Asian American Studies Commons^™

Organizing Against Discrimination: The Chinese Hand Laundrymen Historical Niche And Ethnic Solidarity In America, Johnny Thach

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

From the late 1800s to early 1900s, hand laundries developed into the first Chinese historical niche in America in conjunction with Chinese laundrymen's activism, community organization, and ethnic solidarity in response to the proliferation of anti-Chinese discriminatory ordinances and laws instigated by White laundries and government officials. Using primary sources and secondary historical examples, this thesis explores the formation of the niche through the collective actions of two Chinese laundrymen organizations: the Tung Hing Tong “("同心堂")” in California, and the Chinese Hand Laundry Alliance in New York. This thesis demonstrates that not only were both organizations founded differently and for …

Utopias Misplaced: The Cost Of Outsourcing Dystopian Poetics To North Korea, Seo-Young J. Chu

Publications and Research

This is a slightly revised version of the text of a talk that I (Seo-Young Chu) gave as part of the Fall 2014 Franke Lectures in the Humanities at Yale University. I'm sharing the text here to make the lecture more accessible. Topics include: North Korea/the DPRK, the "uncanny body politic," the uncanny valley, "dystopian poetics," what it means to outsource dystopian poetics, the intersection of aesthetics and politics. Authors/artists mentioned include: Thomas Hobbes, Mary Shelley, David Mitchell, Marjane Satrapi, Song Byeok, Sun Mu, Masahiro Mori, Andy Warhol. The talk also discusses the James Bond film Die Another Day.

Confucius, Yamaha, Or Mozart? Cultural Capital And Upward Mobility Among Children Of Chinese Immigrants, Wei-Ting Lu

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This study examines the determinants of upward mobility among children of Chinese immigrants. While most studies emphasize ethnic cultural capital as a primary determinant of Chinese upward mobility, this study proposes three new concepts to illuminate understudied processes promoting mobility. Specifically, this study argues that Chinese immigrants' interactions with classical music schools in the Chinese community help generate globalized cultural capital (resources from immigrants' participation in transnational networks), navigational capital (the ability to connect social networks together to facilitate community navigation through higher-status educational institutions) and aspirational capital (the ability of parents to acknowledge the barriers to upward mobility). These …

The Relative Impact Of Identity On Lgbt Api Outness: A Quantitative Analysis, Jessica Lee

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

In the United States, the intersecting relationship among race, sex, gender, and sexuality plays a significant role in one's identity development and socialization. Especially for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) Asian Pacific Islander (API) individuals, such interplay presents a continuous task of processing and presenting different identities. Employing a national sample of over 500 LGBT API individuals and utilizing multivariate regression analysis, this thesis explores how LGBT API individuals' sexual and racial identities affect their decisions in coming out to family, friends, co-workers, and other community members. Findings indicate that the level of discomfort in racial/ethnic and/or LGBT community …

Science-Fictional North Korea: A Defective History, Seo-Young J. Chu

Publications and Research

Kafkaesque, Orwellian, eerie, surreal, bizarre, grotesque, alien, wacky, fascinating, dystopian, illusive, theatrical, antic, haunting, apocalyptic: these are just a few of the vaguely science-fictional adjectives that are now associated with North Korea. At the same time, North Korea has become an oddly convenient trope for a certain aesthetic – an uncanny opacity; an ominous mystique – that many writers and artists have exploited to generate striking science-fictional effects in texts with little or no connection to North Korean reality. (The 2002 Bond film Die another Day, for example, draws from North Korea’s science-fictional aura to animate North Korean super-villains who …

Abroad At Home: Xenomania And Voluntary Exile In The Middle Passage, Salt, And Tide Running, Kevin Frank

Publications and Research

This essay re-examines the causes and consequences of Caribbean alienation, with implications for understanding alienation in other postcolonial societies. The author argues that while externalization does follow colonial incursions or international travel by the colonized, exile and alienation also result from emotional or psychological migrations within the mind, a consequence of neocolonial mechanisms tied to globalization.

Two Kinds Of Utility: England’S ‘Supremacy’ And The Quest For Completion In David Dabydeen’S The Intended, Kevin Frank

Publications and Research

This essay concerns the Caribbean writer’s crucial confrontation with colonial literary models. In it, Kevin Frank argues that the central protagonist of David Dabydeen’s The Intended, the unnamed narrator, resembles the author in that he is torn between cultures (English, East Indian, and West Indian), and torn between two kinds of utility: one base, mechanical, and calculating, and the other, romantic. The latter predicament, Frank demonstrates, is a natural consequence of the convergence of romantic and utilitarian ideology underpinning British colonialism. Moreover, Dabydeen’s ambivalence about his allegiances and literary heritage is similar to that of one of his literary …