Asian American Studies Commons^™

A Grave Issue-Lone Fir Cemetery, Block 14, And Chinese Exclusion With Charlie Huxley, Charlie Huxley

PDXPLORES Podcast

Lone Fir Cemetery, located in inner Southeast Portland, Oregon, was established in 1855 and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Block 14 within the cemetery was a segregated section reserved for Chinese immigrants in the late-nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. In this episode of PDXPLORES,

Charlie Huxley (History, '22) discusses how their research illustrates how community engagement with Block 14 in the nineteenth century was defined by discrimination, aggression, and racism toward Portland's Chinese immigrant community.

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Hypervisible (In)Visibility: Black Amerasians, Angelica J. Allen

Africana Studies Faculty Books and Book Chapters

"In this essay, I foreground the experiences of Black Amerasians in the Philippines. Drawing upon interviews from a larger ethnographic study, I explore how analysis of this community’s lived experiences unsettles singular conceptualizations of Filipinx American identity and reveals the transnational dimensions of anti-Blackness. Through this analysis, we can begin to explore the possibilities for cross-disciplinary dialogue between Black studies—namely, the indispensable insights of Black feminist theory—and Filipinx American studies, forging new political alliances as we consider timely issues that are relevant to both fields. I begin with a brief account of Filipinx Amerasian history, followed by an analysis of …

Asian Americans Challenge The Official Racial Nationalism Of The United States, Frank Wu

Publications and Research

The very definition of “Asian American,” which historically has been based upon the formal exclusion of this grouping, demonstrates the racial nationalism of the United States Racial nationalism is not new. It has been the norm in America (and arguably remains the norm elsewhere, including throughout Asia) to identify belonging to a shared race as essential to membership within a nation-state. This essay uses the Wong Kim Ark case, recognizing birthright citizenship for an individual of Chinese descent, and the Korematsu case, allowing the World War II internment of Japanese Americans, as a means of showing how government officials conceived …

Professional Identity Development Of Asian American & Pacific Islander Aanapisi Staff, Sara Boxell Hoang

Graduate Doctoral Dissertations

In spite of a swiftly growing AAPI undergraduate student population, higher education staff remain predominantly White with AAPIs significantly underrepresented within the field. The underrepresentation of AAPI professional staff is a problem not only because it may represent a lack of a career pipeline for AAPIs entering the workforce, but it also negatively impacts the large population of AAPI students who struggle to access and succeed in higher education. Contrary to prevalent stereotypes and misconceptions, many AAPI undergraduates are first-generation college students, come from low-income backgrounds, and struggle to obtain bachelor’s degrees (Maramba, 2011). Although AAPIs in predominately White fields …

Ambiguity Of Vision: Reimagining The Hypervisible Void, Kiwha Lee Blocman

Theses and Dissertations

Asking questions about what Painting is in the 21st century and the dominant narratives it can challenge, my paintings complicate the viewer’s reading of pictorial hierarchy and the projection of human relations in the world. I de-hierarchize and decentralize the compositional components that make up a painting by using patterns to create spatial depth, not European perspectival conventions. In dialogue with modernists such as Matisse who drew from the visual vocabulary of “The Orient”, my central forms derived from architecture and ornamental fragments possess a body-like presence. Further, I reinvent ancient Asian printmaking processes with oil paint. Observing the tenets …

Mahalaya: Building Community In The Filipinx Diaspora Through Solidarity Journalism, Casey Ticsay

Master's Theses

Unethical approaches to storytelling in professional journalism continue to shape public discourse around the diverse experiences of Asians and Asian Americans. This paper analyzes the origins and impact of ethnic news media, specifically the rise of Filipino and Filipino American press in the United States, and the ways journalists of color continue to challenge traditional practices of professional journalism that perpetuate anti-Blackness and maintain white supremacy. Filipino and Filipino American newspapers in the early twentieth century provide historical insight into the issues, debates, and conversations transpiring at the time and highlight the community’s ongoing response to the misrepresentations of their …

(Un)Matched: Racialized Narratives Of U.S.-Based Japanese Men, Masculinity, And Heterosexuality In Online Dating Apps, Keisuke Kimura

Communication ETDs

In this study, I documented and examined U.S.-based Japanese men’s narratives about their day-to-day experiences in and across online dating contexts. Through the analysis of narratives, I critiqued how multilayered differences (i.e., race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, class, and more) working with dominant social structures affect their everyday experiences within the spectrum of power, privilege, and marginalization in the transnational space. Specifically, the overarching purposes and goals of this study were to better understand U.S.-based Japanese men’s online dating experiences and to critique the relationalities of how Japanese men’s narratives (i.e., micro-level context) and their beliefs/attitudes within and between cultural communities …

Carlos Bulosan And Filipino Collective Memory: Teaching, Transgression, And Transformation, Jeffrey Cabusao

English and Cultural Studies Journal Articles

Who is Carlos Bulosan? Why is he significant? Why teach Bulosan in our classrooms? These questions function as points of departure for this lecture delivered in Summer 2021 for the UNITAS International Lecture Series cosponsored by CLASS and Kritika Kultura. By reviewing the significance of Carlos Bulosan, this talk provides an opportunity to examine the continued relevance of Bulosan and his works for the twenty-first century. A pioneering Filipino writer of the twentieth century, Bulosan developed a unique transgressive aesthetic that travels across national and literary boundaries and, in the process, reimagines the boundaries of Filipino identity and literary categorization. …

On The Edge Of Leadership: Narratives Of Asian Indian American Women In Higher Education In The United States, Denozy Sharma

Dissertations

This study was an investigation of the experiences of Asian Indian American Women (AIAW) in higher education in the United States. The motivation of this study was to gain a better understanding of Asian Indian American Women who, in spite of their rising presence in academia and educational attainment, are noticeably underrepresented in academic leadership roles. Asian Indian American women fall far behind White females in leadership positions in higher education.

A qualitative research methodology has been conducted. The investigation involved the narratives of the five female participants (faculty members and/or administrators in U.S. higher education) who identified themselves as …

The One Who Won, Jeanna Polisini

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

I am an adopted Asian American with an Italian last name who was raised in the Jewish faith. While I am one of the lucky ones, the One-Child Policy is responsible for how my life turned out. My intention is to confront the inhumanity of this horrific policy with my adoption story. Until policies personally affect someone’s life, many people do not think twice about the other country’s problems and their repercussions on a global level. For my senior exhibition, I created an autobiographical installation to explore my adoption story and how China’s inhumane dictatorship. The full immersive installation will …

The Rain Over Hanoi: A Personal Project About Screenplay Structure, Story, Representation And Intergenerational Struggle, Joan Moua

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

A good screenplay is first and foremost a good story. Elements of a good story include compelling characters, a theoretical structure, and a well-executed premise. The Rain Over Hanoi is an extremely intimate and personal project about an Asian American expat living in Vietnam. Our protagonist’s journey and coming of age is explored via the interactions she has with her old and new family. Communication through food, symbolism, and cultural exchange are also present throughout the screenplay, utilizing a realistic point of view for the benefit of a full story submersion experience to the reader/viewer. Themes of self-exploration, growing up, …

Las Voces Desde La Liminalidad Sino-Peruana: –Una Lectura Comparativa De Mongolia Y La Vida No Es Una Tómbola–, Jing Tan

LSU Master's Theses

Chinese immigrants first arrived in Peru in the mid-19th Century. Since then, the Sino-Peruvian community has lived through myriad vicissitudes. Today, despite its indisputable influence in Peru’s history, it is still largely invisible in society, just as the concept of an Asian Latin American identity remains elusive in the national consciousness. In the literary and academic world, the scarcity of a voice highlighting Chinese legacies in Peruvian literature is echoed by the dearth of such a voice in the criticism regarding works by Sino-Peruvian writers about Sino-Peruvian experiences.

This comparative analysis engages with two novels that evince deep parallelism with …

Cuteness And Curanderismo, Mylan T. Nguyen

Art Theses and Dissertations

Abstract:

In this paper I analyze the trajectory of concepts and explorations in my art practice during my graduate studies from 2019-2022. I examine how an interest in magic, healing and interconnectedness has led me to create illustration, ceramic, and risograph art that interprets the stories and practices I have encountered around Curanderismo, and Nahuales. I examine how these stories are shaped and also celebrate the wealth of healing knowledge they can provide.

Asian Americans And The Covid-19 Pandemic: A Multi-Lingual Survey In Greater Boston, Carolyn Wong, Ziting Kuang

Institute for Asian American Studies Publications

This report on Asian Americans and the Covid-19 Pandemic describes lessons from a multilingual survey administered in Greater Boston during the Fall, Winter, and early Spring of 2020-21. The Institute for Asian American Studies (IAAS) at UMass Boston designed and administered the IAAS Covid-19 Survey on the health, economic, and social impacts of the pandemic for Asian Americans. The IAAS Covid-19 Survey was designed to fill significant gaps in data available from a previous Spring 2020 survey, Living in Boston During Covid-19, which was funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and administered by UMass Boston’s Center for Survey Research …

Reading From Cutouts: The Aesthetics Of Alienation In The Photos Of Chinese Factory Workers, Heangjin Park

Asian and Asian American Studies Faculty Works

This essay explores the tensions, oppression, and alienation in factory workers’ relationship with their company and commodities registered in photographic aesthetics. Comparing product, portrait, and ID photos I took at a Chinese kimchi factory, I analyze how aesthetic dispositions in those photos were differentiated in the processes of preparation, review, editing, and publication. On the one hand, commodities are photographed to celebrate their virtues and value with the significant investment of time, resources, and attention to every detail. Their relationship with workers, who spend 14 hours a day making kimchi, is effectively effaced while the products are rendered appealing and …

The Rise Of An Eco-Spiritual Imaginary: Ecology And Spirituality As Decolonial Protest In Contemporary Multi-Ethnic American Literature, Andrew Michael Spencer

English Theses and Dissertations

The Rise of an Eco-Spiritual Imaginary reveals a shared ecological aesthetic among contemporary U.S. ethnic writers whose novels communicate a decolonial spiritual reverence for the earth. This shared narrative focus challenges white settler colonial mythologies of manifest destiny and American exceptionalism to instantiate new ways of imagining community across socially constructed boundaries of time, space, nation, race, and species. The eco-spiritual imaginary—by which I mean a shared reverence for the ecological interconnection between all living beings—articulates a common biological origin and sacredness of all life that transcends racial difference while remaining grounded in local ethnicities and bioregions. The novelists representing …

Memory Rewriting As A Method Of Inquiry: When Returning Becomes Collective Healing, Ethan Trinh, Giang Nguyen Hoang Le Mr., Ha Dong, Trang Tran, Vuong Tran

The Qualitative Report

Writing is collective healing to build a community. We, five Vietnamese bodies, enquire, how can individual memories be collective healing to rewrite a better future of education? We borrow Nhat Hanh’s philosophy to touch on our suffering to heal and Barad’s returning as a multiplicity of processes for reconnecting with the pastpresentfuture. We use the recollection of individual memories to share critical incidents of past experiences to build a collective community for healing purposes. We have demonstrated our deep commitment to creating a resilient system in retelling stories and rewriting for hope for educational change through this process.

Review Of Fang Tang's Literary Fantasy In Contemporary Chinese Diasporic Women’S Literature: Imagining Home, Lilly Chen

Asian American Literature: Discourses & Pedagogies

No abstract provided.

Searching For Mirror Books For Young Asian/Asian-American Children With Disabilities, Sohyun Meacham, Su-Jeong Wee, Wu-Ying Hsieh, Pei-Chun Chen, Bryce Davis

Asian American Literature: Discourses & Pedagogies

America’s changing demographics and the increasing number of children with disabilities call for appropriate representations of race/ethnicity and disabilities in materials (e.g., books) for inclusive classrooms. This study analyzed how Asian/Asian-American (A/AA) people with disabilities had been portrayed in picture books with the Asian/Pacific American Award for Literature (APAAL) or the Schneider Family Award (SFA). We addressed the intersectionality of Asian racial cultures and disabilities, focusing on the picture books with these awards, due to the potential impact of these portrayals on children. We used 35 picture books with the APAAL from 2001 to 2020 and 18 with the SFA …

Wages Of Resistance: A Consideration Of Time In Jessica Hagedorn’S Dogeaters, Laura A. Wright

Asian American Literature: Discourses & Pedagogies

Using the formal elements of Dogeaters, Jessica Hagedorn offers a pointed critique of class. Bringing Karl Marx’s discussion of time from Capital into conversation with Gèrard Genette’s narratological essay “Order, Duration and Frequency” I argue that Hagedorn’s depiction of time deliberately undermines the systems of power in the novel. Drawing particularly on Genette’s conceptualization of duration and frequency, I examine Hagedorn’s depictions of men and women at work, specifically the characters of Romeo Rosales and Trinidad Gamboa. Romeo and Trinidad are seldom mentioned in criticism of Hagedorn’s text, but these characters demonstrate Hagedorn’s attention to the working-class and serve …