Letter from an American Professor: An Asian American Education in the South

As the field of Asian American studies has grown and developed, so too has the number of professors teaching Asian American studies content, particularly within the South. Diverting from the conventional format for academic writing, this paper offers a series of personal as well as professional observations on teaching Asian American studies in the South (at UNC). Responding to segments of Hector St. John de Crevecoeur’s Letters from an American Farmer, I attempt to illuminate the nexus of abstract theory and lived experience, the episodes I relate demonstrating my own nascent theorizing on Asian American studies in the South and the multiple intersections I encounter as an Asian American woman teaching Asian American studies in the U.S. South.