American Culture 614/History 624
Asian American History: Readings in Theory and Historiography
As I have been quite fortunate to study Asian American history with a series of great teachers, I take seriously the responsibility to train others in the field. Most of the students I have advised in Asian American history have had a chance to serve as a graduate student instructor for my Asian American history survey after taking an advanced readings course in Asian American historiography. Here is the syllabus for the graduate class. The reading list, which is constantly being updated, has been shaped by the input of many colleagues.
Course Overview
Through extensive readings in Asian/Pacific American history, this course will survey scholarship dating from the origins of ethnic studies in the 1960s to the present. Our discussions will focus on the following questions: How does the study of Asian Americans challenge historians to rethink issues of race, class, and gender? Why and how did the original vision of Asian American Studies emphasize social history and community studies? What have Asian American historians learned from interdisciplinary approaches? How have literary theory and cultural studies influenced recent and current work? What is the future direction of the field?
Course readings will help prepare you to teach classes in Asian/Pacific American history from the time of early migrations to the present. Groups to be examined include Korean, Filipino, South Asian, Southeast Asian, Chinese, and Japanese Americans. Readings in theory and historiography are designed to help graduate students frame and conceptualize research projects involving Asian American history. Course materials and discussions are also relevant to students engaging fields such as U.S. history, comparative race/ethnicity, immigration, U.S./Asia relations, and Asian diasporic communities.
Required Texts
- Sucheng Chan, Asian Americans: An Interpretive History (1991)
- Gary Okihiro, Columbia Guide to Asian American History (2001)
- Judy Yung, Unbound Feet: A Social History of Chinese Women in San Francisco (1995)
- Eiichiro Azuma, Between Two Empires: Race, History, and Transnationalism in Japanese America (2005)
- Catherine Choy, Empire of Care: Nursing and Migration in Filipino American History (2003)
- Michi Weglyn, Years of Infamy: The Untold Story of America’s Concentration Camps (1976)
- Ji-Yeon Yuh, Beyond the Shadow of Camptown: Korean Military Brides in America (2002)
- Steve Louie and Glenn Omatsu (eds.), Asian Americans: The Movement and the Moment (2001)
- Vijay Prashad, Everybody Was Kung Fu Fighting: Afro-Asian Connections and the Myth of Cultural Purity (2001)
- Grace Lee Boggs, Living for Change: An Autobiography (1998)
- Andrew Pham, Catfish and Mandala: A Two-Wheeled Voyage through the Landscape and Memory of Vietnam (1999)
- Anne Fadiman, The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down: A Hmong Child, Her American Doctors, and the Collision of Two Cultures (1997)
- Coursepack
Course Requirements
Seminar Participation
Students should prepare notes on readings and critical questions for seminar discussion. Such preparation will ensure lively, thoughtful, and productive discussions.
Analytical Paper (5 pages)
Discuss the relevance of any assigned article or set of articles from the course. Address the following questions: What is the central argument of the author(s) and how does it shape theoretical approaches to the study of history? How would these approaches impact a research project you are engaged in or considering? Due in my box or office or email by 2 p.m. on Wednesday, February 15.
Longer Paper (15–20 pages)
Develop a topic and reading list in conjunction with the instructor for approval by February 20. You are encouraged to discuss your topic during office hours as early as possible. You are also encouraged to submit a draft of your paper for review prior to the last week of class. Due Monday, April 24. Choose one of the following 3 options:
- Oral history. Conduct an interview of any Asian American age 40 or over. Place your subject’s life history into the context of Asian American history by drawing upon course materials and secondary sources.
- Family history. Research your family’s history as many generations back as possible and place these experiences into the context of Asian American history. Possible research sources may include family records, archival documents, oral interviews, and/or governmental documents combined with course materials and secondary texts.
- Historiography paper. Choose any topic of interest related to the themes or sub-themes of the course, and write a critical review of relevant works in the field.
Two Oral Book Reports
(15 minutes of presentation and discussion). Make selections from the supplemental reading list. Present a critical analysis of the work and a range of reviews of the work. Provide all students in the class with one useful book review.
Guidelines for Book Reports and Common Readings
Consider each work you read from the following perspectives:
- Empirical Data: What are the author’s findings? In what ways do these empirical findings challenge scholarly consensus or force us to think about history in new ways?
- Method: How did the author collect her sources? What methods does the author use to interpret her sources?
- Craft: What strategies does the author use in presenting her material? How is the work structured and organized? What is the intended audience?
- Theory: What are the guiding assumptions driving the author’s works? On what bases, does she construct her arguments?
- Historiography: Compare and contrast the book to related works in the field. What are the author’s goals and most important contributions?
Schedule of Readings and Discussions
January 9: Introductions
January 16: MLK Holiday
January 23: Immigration and Racialization
- Sucheng Chan, Asian Americans
- Gary Okihiro, Columbia Guide to Asian American History
- Sucheng Chan, “Asian American Historiography,” Pacific Historical Review, 65 (Aug. 1996), 363–399.
Supplemental Readings:
- Mae Ngai, Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America
- Robert Lee, Orientals: Asian Americans in Popular Culture
- Gary Okihiro, Margins and Mainstreams
- Ronald Takaki, Strangers from a Different Shore
- Mary Roberts Coolidge, Chinese Immigration (1909)
- Yamato Ichihashi, Japanese in the United States (1932)
- Bruno Lasker, Filipino Immigration to the Continental United States and to Hawaii (1931)
- Elmer Sandmeyer, The Anti-Chinese Movement in California (1939)
- Hilary Conroy, The Japanese Frontier in Hawaii, 1868–1898 (1953)
- Gunther Barth, Bitter Strength: A History of the Chinese in the United States (1964)
- Stuart Creighton Miller, The Unwelcome Immigrant: The American Image of the Chinese (1969)
- Oscar Handlin, The Uprooted
- John Higham, Strangers in the Land
- John Bodnar, The Transplanted
January 30: Chinese American Women and Social History
- Judy Yung, Unbound Feet
- Yuji Ichioka, “A Historian By Happenstance,” Amerasia Journal, 26: 1 (2000), 32–53.
- James Henretta, “Social History as Lived and Written,” American Historical Review, 84: 5 (Dec. 1979), 1293–1322
Supplemental Readings:
- Alexander Saxton, The Indispensible Enemy
- Andrew Gyory, Closing the Gate: Race, Politics, and the Chinese Exclusion Act
- Charles J. McClain, In Search of Equality: The Chinese Struggle against Discrimination
- Jack Tchen, New York before Chinatown
- Sucheng Chan, This Bittersweet Soil
- Renqiu Yu, To Save China, To Save Ourselves: The Chinese Hand Laundry Alliance
- George Anthony Peffer, If They Don’t Bring Their Women Here: Chinese Female Immigration before Exclusion
- Huping Ling, Surviving on the Gold Mountain : A History of Chinese American Women and Their Lives
- Lisa See, On Gold Mountain
- Madeline Hsu, Dreaming of Gold, Dreaming of Home
- Erika Lee, At America’s Gates
- Karen J. Leong, The China Mystique: Pearl S. Buck, Anna May Wong, Mayling Soong Chiang, and the Transformation of American Orientalism
- Judy Tzu-Chun Wu, Doctor Mom Chung of the Fair-Haired Bastards: The Life of a Wartime Celebrity
- Nayan Shah, Contagious Divides: Epidemics and Race in San Francisco's Chinatown
- Anthony Lee, Picturing Chinatown
- Mary Ting Yi Lui, The Chinatown Trunk Mystery: Murder, Miscegenation, and Other Dangerous Encounters in Turn-of-the-Century New York City
- Peggy Pascoe, Relations of Rescue
February 6: Japanese Americans and Transnational History
- Eiichiro Azuma, Between Two Empires
- Sucheta Mazumdar, “Asian American Studies and Asian Studies: Rethinking Roots.” From Shirley Hune, et al., Asian Americans: Comparative and Global Perspectives (Washington State University Press, 1991), 29–44.
- Evelyn Hu-DeHart, “Coolies, Shopkeepers, Pioneers: The Chinese of Mexico and Peru,” Amerasia Journal 15: 2 (1989), 91–116
Supplemental Readings:
- Yuji Ichioka, The Issei
- John Modell, The Economics and Politics of Racial Accommodation
- Valerie Matsumoto, Farming the Home Place
- Akemi Kikumura, Through Harsh Winters and Promises Kept
- Evelyn Nakano Glenn, Issei Nisei War Bride
- Edna Bonacich and John Modell, The Economic Basis of Ethnic Solidarity: Small Business in the Japanese American Community
- Brian Hayashi, “For the Sake of our Japanese Brethren”: Assimilation, Nationalism, and Protestantism Among the Japanese of Los Angeles, 1895–1942
- Roger Daniels, The Politics of Prejudice
- Barbara Kawakami, Japanese Immigrant Clothing in Hawaii
- Gary Okihiro, Cane Fires
- Frank Chuman, The Bamboo People
- Bill Hosokawa, The Nisei
- Naoko Shimazu, Japan, Race, and Equality
- Yukiko Koshiro, Trans-pacific Racisms and the US Occupation of Japan
February 13: Filipino Americans and Colonial History
- Catherine Choy, Empire of Care
- Edna Bonacich, “The Site of Class”; and Peter Kwong, “Asian American Studies Needs Class Analysis.” From Gary Y. Okihiro, et al., Privileging Positions (Washington State University Press, 1995), 67–81.
- Alexander Saxton, “Race and the House of Labor.” From Gary Nash and Richard Weiss, The Great Fear (Holt, Rinehart, Winston, 1970), 98–120.
- Edward Said, “Introduction” to Orientalism (Vintage Books, 1979), 1–28.
Supplemental Readings:
- Augusto Espiritu, Five Faces of Exile
- Dorothy Fujita-Rony, American Workers, Colonial Power
- Craig Scharlin and Lilia Villanueva, Philip Vera Cruz: A Personal History of Filipino Immigrants and the Farmworkers Movement
- E. San Juan, Jr., From Exile to Diaspora
- Vicente Rafael, White Love and Other Events in Filipino History
- Chris Friday, Organizing Asian American Labor
- Bonacich and Cheng, Labor Immigration Under Capitalism
- Ron Takaki, Pau Hana
- Barbara Posadas, The Filipino Americans
- Yen Le Espiritu, Filipino American Lives
- Fred Cordova, Filipinos: Forgotten Asian Americans
- Patricia J. McReynolds, Almost Americans
- Joe Gallura and Emily Lawsin, Filipinos in Detroit
- Angel Shaw, et al., Vestiges of War
February 20: World War II, Internment, and Racial Ideology
- DEADLINE TO HAVE PAPER TOPICS APPROVED
- Michi Weglyn, Years of Infamy
- John Dower, Excerpt from War Without Mercy
- Korematsu v. U.S.
- Don Nakanishi, “Surviving Democracy’s ‘Mistake’: Japanese Americans and the Enduring Legacy of Executive Order 9066,” Amerasia Journal 19: 1 (1993), 7–35.
Supplemental Readings:
- Brian Hayashi, Democratizing the Enemy
- Lane Hirabayashi, The Politics of Fieldwork: Research in an American Concentration Camp
- Richard Drinnon, Keepers of Concentration Camps
- Morton Grodzins, Americans Betrayed
- Michi Weglyn, Years of Infamy
- Peter Irons, Justice at War
- Harvey Gardiner, Pawns in a Triangle of Hate
- Roger Daniels, Prisoners without Trial: Japanese Americans in World War II
- Jacobus ten Broek, Prejudice, War and the Constitution
- Greg Robinson, By Order of the President
- Gary Okihiro, Storied Lives
- Eric Muller, Free to Die for Their Country
- John Dower, War without Mercy: Race and Power in the Pacific War
- Emily S. Rosenberg, A Date Which Will Live: Pearl Harbor in American Memory
February 22: Turn in Analytical Papers
February 27: Break
March 6: Korean American History, Gender and Marriage
- Ji-Yeon Yuh, Beyond the Shadow of Camptown
- Paul Spickard, “What Must I Be? Asian Americans and the Question of Multiethnic Identity,” Amerasia Journal 23: 1 (1997), 43–60.
- Jennifer Ting, “Bachelor Society” from Privileging Positions
Supplemental Readings:
- Mary Paik Lee, Quiet Odyssey: A Pioneer Korean Woman in America
- Soo Young Chin, Doing What Had To Be Done: The Life Narrative of Dora Yum Kim
- Wayne Patterson, The Ilse, First-Generation Korean Immigrants in Hawaii
- Wayne Patterson, The Korean Frontier in America
- Ivan Light, Immigrant Entrepreneurs
- Nancy Abelmann and John Lie, Blue Dreams: Korean Americans and the Los Angeles Riots.
- Bong-youn Choy, Koreans in America
- Claire Kim, Bitter Fruit: The Politics of Black-Korean Conflict in New York City
- Kyeyoung Park, The Korean American Dream: Immigrants and Small Business in New York City
- Charles Hanley, Sang-Hun Choe, and Martha Mendoza, The Bridge at No Gun Ri
March 13: The Asian American Movement
- Steve Louie and Glenn Omatsu, eds., Asian Americans: The Movement and the Moment
- Mao Tse-Tung, “On Practice.” From Selected Works of Mao Tse-Tung, vol. I (Foreign Languages Press, 1977), 295–309.
- Russell Leong, “Lived Theory (notes on the run),” Amerasia Journal, 21: 1/2 (1995), v&8211;x.
- Glenn Omatsu, “Asian American Studies and the Crisis of Practice,” Amerasia Journal, 20: 3 (1994), 119–124.
- Kenyon Chan, “Rethinking the Asian American Studies Project,” Journal of Asian American Studies, 3: 1 (2000), 17–36.
- Glenn Omatsu, “Defying a 1000 Pointing Fingers and Serving the Children“
Supplemental Readings:
- Yen Le Espiritu, Asian American Panethnicity
- Amy Tachiki, et al., Roots: An Asian American Reader
- Toshio Welchel, From Pearl Harbor to Saigon: Japanese American Soldiers and the Vietnam War
- David L. Eng and Alice Y. Hom, Q & A: Queer in Asian America
- Russell Leong, ed., Asian American Sexualities
- Yen Le Espiritu, Asian American Men and Women
- Teresa Williams-Leon and Cynthia Nakashima, Mixed Heritage Asian Americans
- Paul Spickard, Mixed Blood: Intermarriage and Ethnic Identity in Twentieth-Century America
- Karin Aguilar-San Juan, The State of Asian America
- William Wei, The Asian American Movement
- Koji Ariyoshi, From Kona to Yenan
- Karl Yoneda, Ganbatte
March 20: American-Born Asians, Race and Political Identity
- Grace Lee Boggs, Living for Change
- Helen Zia, “Detroit Blues: Because of You Motherfuckers” from Asian American Dreams
- Andrew F. Jones and Nikhil Pal Singh, “Introduction” to positions 11.1
- Daniel Widener, “Perhaps the Japanese Are to Be Thanked”
Supplemental Readings:
- K. Scott Wong and Sucheng Chan, Claiming America: Constructing Chinese American Identities during the Exclusion Era
- Peter Kwong, Chinatown N.Y.
- David Yoo, Growing Up Nisei
- Jere Takahashi, Nisei/Sansei
- Eileen Tamura, Americanization, Acculturation, and Ethnic Identity: The Nisei Generation in Hawaii
- Henry Yu, Thinking Orientals: Migration, Contact, and Exoticism in Modern America
- Caroline Chung Simpson, An Absent Presence
- Lon Kurashige, Japanese American Celebration and Conflict: A History of Ethnic Identity and Festival, 1934–1990
- James Loewen, The Mississippi Chinese: Between Black and White
- Lucy Cohen, The Chinese in the Post-Civil War South
- Najia Aarim-Heriot, Chinese Immigrants, African Americans, and Racial Anxiety in the United States, 1848–82
- Reginald Kearney, African American Views of Japan
- Mark Gallichio, The African American Encounter with Japan and China
- Bill Mullen, Afro-Orientalism
- Tomas Almaguer, Racial Fault Lines
March 27: The South Asian Diaspora and Constructions of Identity
- Vijay Prashad, Everybody Was Kung Fu Fighting
- Karen Leonard, “California’s Punjabi Pioneers”
- Joan Scott, “The Evidence of Experience,” Critical Inquiry, 17 (Summer 1991), 773–797.
- Lisa Lowe, “Heterogeneity, Hybridity, Multiplicity,” Diaspora, 1: 1 (Spring 1991), 24–44.
Supplemental Readings:
- Sandya Shukla, India Abroad: Diasporic Cultures of Postwar America and England
- Vijay Prashad, The Karma of Brown Folk
- Joan Jensen, Passage from India
- Karen Leonard, Making Ethnic Choices
- Lavina Shankar and Rajini Srikanth, A Part, Yet Apart: South Asians in Asian America
- Sunaina Maira and Rajini Srikanth, Contours of the Heart: South Asian Map North America
- Johanna Lessinger, From the Ganges to the Hudson: Indian Immigrants in New York City
- Padma Rangaswamy, Namasté America : Indian Immigrants in an American Metropolis
- Sunaina Maira, Desis in the House
- Karen Leonard, Asian Indian Americans
- Amitava Kumar, Passport Photos
April 3: War, Memory, and Place
- Andrew X. Pham, Catfish and Mandala
- Ellen Somekawa, “On the Edge: Southeast Asians in Philadelphia and the Struggle for Space.” From Eds. Wendy L. Ng, et al., Reviewing Asian America: Locating Diversity (Washington State University Press, 1995), 33–47.
- Arif Dirlik, “Place-Based Imagination: Globalism and the Politics of Place”
Supplemental Readings:
- Sucheng Chan, Hmong Means Free
- Ines Miyares, The Hmong Refugee Experience in the United States
- Lillian Faderman, I Began My Life All Over: The Hmong and American Immigrant Experience
- James Freeman, Hearts of Sorrow
- Adelaida Reyes, Songs of the Caged, Songs of the Free: Music and the Vietnamese Refugee Experience
- Nazli Kibria, Family Tightrope
- Hien Duc Do, The Vietnamese Americans
- Marilyn Young, Vietnam Wars
- Luoung Ung, First They Killed My Father
- Nancy Joan Smith-Hefner, Khmer American: Identity and Moral Education in a Diasporic Community
- Leo Suryadinata, Ethnic Chinese as Southeast Asians
April 10: Southeast Asian Refugees and Questions of Culture
- Anne Fadiman, The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down
- Lisa Lowe, “The Power of Culture”
- Amy K. Stillman, “Of the People Who Love the Land”
Supplemental Readings:
- Peter Kwong, Forbidden Workers
- Timothy P. Fong, The First Suburban Chinatown: The Remaking of Monterey Park, California
- Leland Saito, Race and Politics
- John Horton, The Politics of Diversity: Immigration, Resistance, and Change in Monterey Park, California
- Mary Yoshihara, Embracing the East: White Women and American Orientalism
- Christina Klein, Cold War Orientalism
- Gina Marchetti, Romance and the "Yellow Peril": Race, Sex, and Discursive Strategies in Hollywood Fiction
- Ko-lin Chin, Smuggled Chinese: Clandestine Immigration to the United States
- Michel Laguerre, The Global Ethnopolis: Chinatown, Japantown, and Manilatown in American Society
- Jae-Hyup Lee, Dynamics of Ethnic Identity: Three Asian American Communities in Philadelphia
- Evelyn Hu DeHart, Across the Pacific: Asian Americans and Globalization
- Paul Ong, Edna Bonacich, and Lucie Cheng, The New Asian Immigration in Los Angeles and Global Restructuring
- Elizabeth Buck, Paradise Remade
- Thomas Osborne, Annexation Hawaii: Fighting American Imperialism, or Empire Can Wait
- Merze Tate, The United States and the Hawaiian Kingdom
- Lawrence Fuchs, Hawaii Pono: A Social History
- Noel Kent, Hawai’i: Islands under the Influence
- Edward Beechert, Working in Hawaii: A Labor History
- Haunani-Kay Trask, From a Native Daughter
- Rob Wilson, Reimagining the American Pacific
April 17
Final Presentations
TURN IN FINAL PAPER BY APRIL 24