Representation and the Need for Asian American Graphic Novels in Today’s Classrooms

While the #StopAsianHate movement is new, Asian Americans have long been excluded and marginalized in and out of the classroom. This article argues for the need and importance of Asian Americans in school curriculum. One powerful way of including more Asian American voices and history is through the teaching of Asian American graphic novels.

Disrupting Deficit Discourses about Hmong Culture

Dominant discourses persistently portray Hmong Americans as stuck in time and tied to Hmong cultural traditions. This article suggests dominant discourses about the oppression of Hmong culture are mechanisms of White supremacy. It examines research with Hmong Americans on gender and sexuality to disrupt deficit discourses about Hmong culture. It provides recommendations for teachers to counteract dominant discourses that instantiate the values, worldviews, culture and structures of White supremacy.

Perspectives of Queer Hmong Youth

This article highlights some of the tensions that exist for Hmong people who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ). It uncovers differences and similarities found between the experiences of queer Hmong youth and the larger population of queer youth living in the United States. Despite the perception that a traditional Hmong culture holds no place for queer Hmong Americans, individuals are finding spaces for acceptance and slowly moving the larger Hmong community to a place of understanding and tolerance. A vital part of this movement was Shades of Yellow (SOY), an organization that supported queer Hmong from its inception in 2005 until the group disbanded in June 2017. The life stories of three of its members inform this study, offering a more nuanced look at the experiences of queer Hmong youth living in the Midwest.

Why and How Should We Teach Asian American History?

This synopsis of an interview conducted on March 12, 2021 reflects an interview conducted by Sohyun An and Ritu Radhakrishnan with Dr. Erika Lee, Regents Professor of History and Asian American Studies at the University of Minnesota. This interview took place during a time of extreme violence perpetrated against the Asian American Pacific Islander (AAPI) community. Our conversation was subdued and anxious. However, we recognized the importance of Dr. Lee's scholarship and knowledge in framing this special issue. Our focus during this interview was to provide a context for how Asian Americans are experiencing current events and how these events have been informed by history. As a result, Dr. Lee offers a perspective on why and how we should teach Asian American history.

The Prison Camp as Pedagogy of Place

Place-based education usually refers to curricular work conducted in PK-12 settings that mobilizes local contexts to teach subject matter content. The education research reviewed here departs from this approach. Less interested in place as a means to transmit content, instead this article describes the often intangible learning that occurs in place. Place is a repository of lived experience, one in which the mind and body are intertwined. Place-based learning involves the knowledge and affective attachments provisioned by architectural arrangements and designs. Grounded in familial experience as Japanese Americans incarcerated in World War II-era prison camps, I research historic concentration camps, prisons, and other confinement spaces and how these sites educate contemporary audiences. Many of these historic prisons are places in which populations deemed security threats to the state were targeted, stripped of certain rights and obligations, forcibly removed, and sequestered. Treating these place-based projects as a kind of “curriculum,” my research also has implications for teaching and learning in K-12 classrooms.

Moving Asian American History from the Margins to the Middle in Elementary Social Studies Classrooms

This article describes how three Asian American elementary teachers in Texas reflected on the absence of Asian American histories in their own educational experiences, which later inspired them to teach Asian American histories in their classrooms. The teachers’ lessons about Asian American history required them to first (re)define the term Asian American with their students, and the teachers also (re)defined what it meant to be American. Ultimately, they promoted cultural citizenship, which is more inclusive and critical than traditional forms of citizenship that are defined by individual acts like voting and following rules. Cultural citizenship promotes difference as a resource; emphasizes the need to respect and humanize others; includes the voices, experiences, and perspectives of People of Color; and emphasizes human rights and agency. Asian American children’s literature was an essential tool in disrupting exclusionary histories and notions of citizenship as equal to whiteness, and the teachers' work demonstrates how educators can move Asian Americans from the margins to the middle of social studies instruction to support better teaching of U.S. history and democracy.

Examining (Re)Constructive History through the Experiences of Asian American Teachers

This article summarizes a case study of three Asian American teachers and their experiences in integrating Asian American perspectives into their social studies teaching. Through examining these teachers’ experiences, the importance of teacher dispositions, teacher knowledge of Asian American histories, and access to ongoing professional learning opportunities that centered equity emerged as critical to integrating Asian American perspectives into the curriculum.

RBG Set the Record Straight, Our Curriculum Should Too

TBD

Analyzing Picture Book Biographies of Ruth Bader Ginsburg

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