Color-Line to Borderlands: The Matrix of American Ethnic Studies

Asian American Studies and Asian Studies: Boundaries and Borderlands of Ethnic Studies and Area Studies

Asian American Studies and Asian Studies: Boundaries and Borderlands of Ethnic Studies and Area Studies SHIRLEY HUNE from the inception of asian amer ican studies in the late 1960s, Asian Americanists have sought to establish their own programs in higher education. They have identified Ethnic Studies, with its particular perspectives, methodologies, and scholarship, as their rightful home. Nonetheless , on the many occasions that I have advised colleges and universities anxious to respond to student demands for Asian American Studies, I have been asked the same questions over and over again by presidents, provosts, department chairs, and faculty: Why can’t we just put Asian American Studies in Asian Studies? Can’t one of the Asian Studies faculty teach Asian American history and culture? Why do you want separate programs or your own department? Why do you want your own faculty?1 After more than three decades of Ethnic Studies in academe, these questions suggest that confusion remains in the minds of higher education leadershipaboutthedistinctionsbetweenAsianAmericanStudies ,whichconcerns itself with peoples of Asian and Pacific descent in the United States, and Asian Studies, an area of studies centered on the Asian region. Such a response also demonstrates the insensitivity of the leadership in higher education to the origin, intellectual mission, scholarship, and research interests of Asian American Studies in contrast to those of Asian Studies. This is a unique issue in Ethnic Studies: for example, rarely do academicians propose combining 2 2 7 African American Studies with African Studies or Puerto Rican and Chicano Studies with Latin American Studies. Educational leaders are able to distinguish the di¤erences in those areas, but many have yet to fully comprehend what Asian American Studies represents as a scholarly field and how it contributes as an Ethnic Studies program. Asian Studies generally focuses on the peoples, cultures, and developments within the Asian region and has given scant attention to Asians overseas . In contrast, Asian American Studies centers on Asian Americans as an integral part of U.S. civilization and regards Asia, especially historical and contemporary relations between the United States and Asia, with interest but from the perspective of how these aspects contribute to the making of Asian American history, culture, and identity. The intellectual and theoretical di¤erences between these two fields, which are considered in greater detail throughout this chapter, have led Asian Americanists to argue that locating Asian American Studies within Asian Studies is problematic. In their view, by doing so, the interests and approaches of Asian American Studies would thusbe subordinatedwithinAsianStudies,makingsuchanarrangementmore of an administrative convenience imposed by a college or university rather than being their ideal intellectual home.2 Thus over the years Asian American Studies has been protective of itself in building its specialty and warily eyes the influence of Asian Studies as an institutional organization, not as an intellectual terrain, on its legitimacy in the academy. This chapter explores the boundaries of Asian Studies and Asian American Studies, the emerging borderlands of their overlapping interests, and the continuing e¤orts of Asian Americanists to define for themselves the academic domain and institutional structure of Asian American Studies. Racializing Asian Americans and Asian American Studies Before discussing these two fields in academe, I o¤er some general comments on how race matters here. On a public level misconstruing Asian American Studies and Asian Studies illustrates the “ideological process” of racialization in America, as identified by sociologists Michael Omi and Howard Winant. In their words racialization signifies “the extension of racial meaning to a previously racially unclassified relationship, social practice or group.”3 For example , the notion of cultural citizenship in the United States is racialized. EuropeanAmericanshavehistoricallybeenconsideredthenorm,evenasnewcomers to the United States, while Asian Americans, including indigenous 2 2 8 / s h i r l ey hu n e Hawaiians and the descendants of several generations of American-born families , are frequently treated as permanent foreigners in the land of their birth.4 The racialization of cultural citizenship is also appropriated in academe. If Asian Americans are considered to be foreigners rather than Americans, concomitantly their history, culture, and identity are often mistakenly thought to be best explained by their racial connection to persons in Asia and the Pacific Rim; thus these studies, it follows, are more properly located within Asian Studies. The experiences of Asian Americans, which are primarily influenced by American history and culture and whose location is largely within the United States, are thus rendered invisible. Asian Americans are typically not seen as a racial-ethnic group that...