The Asian Turns

PMLA ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 124 (3) ◽  
pp. 906-917 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric Hayot
Keyword(s):  
Asian American ◽  
The United States ◽  
Asian America ◽  
Literary Scholarship ◽  
Westward Expansion ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
Global Modernity ◽  
History Of ◽  
Material History ◽  
African America

Everybody Loves a CrisisThe story of what's what in asian american studies is like the story of the profession at large: no one thinks in a vacuum. But the current drift in literary scholarship toward questions of transnationalism and globalization arrives at shores long explored by scholars who work on Asian America and the Pacific. Much of this familiarity has to do with the material history of their subjects, the ways in which questions of diaspora and integration, relations between the flows of people and the flows of things, and the narratives of international politics and imperialist violence constitute the ground of Asian America and indeed of the concept of the Pacific as an ocean, a sea of islands, a limit to westward expansion, and the lubricated surface of a certain transcultural history. The critical insights that unfold from the labor of Asian Americanist thought, like those gained through the study of African America and the Caribbean, do not add ethnographic detail to some larger and fundamentally established picture of the history of the United States or global modernity: they change the picture. They reframe it.

Surviving the Bomb in America

2017 ◽  
Vol 86 (3) ◽  
pp. 472-509 ◽  
Author(s):  
Naoko Wake
Keyword(s):  
Asian American ◽  
The United States ◽  
Japanese American ◽  
Asian America ◽  
National Belonging ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
History Of ◽  
Human Costs ◽  
Asian American Identity ◽  
And Gender

This article explores the little-known history of Japanese American survivors of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. By focusing on this particular group of survivors with a careful attention to their layered citizenship, national belonging, and gender identity, the article makes important connections between the history of the bomb and the history of immigration across the Pacific. U.S. survivors were both American citizens and immigrants with deep ties to Japan. Their stories expand our understanding of the bomb by taking it out of the context of the clash between nations and placing it in the lives of people who were not within a victors-or-victims dichotomy. Using oral histories with U.S. survivors, their families, and their supporters, the article reveals experiences, memories, and activism that have connected U.S. survivors to both Japan and the United States in person-centered, relatable ways. Moreover, the article brings to light under-explored aspects of Asian America, namely, significant intersections of former internees’ and bomb survivors’ experiences and the role of older women’s agency in the making of Asian American identity. In so doing, the article destabilizes the rigidly nation-bound understanding of the bomb and its human costs that has prevailed in the Pacific region.

Inter-Imperial Relations, the Pacific, and Asian American History

2012 ◽  
Vol 83 (2) ◽  
pp. 238-254 ◽  
Author(s):  
Augusto Espiritu
Keyword(s):  
Asian American ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Political ◽  
Multiple Sources ◽  
Asian America ◽  
American Experience ◽  
Political Dynamics ◽  
Asian American History ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
Over Time

Despite the turn toward diasporic, transnational, global, and comparative perspectives, this article argues that historians of Asian America have largely neglected and need to reflect upon inter-imperial relations—the relations of cooperation, competition, and conflict between empires, including subaltern attempts at creating spaces for maneuver and agency between them. With a focus on the development of the United States as an empire, this article identifies the key inter-imperial relations over time that have shaped the Asian American experience. An awareness of inter-imperial relations helps scholars to account for the political dynamics, the multiple sources of power, and the challenges to existing hegemonies that have structured Asian American lives. An approach sensitive to inter-imperial relations opens up the possibility of recognizing, and comparing, the simultaneous subaltern struggles that cut across nations and immigrant groups.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Angela K. Ahlgren
Keyword(s):  
Asian American ◽  
The United States ◽  
American Identity ◽  
Asian America ◽  
Art Form ◽  
Race And Sexuality ◽  
History Of ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
Asian American Identity ◽  
The 1960S

The introduction places North American taiko in the context of Asian American identity, the Asian American movement of the 1960s and 1970s, and the history of taiko in Japan. The chapter further defines the scope and aims of the study, explaining how the book seeks to highlight gender, race, and sexuality as key lenses through which taiko can be understood. The chapter defines and complicates what “Asian America” means and how it intersects productively with embodied performance, ultimately arguing that taiko players from a range of backgrounds perform Asian America through their involvement in the art form. The chapter provides a brief history of taiko in the United States and offers an overview of the remaining chapters of the book.

Inter-Imperial Relations, the Pacific, and Asian American History

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Augusto Espiritu
Keyword(s):  
Asian American ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Political ◽  
Multiple Sources ◽  
Asian America ◽  
American Experience ◽  
Political Dynamics ◽  
Asian American History ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
Over Time

Despite the turn toward diasporic, transnational, global, and comparative perspectives, this chapter argues that historians of Asian America have largely neglected and need to reflect upon inter-imperial relations--the relations of cooperation, competition, and conflict between empires, including subaltern attempts at creating spaces for maneuver and agency between them. With a focus on the development of the United States as an empire, this article identifies the key inter-imperial relations over time that have shaped the Asian American experience. An awareness of inter-imperial relations helps scholars to account for the political dynamics, the multiple sources of power, and the challenges to existing hegemonies that have structured Asian American lives. An approach sensitive to inter-imperial relations opens up the possibility of recognizing, and comparing, the simultaneous subaltern struggles that cut across nations and immigrant groups.

American Intellectual History: A Very Short Introduction

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer Ratner-Rosenhagen
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Intellectual History ◽  
The United States ◽  
Revolutionary War ◽  
Short Introduction ◽  
Westward Expansion ◽  
History Of ◽  
American Intellectual ◽  
American Intellectual History ◽  
American Thought

American Intellectual History: A Very Short Introduction provides an introduction to the history of American thought from the sixteenth century up until the present. Long before the United States was a nation, it was a set of ideas, projected onto the New World by European commentators and explorers. American thought grew from this foundation of expectation and experience, both enriched and challenged over the centuries by developments including the Revolutionary War, westward expansion, the rise of capitalism, the proliferation of diverse religions, immigration, industrialization, and the emergence of the United States as a superpower. This introduction provides an overview of some of the most compelling episodes and abiding preoccupations in American thought, while showing how ideas have been major forces driving the course of American history.

Mahjong

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Annelise Heinz
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
American Culture ◽  
The United States ◽  
Jewish American ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
Women's Culture ◽  
History Of ◽  
American Heritage ◽  
Cultural Origins ◽  
Definition Of

Mahjong: A Chinese Game and the Making of Modern American Culture illustrates how the spaces between tiles and the moments between games have fostered distinct social cultures in the United States. When this mass-produced game crossed the Pacific it created waves of popularity over the twentieth century. Mahjong narrates the history of this game to show how it has created a variety of meanings, among them American modernity, Chinese American heritage, and Jewish American women’s culture. As it traveled from China to the United States and caught on with Hollywood starlets, high society, middle-class housewives, and immigrants alike, mahjong became a quintessentially American pastime. This book also reveals the ways in which women leveraged a game for a variety of economic and cultural purposes, including entrepreneurship, self-expression, philanthropy, and ethnic community building. One result was the forging of friendships within mahjong groups that lasted decades. This study unfolds in two parts. The first half is focused on mahjong’s history as related to consumerism, with a close examination of its economic and cultural origins. The second half explores how mahjong interwove with the experiences of racial inclusion and exclusion in the evolving definition of what it means to be American. Mahjong players, promoters, entrepreneurs, and critics tell a broad story of American modernity. The apparent contradictions of the game—as both American and foreign, modern and supposedly ancient, domestic and disruptive of domesticity—reveal the tensions that lie at the heart of modern American culture.

The Pacific Ocean as Highway to Gold Mountain

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Sinn
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New Zealand ◽  
Pacific Ocean ◽  
Capital Flows ◽  
The United States ◽  
The West ◽  
New Era ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Pacific Ocean

This chapter takes a broad look at the Pacific Ocean in relation to Chinese migration. As trade, consumption and capital flows followed migrants, powerful networks were woven and sustained; in time, the networks fanned across the Pacific from British Columbia along the West Coast of the United States to New Zealand and Australia. The overlapping personal, family, financial and commercial interests of Chinese in California and those in Hong Kong, which provide the focus of this study, energized the connections and kept the Pacific busy and dynamic while shaping the development of regions far beyond its shores. The ocean turned into a highway for Chinese seeking Gold Mountain, marking a new era in the history of South China, California, and the Pacific Ocean itself.

Asian Americans in Opera: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nancy Yunhwa Rao
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
19Th Century ◽  
San Francisco ◽  
Asian Americans ◽  
Asian American ◽  
Historical Memory ◽  
The United States ◽  
Chinese Opera ◽  
American Composers ◽  
History Of

Chinese opera in America has several intertwined histories that have developed from the mid-19th century onward to inform performances and representations of Asian Americans on the opera stage. These histories include Chinese opera theater in North America from 1852 to 1940, Chinese opera performance in the ubiquitous Chinese villages at various World Fairs in the United States from 1890 to 1915, the famous US tour of Peking opera singer Mei Lanfang from New York to Chicago and San Francisco in 1930, a constellation of imagined “Chinese” opera and yellowface plays from 1880 to 1930, and the more recent history of contemporary opera created by Asian Americans commissioned by major opera houses. Some of these varied histories are closely intertwined, not all are well understood, and some have been simply forgotten. Since the mid-19th century, Chinese opera theater has become part of US urban history and has left a significant imprint on the collective cultural and historical memory of Chinese America. Outside of Chinese American communities arose well-known instances of imagined “Chinese” opera, yellowface works that employ the “Chinese opera trope” as a source of inspiration, or Western-style theatrical works based on Chinese themes or plotlines. These histories are interrelated, and have also significantly shaped the reception and understanding of contemporary operas created by Asian American composers and writers. While these operatic works of the late 20th and early 21st centuries are significantly different from those of earlier moments in history, their production and interpretation cannot escape this influence.

scholarly journals Traces and Representations of the U.S.-Mexico Frontera

2018 ◽  
Vol 87 (1) ◽  
pp. 150-172
Author(s):  
Katherine G. Morrissey
Keyword(s):  
Pacific Coast ◽  
Mexican Revolution ◽  
Presidential Address ◽  
The United States ◽  
Border Region ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Pacific ◽  
History Of ◽  
The U.S ◽  
Visual History

The following was the author’s presidential address at the annual meeting of the Pacific Coast Branch, American Historical Association, in Northridge, California, on August 4, 2017. The twentieth-century visual history of the U.S.-Mexico borderlands, la frontera, offers a rich set of representations of the shared border environments. Photographs, distributed in the United States and in Mexico, allow us to trace emerging ideas about the border region and the politicized borderline. This essay explores two border visualization projects—one centered on the Mexican Revolution and the visual vocabulary of the Mexican nation and the other on the repeat photography of plant ecologists—that illustrate the simultaneous instability and power of borders.

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