Yoosun Park

Yoosun Park, MSW, PhD

  • Associate Professor
  • Co-Director, PhD in Social Welfare Program

    • Research Interests

    Critical history of social work

    Historical and contemporary immigration

    Discourse Analysis

    Critical theories and methodologies for social work research and education

    Yoosun Park, MSW, PhD is a theory-drive scholar whose research and pedagogy are predicated on the belief that social work’s commitment to social justice requires not only a diversity of social identities but of perspective on and approach to knowledge-building. To this end, she has built an interdisciplinary and non-traditional body of scholarship that utilizes critical theories and methodologies to significantly extend the borders of social work knowledge. Framed within the broad substantive area of critical discourse studies, she has pursued two distinct but overlapping lines of inquiry that interrogate and elucidate each other: 1) an interrogation of social work’s history with racialized populations (particularly immigrants and immigration) and the processes of racialization; and 2) the study of the ways in which that history manifests in social work research, education, and practice today. As required readings in a variety of courses across schools of social work in the United States and abroad, Dr. Park’s award-winning scholarship informs the education of the next generation of social work practitioners and researchers.

    Contact

    Phone

    office: 215.898.2506

    Email

    Address

    3701 Locust Walk, Caster Building
    Philadelphia, PA 19104-6214

    About

    Department(s)

    Standing Faculty | Faculty | School Administration | Degree Programs | PhD Program

    Program(s)

    MSW | MSSP | PhD

    Research Areas(s)

    Identity, Immigration, Racism

    Publications

    Selected Publications

    Gonzalez Benson, O., Park, Y., Remprosa, T. & Gautam, D. (In Press). Aging and Stateless: US non-decisionism and state violence across temporal and geopolitical distances. In T. Bloom and L. Kingston (Eds.), Statelessness and Governance and the Problem Citizenship. Manchester University Press.

    Park, Y., Torres, M., Bhuyan, R., Ao, J., Graves, L. & Rundle, A. (2021). Social workers’ perceptions of structural inequality and immigrant threat: results from a national survey. Journal of Social Work Education. doi.org/10.1080/10437797.2021.1895936

    Park, Y., Bhuyan, R., & Wahab, S. (2020). Still we resist: reflections on our tenure as Editors-in-Chief. Affilia: Journal of Women and Social Work, 35(4), 445–448. doi.org/10.1177/0886109920965287

    Rundle, A.G., Park, Y., Herbstman, J.B., Kinsey, E.W. and Wang, Y.C. (2020), COVID‐19 related school closings and risk of weight gain among children. Obesity. 28(6), 1008–1009. doi.org/10.1002/oby.22813

    Park, Y., Crath, R., & Jeffery, D. (2020). Disciplining the risky subject: a discourse analysis of the concept of resilience in social work literature. Journal of Social Work, 20(2), 152-172. doi: 10.1177/1468017318792953

    Bhuyan, R., Park, Y., & Lee, E. (2020). Should journal rankings matter? Assigning “prestige and quality” in the neoliberal academy. Affilia: Journal of Women and Social Work, 35(2), 157–159. doi.org/10.1177/0886109920917247

    Park, Y. (2019). Our house is on fire: social work and the crisis of immigration. Affilia: Journal of Women and Social Work, 34(4), 413-420. doi: 10.1177/0886109919880349

    Park Y. (2019). Facilitating Injustice: The Complicity of Social Workers in the Forced Removal and Incarceration of Japanese Americans, 1941-1946. Oxford University Press.

    Bhuyan, R., Wahab, S., & Park, Y. (2019). A green New Deal for social work. Affilia: Journal of Women & Social Work, 34(3), 289–294. doi: 10.1177/0886109919861700

    Park, Y., Bhuyan, R., & Wahab, S. (2019). Reclaiming the space of contestation. Affilia: Journal of Women & Social Work, 34(1), 5-7. doi: 10.1177/0886109918822652

    Wahab, S., Bhyuan, R., & Park, Y. (2018). Feeding the scyborgs in social work: enduring commitments that sustain. Affilia: Journal of Women & Social Work, 33(3), 281-285. doi: 10.1177/0886109918786141

    Gonzalez Benson, O., & Park, Y. (2018). Resettled yet Stateless: elderly monoglot refugees in the United States as a limit case to citizenship. Journal of Human Rights Practice, 10(3), 423-438. doi: 10.1093/jhuman/huy026

    Park, Y., Bhuyan, R., & Wahab, S. (2017). Can an academic journal promote radical scholarship? Affilia: Journal of Women & Social Work, 32(3), 273-275. doi: 10.1177/0886109917716230

    Park, Y., Wahab, S., & Bhuyan, R. (2017). Feminism in these dangerous times. Affilia: Journal of Women & Social Work, 32(1), 5-9. doi: 10.1177/0886109916686271

    Park, Y. (2015). “A Curious Inconsistency”: the discourse of social work on the 1922 Married Women’s Independent Nationality Act, and the Intersecting dynamics of race and gender in the laws of immigration and citizenship. Affilia: Journal of Women & Social Work, 30(4), 560-579. doi: 10.1177/0886109915583546

    Park, Y. (2013). The role of the YWCA in the World War II internment of Japanese Americans: a cautionary tale for social work. Social Service Review, 87(3), 477-524. doi: /10.1086/671987

    Park, Y., Bhuyan, R., Richards, C., & Rundle, A. (2012). Social work practitioners’ attitudes toward immigrants and immigration: results from an online survey. Journal of Immigrant & Refugee Studies, 9(4), 367-392. doi: 10.1080/15562948.2011.616801

    Park, Y., & Bhuyan, R. (2012). Whom should we serve? A discourse analysis of social workers’ commentary on undocumented immigrants. Journal of Progressive Human Services, 23(1), 18-40. doi: 10.1080/10428232.2011.605745

    Bhuyan, R., Park, Y., & Rundle, A. (2011). Linking practitioners’ attitudes towards and basic knowledge of immigrants with their social work education. Journal of Social Work Education, 31(8), 973-994. doi: 10.1080/02615479.2011.621081

    Park, Y., Neckerman, K. M., Quinn, J., Weiss, C., & Rundle, A. (2011). Neighbourhood immigrant acculturation and diet among Hispanic female residents of New York City. Journal of Public Health Nutrition, 14(9), 1593-1600. doi: 10.1017/S136898001100019X

    Park, Y., Florez, K. R., Jacobson, J., Neckerman, K. M., & Rundle, A. (2011). Hispanic immigrant women’s perspective on healthy foods and the New York City retail food environment: a mixed-method study. Social Science & Medicine, 73(1), 13-21. doi: 0.1016/j.socscimed.2011.04.012

    Park, Y., Miller, J. L., & Van, B. C. (2010). “Everything has changed”: narratives of the Vietnamese-American community in Biloxi, Mississippi in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. The Journal of Sociology and Social Welfare, 37(3), 79-105.

    Rundle, A., Field, S., Park, Y., Freeman, L., Weiss, C., & Neckerman, K. (2008). Personal and neighborhood socioeconomic status and indices of neighborhood walk-ability predict body mass index in New York City. Social Science & Medicine, 67(12), 1951-1958. doi: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2008.09.036

    Park, Y., Neckerman, K., Quinn, J., Weiss, C., & Rundle, A. (2008). Place of birth, duration of residence, neighborhood immigrant composition and body mass index in New York City. International Journal of Behavioral Nutrition and Physical Activity, 5(19), 1-11. doi: 10.1186/1479-5868-5-19

    Park, Y. (2008). Making refugees: a historical discourse analysis of the construction of the “refugee” in U.S. social work, 1900–1957. British Journal of Social Work, 38(4), 771–787. doi: 10.1093/bjsw/bcn015

    Park, Y. (2008). Facilitating injustice: tracing the role of social workers in the World War II internment of Japanese Americans. Social Service Review, 82(3), 447-483. doi: 10.1086/592361

    Park, Y. (2008). Historical discourse analysis. In Lisa M. Given (Ed.) The SAGE Encyclopedia of Qualitative Research Methods, (pp.394-395). Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publishers.

    Park, Y. (2008). Asian Americans: Japanese. In Terry Mizrahi & Larry E. Davis (Eds.), The Encyclopedia of Social Work, (pp.167-168). New York: Oxford University Press.

    Park, Y., & Miller, J. L. (2007). Inequitable distributions: a critical analysis of the Red Cross and its response to Hurricane Katrina. Journal of Intergroup Relations, 33(1), 45-59.

    Park, Y., & Miller, J. L. (2006). The social ecology of Hurricane Katrina: rewriting the discourse of “natural” disasters. Smith College Studies in Social Work, 76(3), 9-24. doi: 10.1300/J497v76n03_02

    Park, Y., & Kemp, S. P. (2006). “Little Alien Colonies”: representations of immigrants and their neighborhoods in social work discourse, 1875-1924. Social Service Review, 80(4), 705–734. doi.org/10.1086/507934

    Park, Y. (2006). Constructing Immigrants: a historical discourse analysis of the representations of immigrants in U.S. social work, 1882-1952. Journal of Social Work, 6(2), 169-203. doi: 10.1177/1468017306066673

    Park, Y. (2005). Culture as deficit: a critical discourse analysis of the concept of culture in contemporary Social work discourse. Journal of Sociology and Social Welfare, 32(3), 13-34.

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