Asian American Studies Commons^™

Placemaking And Placewashing In Manhattan's Chinatown: Capitalist Vs. Community Interests, Mary Chu

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Since the late 1890s, there have been internal and external placemakers in Manhattan’s Chinatown. They take the form of city government, real estate developers, and community organizations vying for space, and seeking to define what this neighborhood should be, for whom it should serve, and how it should look. Sometimes these would-be placemakers operate with neoliberal goals and overt orientalist and/or racist views. They push those narratives through via media representations and as a tactic to attract tourism, but with little regard for how it affects the community. In this work, I examine connections between historic ideas of placemaking and …

The Migration Of South Asians From India To Guyana: The Journey, Struggles In A New Land, Reasons For Changes Over Time And Their Cultivation Of A New Culture., Cynthia C. Harry

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Indians from different regions of India arrived in Guyana through indentureship in 1838. They were under a five-year contract and had to work on the sugar plantations for the duration of their indentureship. While they tried to persist their Indian culture, assimilation in their new environments and interaction with people of different cultures, allowed them to develop a culture unique to Indo Guyanese heritage.

This thesis focuses on the history of Indian diaspora in Guyana. It evokes the struggles they faced on the ships, and during and after indentureship. It also touches on the political and racial issues they had …

Creative Resilience Against Racism Among Asian Americans: Development Of A Method, Janice Chen

Expressive Therapies Capstone Theses

The experience of racism is inevitable and can become internalized when racism is persistent. As an Asian American woman, I am interested in exploring how art can be used as a form of resilience against internalized racism among Asian Americans. Racism against Asian Americans and recent immigrants from Asia has always existed throughout the history of the United States. Systematic laws, institutional policies, and cultural norms have set rules and narratives to put Asian Americans at a disadvantage. In addition, Asian Americans may have difficulty opening the conversation about racism. Internalized racism can cause physical and mental harm. I used …

Abcs: American Born Chinese Stories, Ethan Peng

English Honors Theses

Inspired by life as an Asian American in New York City, ABC and Other Stories explores family dynamics and perspectives, public perceptions, and emotions throughout twenty-six stories, one for every letter of the alphabet. Real memories and fantastical elements intertwine throughout the collection, all falling under the theme of “ABC,” representing both the English language and “American Born Chinese.” Many of the narrators, left nameless and genderless, recount their stories of growing up in an immigrant household. One recalls the last time their parents physically punished them. Another thinks of being unsettled by a stranger on the subway. Other narrators …

Lingua Asia: Decolonizing Heritage Language Education, Collin Absher

Undergraduate Honors Theses

The emergence of APIA programs within higher education has assisted in posing the question of what should be included in the K-12 history curriculum as it is lacking in Asian American history, African American history, and other marginalized groups’ history and information. In tandem, heritage learning Mandarin classes, while they do attempt to bring the students' writing and reading levels up to their speaking levels, instead focus solely on Chinese history, culture, identity, and societal problems. This is valuable; however, what of the Chinese American identity? There has been a surplus of over 200 years of Chinese American history within …

Writing, Performance, Resistance: Examining Feminist Ideology And Theory In Theatre Since The Second Wave, Olivia Cross

Theater Honors Papers

This project seeks to identify and analyze how feminist theatre is informed by theory and activism in its resistance against white, heteronormative, and patriarchal hegemony offstage through onstage representation. By identifying three consistent themes of gender & sexuality, race, and trauma and the methods used to effectively convey them to an audience, feminist theatre displays how advocacy takes unique forms to uproot the status quo. Furthermore, this research highlights how theatre is a viable and rich outlet for feminist intellectual history, displaying its versatility as a frame of analysis.

Facing Two Fronts: Asian Americans Grappling With Covid-19 And Xenophobic Tensions, Matthew Soos

Senior Theses

This thesis examines the impact of COVID-19-induced discrimination against Asian Americans (AsAms) and its effects on the mental health of college-aged individuals within this demographic. The study specifically targets East and Southeast Asians due to their heightened connection with the pandemic. Data was gathered via a survey disseminated among undergraduate AsAm students at the University of South Carolina. The survey sought information on the occurrence and forms of discrimination encountered pre-pandemic and during the pandemic, alongside the mental health condition and coping mechanisms of the respondents. Moreover, participants were prompted to assess the efficacy of suggested approaches in addressing discrimination. …

Listening To "Silence": Alternative Modes Of Communication In Korean And Korean American Women's Literature, Judy Joo-Ae Bae

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

South Korean feminist activity may be relatively unknown to many Western readers; however, a distinct form of feminist activism can be seen when considering alternative modes of communication that are not less than, simply different from “speech” or “voice” as forms of agency celebrated in the West. Alternative modes of communications such as silence, song, touch, and performance also speak important messages which can be heard when understood through local knowledges. In the three cases of South Korean and Korean American women’s fictions used in this dissertation, I unpack these alternative modes of communications used by the female protagonists through …

Editors' Introduction, Raj G. Chetty, Beverly Greene

Journal of Critical Race and Ethnic Studies

No abstract provided.

Hagwon: Shadow Education In The Korean American Community, Minkyu Kim

Theses and Dissertations

Asian and Asian American students are achieving academic success at disproportionate rates, even when faced with low social capital (i.e., English is not the primary language spoken at home) and high rates of poverty (especially in urban settings like New York City). A contributing factor to their academic success is shadow education. Shadow education (SE) is defined as systemized learning that occurs outside of compulsory schooling, at private cost, with the objective of guiding students through and providing them with a competitive edge in school admissions—often with a focus on high-stakes standardized academic exams (Bray, 1999, 2013). In Korean, shadow …

Methodologizing Transnationality: Relational Writing As Collective Inquiry, Sun Young Lee, Minhye Son, Taeyeon Kim, Jin Kyeong Jung, Soo Bin Jang

Department of Educational Administration: Faculty Publications

How can we take transnationality as a space of in-betweenness to generate new possibilities, moving beyond geographically bounded spans between countries? This article presents five authors’ collective inquiry on transnational positionalities, which we practiced through the relational, transformative, and reflective writing of the self in a community space. We staged the collaborative writing into two processes: the emergent process of thematic writing and the relay writing. Interweaving “I” and “we” voices that cannot be captured through categorical thinking, our collaborative quest resists normative identity politics, proposing writing as a method of collective inquiry for the nuanced understanding of the transnationality …

Lingering Presence: (T)Racing Chinese Community In The Borderlands, Reia Li

Pomona Senior Theses

By the mid-1900s, although there were only around 700 Chinese people in Tucson, Arizona, there were over 100 Chinese-owned markets. These small grocery stores were located in Mexican American barrios and served mainly Mexican, Indigenous, and Black people. Starting from these stores and moving to other spaces important to the Chinese community, this work explores race as a spatial process and space as a racialized project. Drawing on anthropology, geography, and Asian/American studies, this thesis (t)races the transformations of Chinese homes, grocery stores, and suburban spaces throughout the 20th century, examining the racial meanings that these places both emerged from …

Reframing Mourning: Liberatory Grief In Post-Tragedy Chinese American Women’S Fiction, Sophia Li

Honors Projects

My project approaches discussions of Asian American melancholia and mourning with a specific focus on contemporary Chinese American women’s fiction. Scholars such as David Eng, Shinhee Han, and Anne Anlin Cheng have long spotlighted the prevalence of depression among Asian American populations, particularly those with immigrant backgrounds, and they variously adopt psychoanalytic approaches to understand Asian American mental health and intersectional identities. Looking beyond psychoanalytic models, my project focuses on the works of Yiyun Li, Jenny Zhang, and K-Ming Chang to explore diverse forms of post-tragedy positionality. I read the authors paratextually, not only to locate them within legacies of …

The Body Negotiating Unprecedented Movement, Mei Bock

Honors Projects

A collection of poems exploring threads including the Lower East Side, immigration, stray animals, art, and Chinese-American identity.

A Tale Of Two Motherlands: Bridging The Gap Between The American And Korean Identities Of Korean War Adoptees, Lily Zitko

The Great Lakes Journal of Undergraduate History

In 1955, the Harry and Bertha Holt successfully petitioned for the passing of Private Law 475 (Holt Bill) allowing for the adoption of eight orphans from South Korea. This was the beginning of a global revolution in transnational and transracial adoption. Prior to this, the idea of adoption outside of the United States was seldom possible; however, the work of the Holt family rationalized with the pubic and garnered much attention from the government and media. Even more so complicated was the idea of mixed-race Korean children, fathered by American G.I.s stationed in the Korea during the Korean War. Their …

Review Of Empire And Environment: Ecological Ruin In The Transpacific., Hanyue Li

Asian American Literature: Discourses & Pedagogies

A Book Review on Empire and Environment: Ecological Ruin in the Transpacific.

Review Of Beyond The Icon: Asian American Graphic Narratives By Eleanor Ty, Maite Urcaregui

Asian American Literature: Discourses & Pedagogies

No abstract provided.

Re-Visions: Examining Narratives Of Asian American Mental Health, Kenji Aoki

Asian American Literature: Discourses & Pedagogies

This paper examines the intersection between Asian American mental health and resilience tropes. While research has acknowledged that Asian Americans have disparate mental health gaps regarding mental health stigma and how Asian American young adults are the only racial group in which suicide is their leading cause of death, there has been limited study that attempts to directly convey Asian American voices beyond broad statistical or cultural generalizations. To supplement ongoing research and Asian American livelihoods, this essay conjectures and attempts to illuminate the histories, mental illness, and health narratives of Asian Americans, the good, the bad, the ugly, the …

Monstrous Matrilineage In Chinese American Literature, Leina Hsu

Asian American Literature: Discourses & Pedagogies

In this paper, I explore the monstrous relationships between Chinese American mothers and daughters in The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan, Bone by Fae Myenne Ng, and Severance: A Novel by Ling Ma. I employ monsters as metaphors and motifs that illustrate the womens’ genealogical trauma and resistance. By putting Chinese American matrilineages in a monstrous context, I elevate them as alternative knowledge sources that haunt the margins of Western society. In The Joy Luck Club, ghosts reveal the invisibility and survivor mindset of Chinese American immigrant mothers. For Bone, skeletons represent the unspoken trauma that plagues Chinese American …

Memory, Politics, And Literary Imagination In Viet Thanh Nguyen’S The Refugees, Jian Zhu

Asian American Literature: Discourses & Pedagogies

Despite the official conclusion of the Vietnam War, the struggle for remembrance and recollection endures. Within the pages of The Refugees, Viet Thanh Nguyen offers a transnational lens through which to examine the formation and contestation of collective memories between the United States and Vietnam. Despite its military defeat, the United States appropriated anti-communist ideology during the Cold War era to assimilate the refugee community, leveraging a discourse of “freedom and democracy” as a means to reshape historical narratives. In stark contrast, Vietnam commemorated its revolutionary struggle against imperialism through the establishment of museums, statues, and public cemeteries within …

The Modular Fiction Of Ken Liu, Elizabeth Lawrence

Asian American Literature: Discourses & Pedagogies

Ken Liu is an influential translator of Chinese-language science fiction and an award winning author of original speculative fiction as well. His readers routinely observe that Liu draws on his Chinese heritage for world building and plot development. Less remarked upon are parallels between Liu’s creative process and modular production within Chinese literary and material culture. In this article, I explore these parallels through Liu’s wide-ranging fiction. The intent is not to pigeonhole Liu as a distinctly Chinese or Chinese American author – he has rejected such labels himself – but to universalize models of Chinese creative expression.

Course Design As Critical Creativity: Intersectional, Regional, And Demographic Approaches To Teaching Asian American Literatures, Thomas X. Sarmiento

Asian American Literature: Discourses & Pedagogies

This essay offers a theoretical and reflective exploration of critically informed acts of creativity expressed in my course design for and teaching of Asian American literatures at a predominantly white, public land-grant, Midwestern university. I argue that teaching is both a creative and critical activity as it generates new ways of knowing and being through an assessment and curation of extant literary texts and scholarly discourses. Given my geographic, scholarly, and personal orientations, my course features intersectional, regional, and ethnically diverse perspectives that aim to queer what “Asian America/n” signifies. I hope my situated pedagogical insights inspire other scholar-teachers to …

David Henry Hwang’S Yellow Face: Fictional Autoethnography And Parody On Racial Stereotypes, Quan Manh Ha, Jacob Christiansen

Asian American Literature: Discourses & Pedagogies

Hwang’s play Yellow Face (2007), a dramaturgically inventive work, combines multiple narrative forms into a plot that blurs the distinction among social science, social commentary, and fiction. The play is simultaneously self-mocking and self-examining in its representation of the Asian American experience in theatre. It both examines Hwang’s own racial identity and boldly redefines conventional theatrical forms as the playwright places himself at the center of a highly embarrassing, fictional racial controversy in order to scrutinize the performativity of an Asian American identity. This article argues that Yellow Face is fictitious autoethnodrama as it acerbically parodies racialization.

"Loving You No Matter What You Do": Ai's Dramatic Monologues, 1970s Asian American Feminisms, And Reproductive Justice, Catherine Irwin

Asian American Literature: Discourses & Pedagogies

This essay makes visible the 1970s involvement of Asian American and Women of Color feminists in reproductive justice. Grounded in the Asian American feminist praxis of remembering, this essay analyzes how three dramatic monologues by the Asian American mixed-race poet Ai engage with the discourses of reproduce justice set forth by Asian American and Women of Color activists leading up to the 1973 Roe v. Wade decision. Using an Asian American feminist lens, this paper argues that the speakers in Ai’s monologues utilize these discourses circulating about abortion and women’s health care to construct images of the treatment of dispossessed …

In Praise Of Limes, Poets, And Mentors: A Conversation With Shirley Geok-Lin Lim, Noelle Brada-Williams, Elizabeth Asborno

Asian American Literature: Discourses & Pedagogies

No abstract provided.

Introduction To Volume Twelve: Counting Our Blessings, Noelle Brada-Williams

Asian American Literature: Discourses & Pedagogies

No abstract provided.

Aaldp Cover Volume 12, Joanne Lamb

Asian American Literature: Discourses & Pedagogies

No abstract provided.

Service-Learning In The Context Of Asian American Studies And The Aaarcc At Purdue University: Asian/American Business Owners In Greater Lafayette And Indiana, Kawika David, Margaret Palanca, James S. Zhou, Manabu Taketani, Pamela K. Sari

Purdue Journal of Service-Learning and International Engagement

The journey of Asian Americans in the United States is vital to understanding the perspective that Asian immigrants take on the way to becoming Asian Americans. Within the past century, Asians in America have played an essential role in communities across the country. In order to understand the efforts it takes for some of these people, our “Internship in Asian American Studies” (ASAM 490) class explored their experiences and lives by highlighting Asian American and Asian business owners in Greater Lafayette, other areas in Indiana. With a lack of vocalization about this topic, it is crucial to establish this voice …

Threatening National Security Or Bridging The Digital Divide? A Case Study Of Huawei’S Expansion In Brazil, Julie Jin Zeng

Rosenberg Institute Scholars

China’s digital footprint has been expanding rapidly in Latin America in the last two decades. Neither the U.S.-China tech war nor the U.S.-led global campaign aimed at Chinese tech firms seemed to be able to reverse the trend. Much of the policy discussion in the western media surrounding China’s digital expansion focuses on the supply side, emphasizing the potential risks of adopting Chinese technologies. Yet there remains scant research on the demand side— namely, how policymakers in developing countries perceive Chinese tech firms and how they maneuver amid the intensifying rivalry between the U.S. and China. Why did Chinese tech …

An Exploration Of Complementary And Alternative Medicine Usage Within The Vietnamese Community In Lincoln, Nebraska, Helen Duong

Honors Theses

Lincoln, Nebraska is home to over 5,000 Vietnamese refugees and immigrants, many of whom practice complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) as a result of healing traditions passed down through family members. This thesis explores the use of CAM among the Vietnamese population of Lincoln. The study employs an analysis of the literature on CAM among Vietnamese populations and thematic analysis of interviews conducted with members of the Vietnamese community of Lincoln, NE. Interviews explore perceptions of healthcare quality and access within this community as well as investigate the link between CAM and allopathic (Western) medicine. Findings suggest that certain CAM …