13 minute read
To Better Understand Ourselves: A Primer on Asian American Studies
Written by Oliver Wu
What is Asian American Studies?
Asian American Studies (AAS) is an interdisciplinary field that seeks to explain the perspectives, histories, cultures, and politics of Asian Americans. For Asian/Asian American students, it is an opportunity to examine personal identities and their relationships to systems of power. What does it mean to be Asian American? What are an Asian American’s relationships with both “Asia” and “America?” How does the history of Asian America affect the present? AAS aims to provide novel, nuanced, and individualized explanations to these questions (and many more) through classroom discussions, direct involvement with local Asian American communities, and scholarly research.
Arising directly out of student activism during the Civil Rights and Asian American Movements, AAS challenges traditional academic disciplines and teaching methods and aims to redefine grand narratives that marginalize the current and historical experiences of people of color. Spanning a wide range of subjects including history, public policy, sociology, literature, film, law, and education, AAS positions Asian Americans as agents of change and protagonists of their own stories In doing so, AAS breaks down the Black-white dichotomy that oversimplifies our understanding of race. These curricula also challenge individual racism by allowing students to confront their own biases. In this manner, the inclusion of AAS programs in universities enriches campus perspectives and contributes to building a more inclusive and equitable society.
The Start of Asian American Studies at Universities
Galvanized by the Civil Rights Movement and U.S. involvement in Vietnam, student protests became increasingly fervent by the late 1960s
In particular, the relative diversity of student populations along the West Coast allowed for the genesis of student-led movements seeking the establishment of departments and faculty positions that would examine core academic disciplines such as literature, history, and sociology from the perspectives of racial minorities.
On November 6th, 1968, The Black Student Union (BSU) at San Francisco State College (SFSC) called for one such strike protesting the firing of George Mason Murray, a graduate student and minister of education for the Black Panther Party. While working as a part-time instructor of English courses for minority students admitted to SFSC through special programs, Murray visited communist Cuba and later delivered a speech at Fresno State College in which he allegedly noted “We are slaves and the only way to become free is to kill all the slave masters ” Enraged by these comments, the trustees of the California State Colleges demanded that President Robert Smith suspend Murray.
Building upon previous protests, the BSU issued 10 demands including the reinstatement of Murray and the establishment of a Black Studies Department with new, full-time teaching positions Two days later, the BSU was joined by the larger Third World Liberation Front (TWLF), a coalition of African American, Asian American, Latino, and Native American students that included organizations like the BSU, Latin American Student Organization (LASO), Mexican American Student Coalition (MASC), Pilipino American Collegiate Endeavor (PACE), Asian American Political Alliance (AAPA), and Intercollegiate Chinese for Social Action (ICSA). The TWLF-led protestors now demanded open admissions for all non-white applicants and the establishment of a “School of Ethnic Studies” controlled by Third World people.
Officially ending on March 21st, 1969, the Third World strike remains the longest student strike in U.S. history. After President Smith resigned in late November 1968, Ronald Reagan appointed S. I. Hayakawa as Acting President of SFSC An active member of the antistrike group the Faculty Renaissance, Hayakawa threatened protestors with expulsion, declared a state of emergency, banned most political actions by students, and ramped up police presence on campus.
Despite Hayakawa’s hardline approach, the TWLF eventually reached a settlement with campus administration that established a School of Ethnic Studies with individual departments of American Indian, Asian American, Black, and La Raza Studies. A community board was created to provide student input on new faculty appointments (although students were not granted direct control over curriculum, faculty hiring, or admissions), and over one hundred underrepresented students were admitted in the next year under the Educational Opportunity Program (EOP) Asian American Studies was now a formal part of U.S. higher education.
The Evolution of Asian American Studies
Originating directly out of community action, organizers of new Asian American Studies (AAS) departments sought to break down barriers between students and professors and center their curricula around addressing real-world issues. Accordingly, initial faculty hires were often political activists who stressed ethnic consciousness and community research.
However, an economic downturn in the 1970s limited the expansion of university programs, and administrators protested investment into such “experimental” subjects. Additionally, AAS became increasingly institutionalized as protestors graduated, activist intensity waned, and young professors focused on career stability. Righteous and passionate condemnations of racism in America were supplanted by contributions to sociological theory and critiques of U.S. society, politics, and media. Starting from a nearly complete dearth of scholarship, foundational works such as and were rapidly released Amerasia Journaland the Association for Asian American Studies (AAAS) were both established in 1970s and remain active today. Importantly, core coursework allowed for the creation of formal academic majors and minors, improving the professional outlook of AAS students.
However, community involvement was gradually deemphasized from AAS programs. This trend is the complex result of several factors At first, students set up programs to address community issues such as housing and access to native language news and heard directly from community members. At first, students set up programs to address community issues such as housing and access to native language news and heard directly from community members In this manner, university resources were allocated to the simultaneous betterment of immigrant communities and enrichment of the student experience Yet, it came into question whether having students staff social services was more effective or efficient at educating them compared to traditional class structures. Additionally, these young students were often unfamiliar with the traditions and institutions of the neighborhoods they worked in, resulting in occasional misguided attempts at “fixing” communities and perceptions of student elitism.
It was also noted that entrenching AAS programs in local Chinatowns, Little Saigons, Koreatowns, etc. created a dependency on outside funding and labor without allowing community residents to uplift themselves As William Wei notes, “often, what AAS programs could provide in the way of assistance was inappropriate to community needs, and vice versa, so that maintaining a relationship was pointless” (p. 139). In more fortunate cases, community involvement was attenuated when outside assistance was impactful and self-sustaining, thereby becoming less necessary.
Despite these changes in curriculum and a 1980s conservative response to the social reforms and consciousness cultivated in the Civil Rights and Asian American Movements, AAS continued to expand across the U.S. The Immigration Act of 1965 and the arrival of Vietnam War refugees exponentially increased the presence of Asians in universities and America as a whole Now a much larger demographic force, Asian American students continue to advocate for representation in scholarship. For example, faculty at Williams College approved the creation of an AAS program in 2022 after over three decades of activism from groups like Asian American Studies in Action (AASiA), and in April 2023, Fordham University announced it would offer a minor in AAS. Simultaneously, more established AAS programs and scholars are engaged in an ongoing, decadeslong push to make the subject more inclusive, as discussed below.
Rectifying Areas of “Narrative Scarcity” in AAS
At its conception as an academic discipline, AAS was far from inclusive The activists who first established these departments were predominantly male, straight, and East Asian (although many Filipino Americans played a crucial role in early activism). Accordingly, these identities were overrepresented, forming internal hegemonic narratives in AAS that must be proactively challenged For instance, attempts to bely the model minority myth prompted early AAS scholars to focus on the historical and current participation of Asian Americans in the working class; however, the simultaneous masculine characterization of the working class conceals Asian American sexism and the experiences of Asian American women. Similarly, several early Asian Americanists focused on challenging the Orientalist association of “Asian,” “feminine,” and “passive” by emphasizing masculinity. One such writer Frank Chin adopted this approach by problematically connecting Asians and African Americans through masculinity in works like The Chickencoop Chinaman.
Foundational figures in AAS like Frank Chin not only excluded women, but also discredited the perspectives of queer Asian Americans. Indeed, queerness was almost entirely marginalized from AAS until the last 2-3 decades. This deficiency in the field may also be partially attributed to the general taboo nature of sexuality as a “private” topic in Western academic institutions. While queer Asian Americans remain severely underrepresented in AAS, scholars like Amy Sueyoshi are contributing vital and groundbreaking work to expand our understanding of the intersections of gender, sexuality, and race.
Likewise, South Asian representation in AAS has increased dramatically in recent decades. Due to alternate histories of colonization and migration, South Asian Americans were not present in a sufficient number to support a unified political front during the Asian American Movement from which AAS was born
Moreover, the experiences of South Asians both arriving to and living in America are undeniably different from those of East Asians who disproportionately constituted AAS faculty With Tamara Bhalla, current AAAS President Pawan Dhingra argues that the racial profiling, violence, and discrimination faced by South Asian and Arab Americans after the September 11th attacks closely paralleled the historical experiences of East Asian groups as forever foreigners and threats to national security such as with Japanese Americans during WWII. This perceived convergence of Asian American experiences may partially explain AAS’s recent increased receptivity to South Asian perspectives Still, non-East Asian identities remain underrepresented in AAS curricula, a fact which circularly reinforces and is reinforced by a relative lack of non-East Asian students in AAS courses. In 2000, Davé et al. argued that “critical mass justifications” in AAS which posit that “you’re worth discussing only when your numbers are large enough” must be overturned for the growth of the field (p. 85).
One final historical deficiency in AAS to be noted here is the focus on the experiences of Asian Americans in California. As the birthplace of AAS, it is unsurprising that the field has been saturated by Asian Californians, and while AAS has expanded to reach the East Coast as well, the rest of Asian America remains severely excluded from scholarship and fieldwork.
AAS at OU
Thus, the expansion of AAS at OU already offers the opportunity to grow the discipline by incorporating the experiences of Asians/Asian Americans from a geographic location underrepresented in AAS scholarship. Both OU and the state of Oklahoma have sizable Vietnamese populations, yet little to no scholarship has been written about these immigrant/refugee experiences.
Notably, OU houses academic programs for Latinx, Native American, and African American Studies but does not offer a major or minor in Asian American Studies In Fall 2022, the Honors College hired Dr David Song, a trained Asian Americanist, sociologist, and ethnographer as an assistant professor of AAS. Dr. Song currently offers a section of Honors Perspectives (HON 2973) on Intro Asian American Studies.
Despite this recent progress, a formal department and degree program dedicated to AAS remains missing from OU academic offerings. Additional faculty hires specializing in AAS subfields like Asian American literature and history would provide students with a much more cohesive and holistic view of AAS. Moreover, the confinement of AAS to the Honors College does a disservice to the community-oriented and egalitarian essence of the subject. Expanding these course offerings to afford general education credits has historically improved the viability and popularity of AAS.
Despite this recent progress, a formal department and degree program dedicated to AAS remains missing from OU academic offerings Additional faculty hires specializing in AAS subfields like Asian American literature and history would provide students with a much more cohesive and holistic view of AAS. Moreover, the confinement of AAS to the Honors College does a disservice to the community-oriented and egalitarian essence of the subject. Expanding these course offerings to afford general education credits has historically improved the viability and popularity of AAS.
As mentioned previously, movements to expand and introduce AAS at individual universities have taken decades to achieve their goals, and OU will likely be no exception.
Nonetheless, we must first demonstrate that OU students are both interested in AAS and are unable to adequately satisfy this interest through OU’s existing course and degree offerings Accordingly, if you would like to have your experiences (current and former OU students only) represented in efforts to expand AAS at OU, please fill out the survey upon scanning the following QR code:
Upon completion of the survey, you will be given the option to enter yourself into a drawing for one of four $25 Amazon gift cards. The survey will ask about which classes you have taken at OU and possible encounters with Asian American studies. We hope to present the results to OU administrators and demonstrate the need for an Asian American Studies department/degree program at the university. All survey responses are completely confidential, and it will only take around 10-20 minutes to complete. Feel free to share the survey with your friends as well! We would love responses from any/all OU students (not just Asian Americans).
References
[1] Asian Americans: the Movement and the Moment. Edited by Steve Louie and Glenn Omatsu. Los Angeles: UCLA Asian American Studies Center Press, 2001.
[2] Bhalla, Tamara, and Pawan Dhingra. "12 The Privilege of South Asian American Studies." Journal of Asian American Studies 25, no. 2 (2022): 307-318
[3] Chan, Sucheng. “Whither Asian American Studies?” In Asian American Studies Now: A Critical Reader, edited by Jean Yu-wen Shen Wu and Thomas C. Chen, 477–95. Rutgers University Press, 2010.
[4] Davé, Shilpa, et al. "De-Privileging Positions: Indian Americans, South Asian Americans, and the Politics of Asian American Studies." Journal of Asian American Studies 3, no. 1 (2000): 67-100.
[5] De Anza College. “Asian American Studies: A Quick Primer.” Accessed November 26th, 2023. https://www.deanza.edu/asam/primer.html.
[6] Hu-DeHart, Evelyn. “The History, Development, and Future of Ethnic Studies.” The Phi Delta Kappan 75, no. 1 (1993): 50–54.
[7] Lee, Jennifer, and Karthick Ramakrishnan. “From Narrative Scarcity to Research Plenitude for Asian Americans.” RSF: The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences 7, no. 2 (2021): 1–20.
[8] Lowe, Lisa. “The International within the National: American Studies and Asian American Critique.” Cultural Critique, no. 40 (1998): 29–47.
[9] Maeda, Daryl J. Chains of Babylon: The Rise of Asian America. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2009.
[10] Naturalizing Power: Essays in Feminist Cultural Analysis. Edited by Sylvia Yanagisako and Carol Delaney. New York: Routledge, 1995.
[11] The Oxford Handbook of Asian American History. Edited by David K. Yoo and Eiichiro Azuma. New York: Oxford University Press, 2016.
[12] Sumida, Stephen H. “The More Things Change: Paradigm Shifts in Asian American Studies.” American Studies International 38, no. 2 (2000): 97–114.
[13] Wei, William. The Asian American Movement. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1993.
[14] Yan-Gonzalez, Vivian. “Model Minority or Myth? Reexamining the Politics of S.I. Hayakawa.” Amerasia Journal 48, no. 1 (2022): 24-43.
