sociology Honor Society.