"Teaching Texts": Reviews Editor's Introduction

I'm very pleased to be inaugurating the "Teaching Texts" column with this preface and accompanying article. As JAAS readers will know, we wanted to create a space in the journal for starting and circulating conversations on pedagogy in the recognition that "a defining feature of Asian American studies has been and continues to be the attention we pay to our pedagogical practices," to quote from the "Teaching Texts" call for papers. We wrote in that cfp, "From class formats to assignment types, we know that the choices we make in our work as teachers matter a great deal in the enthusiasm and intensity with which students engage Asian American studies. The Journal of Asian American Studies intends to foster this interest in pedagogy, specifically by circulating work that promotes the scholarship of teaching — here, by focusing on text selection and its consequences. What text(s) are you teaching in your Asian American studies or affiliated courses? What issues and/or objectives motivate your text selections?"

The following interview of Professor Jerry Kang, conducted by John Hayakawa Török, addresses these and other matters in ways that are sure to prompt further thinking and to help all of us in our development of Asian American studies curricula. We hope that this will be the first in a series of interviews as well as other pedagogically-focused pieces that, briefly stated, make us better teachers.