Asian American Studies Commons^™

Birth Family Search, Trauma, And Mel-Han-Cholia In Korean Adoptee Memoirs, Katelyn J. Hemmeke

Department of English: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

“Birth Family Search, Trauma, and Mel-han-cholia in Korean Adoptee Memoirs” analyzes the connections between adoption trauma and birth family search by examining three Korean-American adoptee memoirs: The Language of Blood and Fugitive Visions: An Adoptee’s Return to Korea, both by Jane Jeong Trenka; and Ghost of Sangju by Soojung Jo. I draw links between their work and studies on trauma by critical scholars Cathy Caruth, Dori Laub, Margaret Homans, and Jennifer Cho. According to Caruth, the pathology of a traumatic experience lies in the victim’s inability to fully experience the traumatic event as it happens; only …

From Citizens To Elected Representatives: The Political Trajectory Of Asian American Pacific Islanders By 2040, Christine Chen, James Lai, Karthick Ramakrishnan, Alton Wang

Ethnic Studies

The political power of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (AAPIs) has increased steadily in the United States. By 2040, one in ten Americans will be AAPI, and the number of Asian Americans registered to vote will have doubled (Ong, Ong, and Ong, 2016). This section examines the growing AAPI electorate and projects a trajectory for AAPI civic engagement and political participation from now until 2040. By looking at trends and projections for citizenship, voter registration, voter turnout, elected officials, and political infrastructure, the authors illustrate that AAPI political empowerment will have even a greater influence on the future of American …

No Country For Diasporic Men: The Psychological Development Of South Asian Masculinities In The Buddha Of Suburbia And The Mimic Man, Zehra Ahmed Yousofi

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

The purpose of this thesis is to examine the psychological development of South Asian masculinity in a diaspora that is depicted in Hanif Kureishi’s The Buddha of Suburbia and V.S. Naipaul’s The Mimic Men. Together, Kureishi and Naipaul construct a complete understanding of masculinity through childhood, adolescent, young adult, and adulthood. Chapter 1 explores the need to displace their father’s masculinity and seek better masculine models that align with the social norms of the diaspora. Chapter 2 establishes the motivation behind seeking peers to define the meaning of masculinity in a diaspora and the disadvantage of this pathway. Chapter 3 …

Stories Of Persistence: Filipina/O American Undergraduate Students In A Private, Catholic, And Predominantly White University, Angelica M. Bailon

LMU Theses and Dissertations

At more than three million, Filipina/o Americans are one of the largest ethnic minority groups in the United States. Yet, few studies have focused on the experiences of Filipina/o Americans in institutions of U.S. higher education. Given the increasing disparity in degree achievement between first and second generation Filipina/o Americans, this qualitative study investigated the challenges to persistence that Filipina/o American undergraduates have faced in college and identified resources and strategies that have facilitated their survival in higher education. Through individual interviews and a focus group, participants shared their experiences in a private, Catholic, and predominantly White institution. This study …

Remaking Selves, Repositioning Selves, Or Remaking Space: An Examination Of Asian American College Students' Processes Of "Belonging", Michelle Samura

Education Faculty Articles and Research

"Only a few studies have examined Asian American students’ sense of belonging (Hsia, 1988; Lee & Davis, 2000; Museus & Maramba, 2010). Scholars who study Asian American college students have suggested that Asian Americans are awkwardly positioned as separate from other students of color vis-à-vis the model minority stereotype (Hsia, 1988; Lee & Davis, 2000). Furthermore, Asian Americans often are viewed as overrepresented on college campuses, yet they remain under-served by campus support programs and resources and overlooked by researchers. Many Asian Americans have gained access to higher education, but the ways in which they belong on campuses is unclear. …

Japanese American Internment (Encyclopedia Entry), Ann Matsuuchi

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Encyclopedia Entries: "Lgbtq Asian Americans" & "George Takei", Ann Matsuuchi

Publications and Research

Encyclopedia entries on "LGBTQ Asian Americans" & "George Takei" pages 491-498. Originally published in: Asian American Culture: From Anime to Tiger Moms. Edited by Lan Dong. Santa Barbara, California: ABC-CLIO. March 2016. Copyright© 2016 by ABC-CLIO, LLC All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. Inclusion in this institutional repository is permitted by the publisher's contract: "Publisher grants to …

Goddard, Stephen Ross (Fa 841), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

Folklife Archives Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Folklife Archive Project 841. Ten interviews conducted by Stephen Ross Goddard for his graduate studies thesis at Western Kentucky University. These interviews include conversations on how the youth viewed their place within and/or apart from American culture and the Kurdish one into which they were born.

Self-Mirroring Through Broken Pieces: Jesus Among The Comfortwomen, Sunggu Yang

Faculty Publications - George Fox School of Theology

Once again, there is an emotional eruption and political commotion in South Korea after the Japanese and Korean governments announced their diplomat “deal” on the Comfort Women on December 28, 2015. The official agreement includes a formal apology and a compensation of $8.3 million from the Japanese government. There is one important condition also included in the agreement; that this resolution should be “final and irreversible” this year onward. On the surface, the deal seems good—formal apology and some monetary compensation finalized. But then, why the emotional eruption and vehement opposition, especially from the Korean Comfort Women rights activists? In …

Loving The Unlovable Body In Lois Ann Yamanaka’S Saturday Night At The Pahala Theatre, Christa Baiada

Publications and Research

Lois-Ann Yamanaka’s award-winning yet remarkably neglected Saturday Night at the Pahala Theatre (1993) explores female adolescence and coming of age in a rich, polyphonic collection of verse novellas. “Loving the Unlovable Body” focuses on Yamanaka’s treatment of this transition as a fully embodied, fraught, and often painful experience by explicating the uses of several tropes used to express girls’ experiences of their bodies: eating, voice, eyes, fragmentation, and marking/naming. These metaphors contribute to the development of a complex range of possibilities from devastating to hopeful, presented in juxtaposition and interplay, for girls’ relationships to their culturally denigrated bodies and the …

“Yellow Crowfoot In The Pond,/Not Lotus, Not Lily”: Mapping The River, Mapping Voices, Pamela J. Rader

Asian American Literature: Discourses & Pedagogies

This paper examines the prosody of Chin’s eponymous poem, "The Phoenix Gone, The Terrace Empty," through an eco-critical lens. While it does not dismiss the hybrid cultural influences of the poem, it focuses on the ways the non-human agents, or the figures in the poem’s landscape, “speak.” Poetry, like the poem’s terraced gardens, traces tension between the controlling human forces experienced by the narrating female I personas and the natural world’s affective inclinations.

Domestic Violence In Lac Su’S I Love Yous Are For White People: A Sociological Criticism Approach, Quan-Manh Ha

Asian American Literature: Discourses & Pedagogies

This article employs sociological criticism to examine domestic violence, parenting, and communication behavior in Lac Su’s Vietnamese American memoir. The book debunks the seemingly positive myth of Asian Americans as a model minority, substantiates certain negative stereotypes of Asian men, and challenges some of the classic Asian values that apparently have shaped the Asian American identity. I argue that Su’s memoir is a critique of structural inequalities, urban poverty, unemployment, inaccessibility to a support network, and the intersection between class, gender, and race in the contexts of war and its aftermath.

Asian American Studies Praxis And The Educational Power Of Boston's Public Chinese Burial Grounds, Peter Kiang

Asian American Studies Faculty Publication Series

Asian American Studies Praxis and the Educational Power of Boston’s Public Chinese Burial Grounds This article explores the educational significance of the historic Chinese immigrant burial grounds located within Mount Hope Cemetery – the public cemetery of the City of Boston. Approximately 1500 gravestones, most of which are marked principally with Chinese characters displaying names and village origins (predominantly males from Taishan), are clustered in three notable, contiguous, sections of one corner of the cemetery. With years of death ranging mainly from the 1930s through 1960s and years of birth reaching as early as the 1870s, the Mt. Hope Chinese …

Understanding Postcolonial South Asian Communities Through Bollywood, Noor A. Asif

Scripps Senior Theses

Inspired by my personal experience as a South Asian-American, I chose to create a series of paintings that seek to analyze the relationship between South Asians and a Western environment. I was further influenced by Bollywood painted posters, which I argue encapsulate postcolonial aesthetics in the form of fair skin, colored eyes, and exoticism. Moreover, I believe that Bollywood has continued to disseminate these aesthetics to the South Asian collective community. Bollywood and its implicit fascination with the West, in addition to its inherently South Asian identity, embody the struggle that many South Asians face. This struggle, which I as …

Wtf Is #Modelminoritymutiny?: Solidarity, Embodiment, And Practice In Subverting Ascribed Asian American Racial Positioning, Pamela Ng

Scripps Senior Theses

In 2014, in the wake of #BlackLivesMatter, a call to action was made for Asian Americans to actively engage with and unlearn the age old model minority myth and join the movement for racial justice. This thesis seeks to understand and complicate what it means to subvert this ideology in the way of #modelminoritymutiny. It is divided into three primary sections: first, a theoretical framework and of the model minority myth throughout time as a tool for positioning Asian Americans; second, an application of this framework into the recent Peter Liang and Akai Gurley case this past year; and third, …

Revolution, Redemption, And Romance: Reading Constructions Of Filipino Spanish American Identities And Politics Of Knowledge In Rizal’S Noli Me Tangere And El Filibusterismo Alongside Filipino American Fiction, Steven Beardsley

Departmental Honors Projects

This project analyzes the literary works and the iconic role of Filipino nationalist José Rizal before, during, and after the Spanish American War of 1898. Rizal’s social activism and writing inspired a revolution against the Friarocracy in the Philippines. He also influenced Filipino American writers who reference Rizal’s construction of the Filipino woman in Christianity and Filipinos fighting against colonial oppression. Additionally, Filipino American writers illustrate how being Filipino in the US today is a transcultural experience rather than a simple binary of traditional Philippines and modern America. Recognizing Spain as an earlier colonizing force is critical in understanding the …

Pre-1900s Chinese Placer Mining In Northeastern Washington State: An Archaeological Investigation, Lindsey M. Evenson

EWU Masters Thesis Collection

"The lack of organized historical and archival documentation regarding the pre-1900s Chinese placer miners in northeastern Washington has left the historical and archaeological records fragmented. Documentation of the Chinese placer mining activities in the region is poor, at best, and the scars left on the landscape by these miners are often inundated by the damming of the Columbia River (and other major waterways), or the sites are heavily eroded and damaged. The available historic and archival data has been organized and synthesized to create an historical context regarding the pre-1900s Chinese placer miners in the region. Furthermore, archaeological sites previously …

Trauma, Migrant Families, And Neoliberal Fantasies In Last Train Home, Yanjie Wang

Asian and Asian American Studies Faculty Works

This paper examines the traumatic experience of migrant workers through a reading of Lixin Fan's award-winning documentary film Last Train Home(2009). I am not primarily concerned, like most trauma-studies-based research, with grand, clearly recognizable catastrophes. I also avoid generalizing about human suffering in the age of global capitalism. I focus rather on post-Socialist China's more hidden social violence and its traumatizing effect on the quotidian life of migrantworkers-a subaltern group on the periphery of society. I argue that the trauma of the marginalized population must be socially and politically contextualized. The first section of the essay investigates the traumatic sense …

Nostos: On Recollecting Loss And The Physical Manifestation Of Loss, Stephanie M. Huang

Scripps Senior Theses

This paper examines nostalgia in photo-poetry book Nostos, and nostalgia’s existence as a theoretical global condition arising from displacement, looking at nostalgia specifically not as a yearning for home, but a yearning for a lost sense of feeling at home. It traces the lineage of image-text hybrid art practices and examines the significance of conveying meaning through both synergistically. It studies the psychoanalytic process of transforming loss into object, or absence into presence, ultimately using the object as a lens to view oneself and the way in which nostalgia manifests itself.

“Leadership Means Moving A Community Forward”: Asian American Community College Students And Critical Leadership Praxis, Melissa Ann Loredo Canlas

Doctoral Dissertations

Asian Americans are underrepresented in both formal leadership positions and leadership research (Foldy & Ospina, 2009) and rarely are Asian Americans viewed as leaders, activists, or agents of social change. Leadership development programs, particularly those focused on social and racial justice, are largely absent from the curriculums and educational experiences of Asian Americans (Omatsu, 2006), and few leadership development programs focus specifically on the needs of Asian Americans (Chung, 2014; Liang, Lee, & Ting, 2002), particularly at the community college level.

This study addressed the need for critical leadership development for Asian American community college students, focusing specifically on leadership …