Scholarship & Teaching

Assistant Professor of Psychology, Pace University

Psychological life within and against systems of racial power

My interdisciplinary scholarship explores how racialization and systems of power shape inner life—including how people understand themselves, encounter desire and distress, and envision possibilities for empowerment. Much of this work centers Asian American experiences, with particular attention to the intersections of gender, sexuality, and capital.

Bringing queer of color critique and psychoanalytic thought into conversation with empirical psychology, I use quantitative and qualitative methods informed by critical and interpretive frameworks. My projects address measurable patterns of racism-related harm as well as the less visible ways ideology, history, and fantasy organize subjective and collective experience. I also study what helps people resist internalized oppression and develop more affirmative ways of relating to themselves and others.

Google Scholar · ORCID · University Profile · Collaboration

Areas of Inquiry

  • Asian racialization & internalized oppression

    • How are racial meanings internalized, negotiated, reproduced, and resisted in psychic life?

    • What do the distinctive mechanisms and consequences of Asian racialization illuminate about the interlocking logics of whiteness, heteropatriarchy, settler colonialism, and racial capitalism?

  • Masculinities, sexualities, & intersectional experience

    • How do race, gender, sexuality, class, and other social positions mutually shape the experiences of Asian Americans, particularly men?

    • What do the anxieties, desires, and conflicts arising at these intersections reveal about ideological and material structures of domination within and beyond the United States?

  • Affirmative interventions and collective action

    • How can critical perspectives be leveraged to inform affirmative interventions that enable people to apprehend internalized oppression while cultivating more integrated, empowered lives?

    • How can psychology critically examine its institutional practices and disciplinary contradictions to advance social transformation?

Forum for Intersectionality, Racialization, and Empowerment

FIRE Collective

I direct the FIRE Collective, a research group that examines the intersectional and contemporary manifestations of racism-related stress among Asian Americans across sociocultural and transnational contexts, as well as their implications for mental health and clinical practice.

Current Projects

Body Image, Racialization, and Asian American Masculinities: This theoretical paper uses psychoanalytic and critical perspectives to analyze body image among Asian American men as both an intimate dimension of selfhood and a discursive site where the demands of white supremacist heteropatriarchy and racial capitalism are imposed and contested.

Student Research Opportunities

I periodically recruit motivated undergraduate and graduate students for academic yearlong research involvement, typically at the beginning of the fall semester. Applicants should demonstrate a clear and substantive commitment to the Collective’s areas of inquiry. Course credit may be available; funding is not currently available.

Recruitment announcements and application instructions are generally circulated through Pace University psychology department networks.

Prospective students should note that admissions to graduate psychology programs at Pace University are conducted on a cohort basis rather than through individual advisors. All admissions questions should be directed to the director of the program of interest.

Selected Publications

Choi, A. Y. (in press). Model minority myth: Rethinking the concept. In N. Tewari, A. N. Alvarez, & M. Fu (Eds.), Asian American psychology: Expanding identities (2nd ed.). Routledge.

Critically reassesses the model minority myth not merely as a stereotype but as an ideological and material structure of racialization that exploits Asian Americans to consolidate white supremacy, neoliberal multiculturalism, and settler colonial capitalism.

Choi, A. Y., Israel, T., & Nylund-Gibson, K. (2020). Syndemic behavioral risk and suicidality among bisexual adolescents: A latent class analysis. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 88(7), 597–612. https://doi.org/10.1037/ccp0000500

Introduces a novel approach to modeling syndemic conditions among bisexual adolescents, identifying distinct patterns of co-occurring risk and their associations with suicidality.

Choi, A. Y., Israel, T., & Maeda, H. (2017). Development and evaluation of the Internalized Racism in Asian Americans Scale (IRAAS). Journal of Counseling Psychology, 64(1), 52–64. https://doi.org/10.1037/cou0000183

Develops and validates a multidimensional measure of internalized racism among Asian Americans, encompassing negative self-evaluation, stereotypes of weakness, appearance-related bias, and associated mental health consequences.

Keum, B. T., Choi, A. Y., Verdugo, J. L., Xie, L., Zhu, C., & Oh, S. (2025). Flourishing and positive mental health among Asian American men: Development and validation of the Affirmative Socialization for Asian American Men Measure. Journal of Prevention and Health Promotion, 6(4), 667–707. https://doi.org/10.1177/26320770251351957

Establishes a multidimensional measure of affirmative gendered racial socialization practices that counter intersectional racism and are associated with psychological flourishing among Asian American men.

Keum, B. T., Ahn, L. H., Choi, A. Y., Choudhry, A., Nguyen, M., Meizys, G. M., Chu, A., & Hearns, M. (2023). Asian American men’s gendered racial socialization and fragmented masculinity: Interpretive phenomenological analysis. The Counseling Psychologist, 51(5), 684–718. https://doi.org/10.1177/00110000231170310

Shows how cumulative forms of gendered racism across the lifespan can fracture Asian American men’s masculine identities and undermine mental health. The findings underscore the need for affirmative socialization and structural change addressing whiteness and heteropatriarchy.

Selected Research Honors

Fritz and Linn Kuder Early Career Award for Distinguished Scientific Contributions
Society of Counseling Psychology, APA Division 17 · 2026

Edwin B. Newman Graduate Research Award
American Psychological Association and Psi Chi · 2020

Dr. Arthur M. Nezu Diversity Dissertation Award
American Board of Professional Psychology · 2020

Barbara Smith and Jewell E. Horvat Graduate Student Award for Research with LGBTQ Individuals of Color
Society for the Psychological Study of Culture, Ethnicity, and Race, APA Division 45 · 2019

Collaboration

I welcome substantive collaborations with a clear scholarly aim and potential for publication or other meaningful dissemination, particularly those addressing the intersections of racialization, gender, sexuality, desire, and mental health among Asian American men and queer people of color. I am especially drawn to work that uses critical theory to deepen empirical inquiry or applied practice.

To propose a collaboration, please email me at achoi@pace.edu with a brief description of the project, its current stage, who is involved, and what you are asking me to contribute.

Given my current capacity, I can only consider proposals with a defined scope and a specific role for me. I do not use initial inquiries to help develop projects from the ideation stage; review works in progress or consult on research projects outside a defined collaborative role; provide informal mentorship or advisement; answer general or administrative questions about my institution’s programs or policies; or accept unsolicited requests to serve on ad hoc service committees.

Prospective psychotherapy clients should use the secure initial evaluation request form.

Andrew Young Choi, PhD, ABPP

Teaching Philosophy

I believe people learn from how they are treated. My teaching is grounded in respectful, intellectually serious relationships and pedagogical humility. I regard students as active participants in their education while remaining open to reevaluating my own assumptions.

My goal is to build learning communities where psychological knowledge can be examined rigorously and questions that matter in students’ lives can guide the process. Rather than treating individual perspective merely as bias to be eliminated, I help students locate their standpoints within the historical and structural contingencies that influence what they value and take for granted.

Lived experience can be a critical source of insight and a starting point for disciplined inquiry. Placed in conversation with scholarship and perspectives beyond one’s own, it can serve as a lens for revealing how material and ideological conditions make certain social arrangements appear natural or inevitable.

For me, education becomes transformative when deeper understanding strengthens a person’s capacity to act. I ask students to consider how everyday interpretations and choices may reproduce injustice or create openings for greater personal and collective freedom.

This work requires clear expectations, sufficient trust for challenging discussion, and guidance that connects ideas to their practical and ethical consequences. Teaching is ultimately a collaborative endeavor that helps students think independently, understand their place in the world more critically and compassionately, and act on what they learn with greater confidence and purpose.

Selected Courses

My courses span psychology’s intellectual foundations as well as the clinical, ethical, and sociocultural dimensions of professional practice, with an emphasis on health equity.

Students connect theory and research to personal narratives and contemporary issues while analyzing how institutions and cultural politics organize mental health care—and shape the lived realities and measurable life outcomes of those it is meant to serve.

  • History and Systems of Psychology

  • Public Health Psychology

  • Asian American Psychology

  • Ethics in Professional Psychology

  • Theories of Counseling and Psychotherapy

  • Helping Skills: Theory, Research, and Practice