Read the notes, then try the practice. It adapts as you go.When you're ready.
Session Length
~17 min
Adaptive Checks
15 questions
Transfer Probes
8
Asian American Studies is an interdisciplinary academic field that examines the history, culture, politics, and experiences of people of Asian descent in the United States. Emerging from the civil rights and Third World Liberation Front movements of the late 1960s, the field was formally established in 1969 when student strikes at San Francisco State College and the University of California, Berkeley led to the creation of the first ethnic studies programs. The discipline draws on methodologies from history, sociology, literary criticism, political science, cultural studies, and gender studies to analyze how Asian Americans have shaped and been shaped by American society.
The field encompasses an extraordinarily diverse range of communities, including but not limited to Chinese, Japanese, Filipino, Korean, Vietnamese, South Asian, Southeast Asian, and Pacific Islander Americans. Asian American Studies scholars investigate topics such as immigration and exclusion, labor history, racial formation, transnational identity, the model minority myth, anti-Asian violence, coalition building across racial lines, and the ongoing struggles for social justice. The discipline challenges monolithic portrayals of Asian Americans by foregrounding the vast differences in language, religion, class, generation, and national origin within this panethnic category.
Today, Asian American Studies continues to evolve as it addresses contemporary issues including the surge in anti-Asian hate crimes during and after the COVID-19 pandemic, the politics of disaggregated data, mixed-race and multiethnic identities, queer and feminist Asian American perspectives, and the complexities of diaspora and transnationalism in a globalized world. The field remains committed to its activist roots, connecting academic inquiry with community empowerment and social transformation.
One step at a time.
The stereotype that Asian Americans are universally successful, hardworking, and high-achieving, which masks significant disparities within Asian American communities and is used to delegitimize the struggles of other racial minorities.
Example: Aggregated data showing high median income for Asian Americans conceals that Southeast Asian groups such as Hmong and Cambodian Americans have poverty rates significantly higher than the national average.
A racist ideology originating in the 19th century that frames Asian peoples as an existential threat to Western civilization, fueling xenophobic legislation, media representations, and periodic waves of anti-Asian violence.
Example: The Yellow Peril narrative influenced the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 and resurfaced during World War II to justify Japanese American incarceration.
The strategic grouping of distinct ethnic communities under a single racial or political label, such as 'Asian American,' to build coalitions and political power despite significant cultural, linguistic, and historical differences among the groups.
Example: The term 'Asian American' was coined by activists Yuji Ichioka and Emma Gee in 1968 to replace the externally imposed label 'Oriental' and unite diverse communities for collective political action.
The forced removal and imprisonment of approximately 120,000 Japanese Americans during World War II under Executive Order 9066, justified by wartime hysteria and racial prejudice rather than any evidence of espionage or disloyalty.
Example: Fred Korematsu defied the internment orders and was convicted in 1944 in Korematsu v. United States. His conviction was vacated in 1983 when evidence of government suppression of key documents was revealed.
A concept articulated by Edward Said describing the Western construction of 'the East' as exotic, inferior, and fundamentally different, which produces distorted knowledge systems that justify colonial and imperial domination of Asian peoples.
Example: Hollywood films have historically depicted Asian men as villainous or asexual and Asian women as submissive or hypersexualized, reinforcing Orientalist binaries of West as rational versus East as mysterious.
A theory developed by Michael Omi and Howard Winant describing race as a socially constructed category that is continuously created, transformed, and destroyed through political, economic, and cultural processes rather than being a fixed biological reality.
Example: The racial classification of South Asians has shifted over time in the United States, from being legally classified as white in some early court cases to being denied whiteness in United States v. Bhagat Singh Thind (1923).
The maintenance of social, cultural, economic, and political ties across national borders by immigrant communities, challenging the assumption that migration is a one-way process of assimilation into the host country.
Example: Filipino American nurses who send remittances to family in the Philippines, maintain dual citizenship, and participate in political organizing in both countries exemplify transnational practices.
A form of colonialism in which outsiders come to a land and seek to permanently replace the indigenous population. Asian American Studies examines how Asian Americans are situated within this structure as both beneficiaries and subjects of colonial power.
Example: The role of Asian plantation laborers in Hawai'i illustrates how Asian immigrants were recruited to serve colonial economic interests while also being subjected to racial exploitation, complicating simple colonizer-colonized binaries.
More terms are available in the glossary.
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