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SPOKEN WORD When Ten Minus Two Equals Zero An Interview with Sanda Lwin NINA HA Meridians intern Nina Ha caught up u>ith her long-time colleague, Sanda Luun, at the "Are We There Yet? Mapping Asian American Studies at the Five Colleges" conference at the University o/Massachusetts at Amherst mhere Liuin hadjust delivered the keynote address entitled 'The Constitution ofAsian America." nina ? A : What observations can you make about what is going on within Asian American Studies, especially outside of California, where Asian American Studies has historically been situated? sanda lwin: I'm intrigued by the trajectory of"Asian Americanists" who, like myself, have done all ofour academic training at institutions "EastofCalifornia." When I was an undergraduate atDartmouth College, in the 1980s, ifsomeonewas interested in the historyofAsian immigrants and their descendants in the United States, s/he was directed away from courses in American history and literature, and towards courses in the history and literature ofAsia itself. This intellectual push towards Asian studies suggested thatthe history ofAsian Americans was notto be found in the history ofthe United States, but outside ofAmerican culture, in the countries of origin of Asian immigrant groups. In retrospect, I don't think this advice was entirely misguided: for one thing, as much ofthe work on diaspora and the transnational attests, an understanding ofthe histories ofthe countries oforigin for Asian American migration to the Americas is critical to understanding the formation ofAsian America. But at that time, the rationale behind this intellectual push towards Asian [Meridians:.feminism, race, transnationalism 2002, vol. 3, no. 1, pp. 201-8]©2002 by Wesleyan University Press. All rights reserved. studies was that many scholars of U.S. history and culture were illequipped to advise students on Asian American studies. What was not recognized was how Asian Americans have constituted, and have been constituted by, the history, literature, and culture ofthe United States in particular, and ofthe Americas as a whole. When I began the graduate program in English at Columbia in the early 1990s, there were no full-time faculty members teachingAsian American studies. There was the occasional undergraduate course offered by a visiting or adjunct scholar but the onus was on us, as graduate students working in the field, to find faculty advisors who supported our research, to organize multiple year-long Asian American Studies speakers' series and to invite scholars in the field to our campus, to caravan to and present papers at conferences such as the Association for Asian American Studies (AAAS), and network with Asian Americanists at other institutions on the East Coast. We did all this in order to create a sense of critical mass and to prove to our institution that this is a legitimate field of knowledge. Like you and your colleagues have been doing at the University ofMassachusetts at Amherst, my graduate student colleagues and I also acted in many ways as each other's mentors. Things have changed—people working in Asian American studies have moved to institutions such as Columbia, UMass, and Yale, and there are also Asian American Studies programs at Cornell, Hunter College, and NYU, to name only some ofthe institutions where the field is growing on the East Coast. I think this is a very exciting moment for Asian American Studies "East ofCalifornia." N ? N A : From whom have you learned the most? s a N D a : Myadvisors from graduate school continue to inspire and motivate me, including Gayatri Spivak, Priscilla Wald, David Eng, and Kendall Thomas. I have learned much from their intellectual work, and from their pedagogy in the classroom, as well as from the ways in which they have generously supported me and other young scholars in the field. That my own research and thinking is situated at the intersections ofAmerican studies, Asian American studies, postcolonial studies, and critical race theory is very much a testament to the ways in which they continue to inspire me. I also have learned much from my parents, both personally and intellectually. I think my parents' experiences allowed me to question 202 NINA HA conventional paradigms of Asian American migration, as well as the assumption ofvoluntarism and consent that is implicit in the use ofthe...

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