English Literature Research Areas
- English Literature Research Areas Guide
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American Literature
- Early American Studies
- 19th Century U.S. Literatures
- 20th & 21st Century U.S. Literatures
- African American Literature
- Asian American Literature
- Asian American Pacific Islander (AAPI) Literature
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- Searching InfoHawk+ and Locating Materials in the Library
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Asian American Literary Canon
Asian American literature is difficult to define, as it spans literary genres, gender, ethnicity, religion, and geographically diverse cultural heritage and influences. Long Le-Khac et al. (2025) began to compile a list of over 1900 scholarly citations from 1971- 2023 to capture which Asian American authors and texts have shaped the field over time.

Most cited Asian American texts, designed by Nami Kurita. Referenced in Le-Khac, Long. 2025. “The Canon of Asian American Literature.” Edited by Alexander Manshel, J.D. Porter, and Melanie Walsh. Post45 Data Collective, August. https://doi.org/10.18737/092211.
Asian American Pacific Islander (AAPI) Literature
"Asian American literature" generally refers to the literary works that are produced by Asian immigrants and Americans of Asian descent. This includes fiction, poetry, essays, and dramas that are geographically and culturally diverse. R.C. Lutz asserts, "This genre serves to illuminate the Asian immigrant experience from the perspective of those who lived it, rather than through the often-distorted lens of mainstream American media." (2024).
Collections and Companions
- Companions & Handbooks
- Asian American Literature and Identity
- Asian American Literature and Multiculturalism
- Asian American Literature and Place
- Asian American Writers
Click on the "i" info icon after each book title to view a brief description about the following books from the University of Iowa Libraries' catalog:
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The Oxford Encyclopedia of Asian American Literature and Culture by Josephine Lee "In the past four decades, the field of Asian American literary and cultural studies has grown enormously, expanding its areas of inquiry beyond reflection on the straight-line patterns of immigration, assimilation, and citizenship to encompass issues such as transnational and diasporic identities and communities, the workings of imperialism, the intersectionality of race, gender, and sexuality, and social justice/human rights in a global context. The Oxford Encyclopedia of Asian American Literature and Culture will offer a comprehensive and in-depth survey of this important literary tradition, covering the span of Asian American literature from the late nineteenth-century large-scale immigration of Chinese to the United States and Canada to the present. All of the articles appear online as part of the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Literature"--
ISBN: 9780190699819Publication Date: 2020-02-01 -
The Cambridge Companion to Asian American Literature by Crystal Parikh (Editor); Daniel Y. Kim (Editor) The Cambridge Companion to Asian American Literature offers an engaging survey of Asian American literature from the nineteenth century to the present day. Since the 1980s, Asian American literary studies has developed into a substantial and vibrant field within English and American Studies. This Companion explores the variety of historical periods, literary genres and cultural movements affecting the development of Asian American literature. Written by a host of leading scholars in the field, this book provides insight into the representative movements, regional settings, archival resources and critical reception that define Asian American literature. Covering subjects from immigrant narratives and internment literature to contemporary race studies and the problem of translation, this Companion provides insight into the myriad traditions that have shaped the Asian American literary landscape.
ISBN: 9781316371725Publication Date: 2015-08-26 -
The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Asian American Literature by Guiyou Huang (Editor) Asian American literature dates back to the close of the 19th century, and during the years following World War II it significantly expanded in volume and diversity. Monumental in scope, this encyclopedia surveys Asian American literature from its origins through 2007. Included are more than 270 alphabetically arranged entries on writers, major works, significant historical events, and important terms and concepts. Thus the encyclopedia gives special attention to the historical, social, cultural, and legal contexts surrounding Asian American literature and central to the Asian American experience. Each entry is written by an expert contributor and cites works for further reading, and the encyclopedia closes with a selected, general bibliography of essential print and electronic resources. While literature students will value this encyclopedia as a guide to writings by Asian Americans, the encyclopedia also supports the social studies curriculum by helping students use literature to learn about Asian American history and culture, as it pertains to writers from a host of Asian ethnic and cultural backgrounds, including Afghans, Chinese, Japanese, Koreans, Filipinos, Iranians, Indians, Vietnamese, Hawaiians, and other Asian Pacific Islanders. The encyclopedia supports the literature curriculum by helping students learn more about Asian American literature. In addition, it supports the social studies curriculum by helping students learn about the Asian American historical and cultural experience.
ISBN: 9780313341571Publication Date: 2008-12-30 -
A Resource Guide to Asian American Literature by Sau-Ling C. Wong (Editor); Stephen H. Sumida (Editor) An informative and original collection of twenty-five essays, the Resource Guide to Asian American Literature offers background materials for the study of this expanding discipline and suggests strategies and ideas for teaching well-known Asian American works. The volume focuses on fifteen novels and book-length prose narratives (among them Meena Alexander's Nampally Road, Louis Chu's Eat a Bowl of Tea, Monica Sone's Nisei Daughter, Amy Tan's The Joy Luck Club) and six works of drama (including David Henry Hwang's M. Butterfly). Each essay contains information about the work (e.g., its publication or production history), its popular and critical reception, a biographical sketch of the author, the historical context, major themes, critical issues, pedagogical topics, a list of comparative works, an assessment of resources, and a bibliography. The Resource Guide concludes with four essays that present themes and approaches for the study and teaching of short fiction, poetry, and panethnic anthologies. This volume provides a fresh look at what "Asian American literature" means and serves as an introduction to the study and teaching of this flourishing field. It is an essential collection for students, teachers, and scholars of all American literatures.
ISBN: 9780873522724Publication Date: 2001-01-01 -
The Routledge Companion to Asian American and Pacific Islander Literature by Rachel Lee (Editor) The Routledge Companion to Asian American and Pacific Islander Literature offers a general introduction as well as a range of critical approaches to this important and expanding field. Divided into three sections, the volume: Introduces "keywords" connecting the theories, themes and methodologies distinctive to Asian American Literature Addresses historical periods, geographies and literary identities Looks at different genre, form and interdisciplinarity With 41 essays from scholars in the field this collection is a comprehensive guide to a significant area of literary study for students and teachers of Ethnic American, Asian diasporic and Pacific Islander Literature. Contributors: Christine Bacareza Balance, Victor Bascara, Leslie Bow, Joshua Takano Chambers-Letson, Tina Chen, Anne Anlin Cheng, Mark Chiang, Patricia P. Chu, Robert Diaz, Pin-chia Feng, Tara Fickle, Donald Goellnicht, Helena Grice, Eric Hayot, Tamara C. Ho, Hsuan L. Hsu, Mark C. Jerng, Laura Hyun Yi Kang, Daniel Y. Kim, Jodi Kim, James Kyung-Jin Lee, Rachel C. Lee, Jinqi Ling, Colleen Lye, Sean Metzger, Susette Min, Susan Y. Najita, Viet Thanh Nguyen, erin Khuê Ninh, Eve Oishi, Josephine Nock-Hee Park, Steven Salaita, Shu-mei Shi, Rajini Srikanth, Brian Kim Stefans, Erin Suzuki, Theresa Tensuan, Cynthia Tolentino, Thuy Linh Nguyen Tu, Eleanor Ty, Traise Yamamoto, Timothy Yu.
ISBN: 9780415642484Publication Date: 2014-05-20 -
Thinking Its Presence by Dorothy J. Wang This title provides a detailed study of the formal properties in Asian American poetry across a range of aesthetic styles, from traditional lyric to avant-garde. With passion and conviction, Wang argues that critics should read minority poetry with the same attention to language and form that they bring to their analyses of writing by white poets.
ISBN: 9780804789097Publication Date: 2013-12-01 -
Asian American Literary Studies by Guiyou Huang (Editor) This volume presents global perspectives on Asian American literature by accomplished scholars from Germany, Japan, Singapore, Spain, and the US. It covers a diverse range of interdisciplinary topics in contemporary Asian American Studies across a wide spectrum of ethnic groups: Burmese, Chinese, Filipino, Indian, Japanese, Korean, Malaysian, Pakistani, Sri Lankan, and Vietnamese. Section I probes themes such as the vital role that war plays in the production of Asian American literary works, and the agency of the self in the life writings of Asian American autobiographers. Section II examines the confines of binary oppositions of gender, as well as issues of pan-ethnicity and gender relations. Section III explores the role that performance, film, and language play in the definition of self-identity and in ethnic empowerment. Five intrinsically connected themes run through all sections: gender roles; stereotyping; identity politics; intersections of literature, history, family, and the self; and the impact of wars on Asian American culture and literature. The chapters illuminate each other by discussing ideas and issues that are the enlargements of other, related themes and topics.
ISBN: 9780748620135Publication Date: 2005-07-18 -
The Cambridge History of Asian American Literature by Min Hyoung Song (Editor); Rajini Srikanth (Editor) The Cambridge History of Asian American Literature presents a comprehensive history of the field, from its origins in the nineteenth century to the present day. It offers an unparalleled examination of all facets of Asian American writing that help readers to understand how authors have sought to make their experiences meaningful. Covering subjects from autobiography and Japanese American internment literature to contemporary drama and social protest performance, this History traces the development of a literary tradition while remaining grounded in current scholarship. It also presents new critical approaches to Asian American literature that will serve the needs of students and specialists alike. Written by leading scholars in the field, The Cambridge History of Asian American Literature will not only engage readers in contemporary debates but also serve as a definitive reference for years to come.
ISBN: 9781107053953Publication Date: 2015-12-01
Click on the "i" info icon after each book title to view a brief description about the following books from the University of Iowa Libraries' catalog:
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Asian American Society by Mary Yu Danico (Editor) Asian Americans are a growing, minority population in the United States. After a 46 percent population growth between 2000 and 2010 according to the 2010 Census, there are 17.3 million Asian Americans today. Yet Asian Americans as a category are a diverse set of peoples from over 30 distinctive Asian-origin subgroups that defy simplistic descriptions or generalizations. They face a wide range of issues and problems within the larger American social universe despite the persistence of common stereotypes that label them as a "model minority" for the generalized attributes offered uncritically in many media depictions. Asian American Society: An Encyclopedia provides a thorough introduction to the wide-ranging and fast-developing field of Asian American studies. Published with the Association for Asian American Studies (AAAS), two volumes of the four-volume encyclopedia feature more than 300 A-to-Z articles authored by AAAS members and experts in the field who examine the social, cultural, psychological, economic, and political dimensions of the Asian American experience. The next two volumes of this work contain approximately 200 annotated primary documents, organized chronologically, that detail the impact American society has had on reshaping Asian American identities and social structures over time. Features: More than 300 articles authored by experts in the field, organized in A-to-Z format, help students understand Asian American influences on American life, as well as the impact of American society on reshaping Asian American identities and social structures over time. A core collection of primary documents and key demographic and social science data provide historical context and key information. A Reader′s Guide groups related entries by broad topic areas and themes; a Glossary defines key terms; and a Resource Guide provides lists of books, academic journals, websites and cross references. The multimedia digital edition is enhanced with 75 video clips and features strong search-and-browse capabilities through the electronic Reader's Guide, detailed index, and cross references. Available in both print and online formats, this collection of essays is a must-have resource for general and research libraries, Asian American/ethnic studies libraries, and social science libraries.
ISBN: 1483365603Publication Date: 2014-09-03 -
The Semblance of Identity by Christopher Lee The history of Asian American literature reveals the ongoing attempt to work through the fraught relationship between identity politics and literary representation. This relationship is especially evident in literary works which claim that their content represents the socio-historical world. The Semblance of Identity argues that the reframing of the field as a critical, rather than identity-based, project nonetheless continues to rely on the logics of identity.
ISBN: 9780804783705Publication Date: 2012-04-01 -
Inhuman Citizenship by Juliana Chang In Inhuman Citizenship, Juliana Chang claims that literary representations of Asian American domesticity may be understood as symptoms of America's relationship to its national fantasies and to the "jouissance"--a Lacanian term signifying a violent yet euphoric shattering of the self--that both overhangs and underlies those fantasies. In the national imaginary, according to Chang, racial subjects are often perceived as the source of jouissance, which they supposedly embody through their excesses of violence, sexuality, anger, and ecstasy--excesses that threaten to overwhelm the social order. To examine her argument that racism ascribes too much, rather than a lack of, humanity, Chang analyzes domestic accounts by Asian American writers, including Fae Myenne Ng's Bone, Brian Ascalon Roley's American Son, Chang-rae Lee's Native Speaker, and Suki Kim's The Interpreter. Employing careful reading and Lacanian psychoanalysis, Chang finds sites of excess and shock: they are not just narratives of trauma; they produce trauma as well. They render Asian Americans as not only the objects but also the vehicles and agents of inhuman suffering. And, claims Chang, these novels disturb yet strangely exhilarate the reader through characters who are objects of racism and yet inhumanly enjoy their suffering and the suffering of others. Through a detailed investigation of "family business" in works of Asian American life, Chang shows that by identifying with the nation's psychic disturbance, Asian American characters ethically assume responsibility for a national unconscious that is all too often disclaimed.
ISBN: 9780816674435Publication Date: 2012-10-16 -
Diaspora Literature and Visual Culture by Sheng-mei Ma This book offers an incisive and ambitious critique of Asian Diaspora culture, looking specifically at literature and visual popular culture. Sheng-mei Ma's engaging text discusses issues of self and its relationship with Asian Diaspora culture in the global twenty-first century. Using examples from Asia, Asian America, and Asian Diaspora from the West, the book weaves a narrative that challenges the twenty-first century triumphal discourse of Asia and argues that given the long shadow cast across modern film and literature, this upward mobility is inescapably escapist, a flight from itself; Asia's stunning self-transformation is haunted by self-alienation. The chapters discuss a wealth of topics, including Asianness, Orientalism, and Asian American identity, drawing on a variety of pop culture sources from The Matrix Trilogy to Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. This book forms an analysis of the new idea of Asian Diaspora that cuts across area, ethnicity, and nation, incorporating itself into the contemporary global culture whilst retaining a distinct Asian flavor. Covering the mediums of literature, film, and visual cultures, this book will be of immense interest to scholars and students of Asian studies and literature, ethnic studies, cultural studies, and film.
ISBN: 9780415594264Publication Date: 2010-12-17 -
Asian North American Identities: Beyond the Hyphen by Eleanor Ty (Editor); Donald C. Goellnicht (Editor) The nine essays in Asian North American Identities explore how Asian North Americans are no longer caught between worlds of the old and the new, the east and the west, and the south and the north. Moving beyond national and diasporic models of ethnic identity to focus on the individual feelings and experiences of those who are not part of a dominant white majority, the essays collected here draw from a wide range of sources, including novels, art, photography, poetry, cinema, theatre, and popular culture. The book illustrates how Asian North Americans are developing new ways of seeing and thinking about themselves by eluding imposed identities and creating spaces that offer alternative sites from which to speak and imagine. Contributors are Jeanne Yu-Mei Chiu, Patricia Chu, Rocio G. Davis, Donald C. Goellnicht, Karlyn Koh, Josephine Lee, Leilani Nishime, Caroline Rody, Jeffrey J. Santa Ana, Malini Johar Schueller, and Eleanor Ty.
ISBN: 1282071319Publication Date: 2014-03-28 -
Take Out by Quang Bao An anthology of queer writings from Asian Pacific America
ISBN: 9781889876115Publication Date: 2000-10-15
Click on the "i" info icon after each book title to view a brief description about the following books from the University of Iowa Libraries' catalog:
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Tricksters and Cosmopolitans by Rei Magosaki Tricksters and Cosmopolitans is the first sustained exploration into the history of cross-cultural collaborations between Asian American writers and their non-Asian American editors and publishers. The volume focuses on the literary production of the cosmopolitan subject, featuring the writers Sui Sin Far, Jessica Hagedorn, Karen Tei Yamashita, Monique Truong, and Min Jin Lee. The newly imagined cosmopolitan subject that emerges from their works dramatically reconfigured Asian American female subjectivity in metropolitan space with a kind of fluidity and ease never before seen. But as Rei Magosaki shows, these narratives also invariably expose the problematic side of this figure, which also serves to perpetuate exploitative structures of Western imperialism and its legacies in late capitalism. Arguing that the actual establishment of such a critical standpoint on imperialism and globalization required the expansive and internationalist vision of editors who supported, cultivated, and promoted these works, Tricksters and Cosmopolitans reveals the negotiations between these authors and their publishers and between the shared investment in both politics and aesthetics that influenced the narrative structure of key works in the Asian American literary canon.
ISBN: 9780823271306Publication Date: 2016-08-01 -
Modern Minority by Yoon Sun Lee Modern Minority presents a fresh examination of canonical and emergent Asian American literature's relationship to the genre of realism, particularly through its preoccupation with the everyday. Lee argues that it is through the elements of the everyday, which she defines as the 'quantifiable' attention to familiar objects and 'quasi-statistical' repetitions of ordinary acts, that Asian American writers negotiate their vexed relationship to modernity. Lee draws on Lukacs, Jameson, de Certeau, and other cultural critics to show how portraits of the everyday articulate Asian American writers' participation in the project of literary realism. The study participates in a new trend in Asian American criticism that sees form as crucial to the construction of minorness. The book covers most of the 20th century and spans a range of Asian ethnic groups and literary styles. Authors examined include Carlos Bulosan, Lan Samantha Chang, Frank Chin, Ha Jin, Younghill Kang, Nora Okja Keller, Maxine Hong Kingston, Joy Kogawa, Chang-rae Lee, Mine Okubo, Monica Sone, Jade Snow Wong, Lois-Ann Yamanaka, Jhumpa Lahiri, Thi Diem Thúy Lê, and Toshio Mori. The manuscript contributes a new direction in a field in which the criticism has been preoccupied with the politics of recognition and identity; it will interest scholars in Asian American, ethnic American, and American literary and cultural criticism.
ISBN: 9780199915835Publication Date: 2013-01-18 -
Interracial Encounters by Julia H. Lee 2013 Honorable Mention, Asian American Studies Association's prize in Literary Studies Part of the American Literatures Initiative Series Why do black characters appear so frequently in Asian American literary works and Asian characters appear in African American literary works in the early twentieth century? Interracial Encounters attempts to answer this rather straightforward literary question, arguing that scenes depicting Black-Asian interactions, relationships, and conflicts capture the constitution of African American and Asian American identities as each group struggled to negotiate the racially exclusionary nature of American identity. In this nuanced study, Julia H. Lee argues that the diversity and ambiguity that characterize these textual moments radically undermine the popular notion that the history of Afro-Asian relations can be reduced to a monolithic, media-friendly narrative, whether of cooperation or antagonism. Drawing on works by Charles Chesnutt, Wu Tingfang, Edith and Winnifred Eaton, Nella Larsen, W.E.B. Du Bois, and Younghill Kang, Interracial Encounters foregrounds how these reciprocal representations emerged from the nation's pervasive pairing of the figure of the "Negro" and the "Asiatic" in oppositional, overlapping, or analogous relationships within a wide variety of popular, scientific, legal, and cultural discourses. Historicizing these interracial encounters within a national and global context highlights how multiple racial groups shaped the narrative of race and national identity in the early twentieth century, as well as how early twentieth century American literature emerged from that multiracial political context.
ISBN: 9780814752555Publication Date: 2011-10-01 -
Politicizing Asian American Literature by Youngsuk Chae This book examines U.S. multiculturalism from the perspective of Asian American writings, drawing contrasts between politically acquiescent multiculturalism and politically conscious multiculturalism. Chae discusses the works of writers who have highlighted a critical awareness of Asian Americans' social and economic status and their position as 'unassimilable aliens', 'yellow perils', 'coolies', 'modern-day high tech coolies', or as a 'model minority', which were ideologically woven through the complex interactions of capital and labor in the U.S. cultural and labor history. Chae suggests that more productive means of analysis must be brought to the understanding of Asian American writings, many of which have been attempting to raise awareness of the politicizing effects of U.S. multiculturalism.
ISBN: 9780203942444Publication Date: 2007-12-12 -
So There It Is by Brigitte Wallinger-Schorn In interpreting contemporary Asian American poetry, it is important to understand the cultural hybridity of Asian America identity, located at the interstices of the fixed identifications 'American', 'Asian American', and 'Asian'. This rootedness in more than one culture exposes the inapplicability of binary concepts (foreigner/national, etc.). Hybridity, opposing essentialism and 'the original', favors multivocality and ambivalence. The exploration of Asian American cultural hybridity is linked both to material realities and poetic manifestations. Asian American hybrid subjectivity is explored through in-depth interpretations of works from well-established contemporary poets such as Kimiko Hahn, Marilyn Chin, Li-Young Lee, and Arthur Sze, as well as that of many new talents and hitherto neglected writers. This study examines how language and power interrelate, with translation and linguistic fusion being two approaches adopted by hybrid authors in their creation of alternative discourse. Culturally hybrid subjectivity is independent of and at the same time interconnected with more than one culture, thus enabling innovative political and identitarian positions to be articulated. Also examined are such traditional poetic forms as the zuihitsu, the sonnet, and the ghazal, which continue to be used, though in modernized and often subversive guise. The formal liminal space is revealed as a source of newness and invention deconstructing eurocentric hierarchy and national myth in American society and expanding or undercutting binary constructs of racial, national, and ethnic identities. A further question pursued is whether there are particular aesthetic modes and concepts that unite contemporary Asian American poetry when the allegiances of the practitioners are so disparate (ultimate geocultural provenience, poetic schools, regions in the USA, generations, sexual orientation, etc.). Wide-ranging interviews with Kimiko Hahn and Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni on identity and roots, language and power, feminism, and the American poetry scene provide illuminating personal yet representative answers to this and other questions.
ISBN: 9789042034143Publication Date: 2011-01-01 -
Transcultural Encounters in South-Asian American Women's Fiction by Elena Adriana Stoican This book offers captivating insights into the interaction between the Indian and the American cultural worlds. A fascinating work of research, it illustrates an extraordinary capacity to employ the details of literary texts as significant clues in understanding the configuration of transcultural identities. The book constructs an exciting dialogue between complex theoretical notions and the vibrant fictional worlds populated by Indian, American and European characters. Its original and multi-layered approach illustrates how complex theories of culture can help the reader understand contemporary processes of migration, cultural change and gender identity that interfere with daily life.
ISBN: 9781443877121Publication Date: 2015-07-15
Click on the "i" info icon after each book title to view a brief description about the following books from the University of Iowa Libraries' catalog:
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Eating Identities by Wenying Xu The French epicure and gastronome Brillat-Savarin declared, "Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you who you are." Wenying Xu infuses this notion with cultural-political energy by extending it to an ethnic group known for its cuisines: Asian Americans. She begins with the general argument that eating is a means of becoming--not simply in the sense of nourishment but more importantly of what we choose to eat, what we can afford to eat, what we secretly crave but are ashamed to eat in front of others, and how we eat. Food, as the most significant medium of traffic between the inside and outside of our bodies, organizes, signifies, and legitimates our sense of self and distinguishes us from others, who practice different foodways. Narrowing her scope, Xu reveals how cooking, eating, and food fashion Asian American identities in terms of race/ethnicity, gender, class, diaspora, and sexuality. She provides lucid and informed interpretations of seven Asian American writers (John Okada, Joy Kogawa, Frank Chin, Li-Young Lee, David Wong Louie, Mei Ng, and Monique Truong) and places these identity issues in the fascinating spaces of food, hunger, consumption, appetite, desire, and orality. Asian American literature abounds in culinary metaphors and references, but few scholars have made sense of them in a meaningful way. Most literary critics perceive alimentary references as narrative strategies or part of the background; Xu takes food as the central site of cultural and political struggles waged in the seemingly private domain of desire in the lives of Asian Americans. Eating Identities is the first book to link food to a wide range of Asian American concerns such as race and sexuality. Unlike most sociological studies, which center on empirical analyses of the relationship between food and society, it focuses on how food practices influence psychological and ontological formations and thus contributes significantly to the growing field of food studies. For students of literature, this tantalizing work offers an illuminating lesson on how to read the multivalent meanings of food and eating in literary texts.
ISBN: 9780824862282Publication Date: 2007-11-13 -
Asian American Literature and the Environment by Lorna Fitzsimmons (Editor); Youngsuk Chae (Editor); Bella Adams (Editor) This book is a ground-breaking transnational study of representations of the environment in Asian American literature. Extending and renewing Asian American studies and ecocriticism by drawing the two fields into deeper dialogue, it brings Asian American writers to the center of ecocritical studies. This collection demonstrates the distinctiveness of Asian American writers¿ positions on topics of major concern today: environmental justice, identity and the land, war environments, consumption, urban environments, and the environment and creativity. Represented authors include Amy Tan, Maxine Hong Kingston, Ruth Ozeki, Ha Jin, Fae Myenne Ng, Le Ly Hayslip, Lan Cao, Mitsuye Yamada, Lawson Fusao Inada, Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston, Milton Murayama, Don Lee, and Hisaye Yamamoto. These writers provide a range of perspectives on the historical, social, psychological, economic, philosophical, and aesthetic responses of Asian Americans to the environment conceived in relation to labor, racism, immigration, domesticity, global capitalism, relocation, pollution, violence, and religion. Contributors apply a diversity of critical frameworks, including critical radical race studies, counter-memory studies, ecofeminism, and geomantic criticism. The book presents a compelling and timely "green" perspective through which to understand key works of Asian American literature and leads the field of ecocriticism into neglected terrain.
ISBN: 9780415713238Publication Date: 2014-11-10 -
Where I Have Never Been by Patricia P. Chu In researching accounts of diasporic Chinese offspring who returned to their parents' ancestral country, author Patricia Chu learned that she was not alone in the experience of growing up in America with an abstract affinity to an ancestral homeland and community. The bittersweet emotions she had are shared in Asian American literature that depicts migration-related melancholia, contests official histories, and portrays Asian American families as flexible and transpacific. Where I Have Never Been explores the tropes of return, tracing both literal return visits by Asian emigrants and symbolic "returns": first visits by diasporic offspring. Chu argues that these Asian American narratives seek to remedy widely held anxieties about cultural loss and the erasure of personal and family histories from public memory. In fiction, memoirs, and personal essays, the writers of return narratives-including novelists Lisa See, May-lee Chai, Lydia Minatoya, and Ruth Ozeki, and best-selling author Denise Chong, diplomat Yung Wing, scholar Winberg Chai, essayist Josephine Khu, and many others-register and respond to personal and family losses through acts of remembrance and countermemory.
ISBN: 9781439902264Publication Date: 2019-01-04 -
Cities of Others by Xiaojing Zhou Asian American literature abounds with complex depictions of American cities as spaces that reinforce racial segregation and prevent interactions across boundaries of race, culture, class, and gender. However, in Cities of Others, Xiaojing Zhou uncovers a much different narrative, providing the most comprehensive examination to date of how Asian American writers - both celebrated and overlooked - depict urban settings. Zhou goes beyond examining popular portrayals of Chinatowns by paying equal attention to life in other parts of the city. Her innovative and wide-ranging approach sheds new light on the works of Chinese, Filipino, Indian, Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese American writers who bear witness to a variety of urban experiences and reimagine the American city as other than a segregated nation-space. Drawing on critical theories on space from urban geography, ecocriticism, and postcolonial studies, Zhou shows how spatial organization shapes identity in the works of Sui Sin Far, Bienvenido Santos, Meena Alexander, Frank Chin, Chang-rae Lee, Karen Tei Yamashita, and others. She also shows how the everyday practices of Asian American communities challenge racial segregation, reshape urban spaces, and redefine the identity of the American city. From a reimagining of the nineteenth-century flaneur figure in an Asian American context to providing a framework that allows readers to see ethnic enclaves and American cities as mutually constitutive and transformative, Zhou gives us a provocative new way to understand some of the most important works of Asian American literature.
ISBN: 9780295994024Publication Date: 2014-12-01 -
Writing the Ghetto by Yoonmee Chang In the United States, perhaps no minority group is considered as "model" or successful as the Asian American community. Rather than living in ominous "ghettoes," Asian Americans are described as residing in positive-sounding "ethnic enclaves." Writing the Ghetto helps clarify the hidden or unspoken class inequalities faced by Asian Americans, while insightfully analyzing the effect such notions have had on their literary voices. Yoonmee Chang examines the class structure of Chinatowns, Koreatowns, Little Tokyos, and Little Indias, arguing that ghettoization in these spaces is disguised. She maintains that Asian American literature both contributes to and challenges this masking through its marginalization by what she calls the "ethnographic imperative." Chang discusses texts from the late nineteenth century to the present, including those of Sui Sin Far, Winnifred Eaton, Monica Sone, Fae Myenne Ng, Chang-rae Lee, S. Mitra Kalita, and Nam Le. These texts are situated in the contexts of the Chinese Exclusion Era, Japanese American internment during World War II, the globalization of Chinatown in the late twentieth century, the Vietnam War, the 1992 Los Angeles riots, and the contemporary emergence of the "ethnoburb."
ISBN: 9780813548012Publication Date: 2010-11-08 -
Go Home! by Rowan Hisayo Buchanan (Editor); Viet Nguyen (Foreword by); Alexander Chee (Contribution by) An anthology of Asian diasporic writers musing on the notion of "home"--and the possibilities of outsiderhood and belonging. "I read this book and see my people--see us--and feel, in our collective outsiderhood, at home." --Ocean Vuong, Night Sky with Exit Wounds "To be from nowhere is the state of Asian diaspora, but there is also a wild humor and imagination that comes from being underestimated, rarely counted, hardly seen. Here, we begin to draw the hopeful outlines of a collective history for those so disparate yet often lumped together." --Jenny Zhang, Sour Heart Asian diasporic writers imagine "home" in the twenty-first century through an array of fiction, memoir, and poetry. Both urgent and meditative, this anthology moves beyond the model-minority myth and showcases the singular intimacies of individuals figuring out what it means to belong.
ISBN: 9781936932016Publication Date: 2018-03-13 -
Contours of the Heart by Sunaina Maira This book comes at a critical time in the history of South Asians in North America. As the number of South Asian immigrants increases in the United States and Canada, a familiar tension has been the immigrant conflict between home as a physical site in North America and home as an emotional concept tied to the ancestral country, and the second generation's questioning of both notions. This anthology critically explores this familiar tension and the concept of "home." It focuses on the transformative experiences that lead individuals to declare or reject new forms of belonging in North America. Setting up "home" may require contesting existing roles, inventing hybrid identities, or seeking social and political change. The anthology challenges undifferentiated, stereotypical images of South Asians in North America, portraying instead the subtleties of their varied, sometimes invisible experiences. It includes fiction, poetry, essays, and photography.
ISBN: 9781889876009Publication Date: 1998-03-19
Click on the "i" info icon after each book title to view a brief description about the following books from the University of Iowa Libraries' catalog:
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Asian American Short Story Writers by Guiyou Huang Asian America has produced numerous short-story writers in the 20th century. Some emerged after World War II, yet most of these writers have flourished since 1980. The first reference of its kind, this volume includes alphabetically arranged entries for 49 nationally and internationally acclaimed Asian American writers of short fiction. Each entry is written by an expert contributor and includes a biography, a discussion of major works and themes, a survey of the writer's critical reception, and primary and secondary bibliographies. Writers include Frank Chin, Sui Sin Far, Shirely Geok-lin Lim, Toshio Mori, and Bharati Mukherjee. An introductory essay provides a close examination of the Asian American short story, and the volume closes with a list of works for further reading.
ISBN: 9780313322297Publication Date: 2003-06-30 -
Aiiieeeee! by Frank Chin (Editor); Jeffery Paul Chan (Editor); Lawson Fusao Inada (Editor); Shawn Wong (Editor); Tara Fickle (Foreword by) In the eyes of mid-twentieth-century white America, "Aiiieeeee!" was the one-dimensional cry from Asian Americans, their singular expression of all emotions--it signified and perpetuated the idea of Asian Americans as inscrutable, foreign, self-hating, undesirable, and obedient. In this anthology first published in 1974, Frank Chin, Jeffery Chan, Lawson Inada, and Shawn Wong reclaimed that shout, outlining the history of Asian American literature and boldly drawing the boundaries for what was truly Asian American and what was white puppetry. Showcasing fourteen uncompromising works from authors such as Carlos Bulosan and John Okada, the editors introduced readers to a variety of daring voices. Forty-five years later the radical collection continues to spark controversy. While in the seventies it helped establish Asian American literature as a serious and distinct literary tradition, today the editors' forceful voices reverberate in contemporary discussions about American literary traditions. Now back in print with a new foreword by literary scholar Tara Fickle, this third edition reminds us how Asian Americans fought for--and seized--their place in the American literary canon.
ISBN: 9780295746487Publication Date: 2019-10-31 -
Asian American Autobiographers by Guiyou Huang Asian Americans have made many significant contributions to industry, science, politics, and the arts. At the same time, they have made great sacrifices and endured enormous hardships. This reference examines autobiographies and memoirs written by Asian Americans in the twentieth century. Included are alphabetically arranged entries on 60 major autobiographers of Asian descent. Some of these, such as Meena Alexander and Maxine Hong Kingston, are known primarily for their writings; others, such as Daniel K. Inouye, are known largely for other achievements, which they have chronicled in their autobiographies. Each entry is written by an expert contributor and provides a reliable account of the autobiographer's life; reviews major autobiographical works and themes, including fictionalized autobiographies and autobiographical novels; presents a meticulously researched account of the critical reception of these works; and closes with a bibliography of primary and secondary sources. An introductory essay considers the history and development of autobiography in American literature and culture and discusses issues and themes vital to Asian American autobiographies and memoirs, such as family, diaspora, nationhood, identity, cultural assimilation, racial dynamics, and the formation of the Asian American literary canon. The volume closes with a selected bibliography.
ISBN: 9780313314087Publication Date: 2001-05-30 -
Historical Dictionary of Asian American Literature and Theater by Wenying Xu Asian American literature is one of the most recent forms of ethnic literature and is already becoming one of the most prominent, given the large number of writers, the growing ethnic population from the region, the general receptivity of this body of work, and the quality of the authors. In recent decades, there has been an exponential growth in their output and much Asian American literature has now achieved new levels of popular success and critical acclaim. Nurtured by rich and long literary traditions from the vast continent of Asia, this literature is poised between the ancient and the modern, between the East and West, and between the oral and the written. The Historical Dictionary of Asian American Literature and Theater covers the activities in this burgeoning field. First, its history is traced year by year from 1887 to the present, in a chronology, and the introduction provides a good overview. The most important section is the dictionary, with over 600 substantial and cross-referenced entries on authors, books, and genres as well as more general ones describing the historical background, cultural features, techniques and major theatres and clubs. More reading can be found through an extensive bibliography with general works and those on specific authors. The book is thus a good place to get started, or to expanded one's horizons, about a branch of American literature that can only grow in importance.
ISBN: 9780810855779Publication Date: 2012-04-12 -
Our Voices, Our Histories by Shirley Hune (Editor); Gail M. Nomura (Editor) An innovative anthology showcasing Asian American and Pacific Islander women's histories Our Voices, Our Histories brings together thirty-five Asian American and Pacific Islander authors in a single volume to explore the historical experiences, perspectives, and actions of Asian American and Pacific Islander women in the United States and beyond. This volume is unique in exploring Asian American and Pacific Islander women's lives along local, transnational, and global dimensions. The contributions present new research on diverse aspects of Asian American and Pacific Islander women's history, from the politics of language, to the role of food, to experiences as adoptees, mixed race, and second generation, while acknowledging shared experiences as women of color in the United States. Our Voices, Our Histories showcases how new approaches in US history, Asian American and Pacific Islander studies, and Women's and Gender studies inform research on Asian American and Pacific Islander women. Attending to the collective voices of the women themselves, the volume seeks to transform current understandings of Asian American and Pacific Islander women's histories.
ISBN: 9781479877010Publication Date: 2020-03-10 -
Writers of the Indian Diaspora by Emmanuel S. Nelson (Editor) The fifty-eight writers included in this new sourcebook have roots in India--or, less frequently, in Pakistan, Bangladesh, or Sri Lanka--but represent diverse geographical areas of the Indian Diaspora: from the South Pacific to South America, from the Indian Ocean islands of Mauritius and Singapore to the cities and suburbs of London, New York, Johannesburg, and Toronto. Their lives, works, themes, and critical receptions are examined individually but with attention to two central assumptions: that people of the Indian diaspora share a diasporic consciousness generated by a complex network of historical connections, spiritual affinities, and unifying racial memories, and that this shared sensibility is manifested in the cultural productions of the Indian diasporic communities around the world. These concepts, developed by Professor Nelson in a previous study, Reworlding: The Literature of the Indian Diaspora, are here applied to a larger canvas of writers, including major international figures such as V.S. Naipaul, and Salman Rushdie and talented emerging writers. The writers practice a variety of literary forms and represent a extraordinary diversity of ethnicities, languages, and religious traditions. The women among them contribute the perspective of gender along with the themes of ethnicity, migrancy, and post-coloniality shared with the male writers. Each entry begins with relevant biographical information on the writer, offers an interpretive summary of the major works, provides an overview of the critical reception accorded the corpus and individual productions, and concludes with detailed primary and secondary bibliographies. A brief appendix lists each writer with place of birth and places of domicile. The introduction to the volume, by Professor Nalini Natarajan, discusses several theoretical issues pertinent to Indian diasporic studies. Of value to all literary collections and scholars, this reference work will be of special interest for post-colonial and Commonwealth studies.
ISBN: 9780313279041Publication Date: 1993-04-13
Contextual Resources
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American Race Relations: Global Perspectives, 1941-1996 This link opens in a new windowCovers foreign reactions to America’s struggles with racial justice, from the Jim Crow era to the Civil Rights movement and beyond. Provides a wealth of primary source documents on African American, Hispanic American, Asian American and Native American history
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Behind the Scenes of the Civil Rights Movements This link opens in a new windowBehind the Scenes of the Civil Rights Movements focuses on unearthing and digitizing the histories of civil rights activism by the everyday citizens of Black, Latine, Indigenous, and Asian American/Pacific Islander communities. The program will include up to four collections, targeted for completion by the end of 2025.
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China, America and The Pacific This link opens in a new windowExplore an extensive range of archival material connected to the trading and cultural relationships that emerged between China, America and the Pacific region between the 18th and early 20th centuries. Manuscript sources, rare printed texts, visual images, objects and maps document this history.
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America: History and Life This link opens in a new windowRECOMMEND USING CHROME; Covers the world's scholarly literature in United States and Canadian history. It includes article abstracts from 1700 journals and bibliographic citations of books and dissertations. The coverage is 1954- .
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America in World War Two This link opens in a new windowUncover the stories of American military personnel and civilians during the Second World War through their oral histories, correspondence, diaries, photographs, artifacts, and military records. This digital resource offers an insight into the personal experiences of those involved in the conflict, both on the United States home front and on deployment overseas in Europe, the Mediterranean, the Pacific, China, Burma and India.
Searching InfoHawk+ and Locating Materials in the Library
Sample Search Terms:
- American Literature -- Asian American authors -- History and criticism
- American Literature -- Asian American authors
- American poetry -- Asian American authors -- History and criticism
- American poetry -- Asian American authors
- Fiction --Asian American authors
- Indic fiction
- Women authors, Indic
Call numbers beginning with PJ (Oriental Languages and Literature), PL (Languages and Literature of Eastern Asia), PN (General Literature) or PS (American Literature) 3515 are located on the West side of the fourth floor of the Main Library.

Call numbers beginning with PS3517 (American Literature) are located on the West side of the second floor of the Main Library.

Databases
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Arts & Humanities Citation Index (A&HCI) This link opens in a new windowA multidisciplinary citation index to the journal literature of the arts and humanities, 1975 - present. Includes some full text. Part of the Web of Knowledge database.
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Bibliography of Asian Studies (BAS) This link opens in a new windowRECOMMEND USING CHROME; This on-line version of the Bibliography of Asian Studies (BAS) contains more than 410,000 records on all subjects (especially humanities and social sciences) pertaining to East, Southeast, and South Asia published worldwide from 1971 to the present.
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Ethnic Newswatch Complete This link opens in a new windowEthnic NewsWatch is a current resource of full-text newspapers, magazines, and journals of the ethnic and minority press, providing researchers access to essential, often overlooked perspectives. The database now also contains Ethnic NewsWatch: A History, which provides historical coverage of Native American, African American, and Hispanic American periodicals from 1959-1989
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Gale Literature Criticism This link opens in a new windowSearchable database that provides access to the literary criticism collections Classical and Medieval Literary Criticism (CMLC), Children's Literature Review (CLR), Contemporary Literary Criticism (CLC), Drama Criticism (DC), Literature Criticism from 1400-1800 (LC), Nineteenth-Century Literary Criticism (NCLC), Poetry Criticism (PC), Shakespeare Criticism (SC), Short Story Criticism (SSC), and Twentieth-Century Literary Criticism (TCLC).
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JSTOR (Journal Storage) This link opens in a new windowProvides image and full-text online access to back issues of selected scholarly journals in history, economics, political science, philosophy, mathematics and other fields of the humanities and social sciences. Consult the online tables of contents for holdings, as coverage varies for each titles. Journals may be searched across multiple titles as well as by the individual titles below
Note that this database comprises mostly back issues: for most titles the JSTOR database does NOT include full text of the most recent 3 to 5 years. -
Literature Online (LION) This link opens in a new windowA fully searchable library of over 350,000 works of English and American literature, overseen by an academic advisory board.
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MLA International Bibliography (EBSCO Version) This link opens in a new window
The MLA International Bibliography is a subject index for books, articles and websites published on modern languages, literatures, folklore, and linguistics. It is produced by the Modern Language Association (MLA), an organization dedicated to the study and teaching of language and literature. The electronic version of the Bibliography dates back to 1925 and contains over 2 million citations from more than 4,400 periodicals (including peer-reviewed e-journals) and 1,000 book publishers.
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Project Muse This link opens in a new windowWith full text for well over 300 journal titles from university publishers, Project MUSE covers the fields of literature and criticism, history, the visual and performing arts, cultural studies, education, political science, gender studies, and many others. Coverage begins in 1995.
Journals
Click on the "i" info icon after the title to view a brief description about the following literary journals:
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AAPI Nexus Notable journal information: Published by UCLA’s Asian American Studies Center Press, AAPI Nexus is a national journal focusing on policies, practices and community research to benefit the nation’s burgeoning Asian American and Pacific Islander communities. AAPI Nexus draws from professional schools and applied social science scholars as well as practitioners and public policy advocates with the goal of reinvigorating Asian American Studies’ mission of serving communities and generating practical research.
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Amerasia Journal Since 1971, Amerasia Journal has been the leading interdisciplinary journal in Asian American and Pacific Islander studies. For almost five decades, Amerasia Journal has played an indispensable role in establishing Asian American studies as a viable and relevant field of scholarship, teaching, community service, and public discourse. According to founding publisher Don T. Nakanishi, Amerasia Journal “has benefited from and reflected a wide array of profound social changes that have occurred among Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders—be it their unprecedented growth and diversification, or their ever-increasing levels of access, representation, and achievement in American society’s institutions and sectors that had long excluded, marginalized, or demonized them.”
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Asian American Literature: Discourse & Pedagogies Asian American Literature: Discourses & Pedagogies focuses on the production, collection, and distribution of accessible high quality research on Asian American Literature for students, teachers, and the general public.
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Bamboo Ridge Press Bamboo Ridge Press was founded in 1978 to publish literature by, for, and about Hawaiʻi’s people.While special attention is given to literature that reflects an island sensibility, Bamboo Ridge is broad in scope and embraces a variety of work from writers across the nation. Some of our books have received recognition for literary excellence and for their contribution to the understanding and appreciation of Hawaiʻi’s cultures and people. Bamboo Ridge publications have been adopted as texts or recommended reading in high school and college classrooms and have found a diverse audience across the country.
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Cha: An Asian Literary Journal Cha, founded in 2007, a decade after the handover, is the first Hong Kong international English-language free-access online literary journal; it is dedicated to publishing quality poetry, fiction, creative non-fiction, reviews and photography & art.
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Hmong Studies Journal The Hmong Studies Journal is a unique and established peer-reviewed Internet-based academic publication devoted to the scholarly discussion of Hmong history, Hmong culture, Hmong people, and other facets of the Hmong experience in the U.S., Asia and around the world. The Hmong Studies Journal has published 23 volumes and 27 online issues since 1996. Over this time, the Hmong Studies Journal has established itself as the most authoritative and widely cited scholarly journal devoted to academic studies related to the Hmong diaspora and Hmong culture and history.
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Hyphen Magazine Hyphen is a news and culture magazine, media outlet, and community partner that illuminates Asian America through investigative features on the cultural and political trends shaping the fastest-growing population in the country. We offer in-depth profiles of change-makers in our community and a window into the world of artists and writers who are re-envisioning and rewriting what it means to be Asian American. Through balanced and incisive reporting and sometimes irreverent commentary, we relate the enormous richness, contradiction, and vitality that defines the Asian American experience to stimulate debate, raise awareness, and build bridges within and beyond our own community.
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Journal of Asian American Studies Journal of Asian American Studies (JAAS) explores all aspects of Asian American experiences through original articles detailing new theoretical developments, research results, methodological innovations, public policy concerns, and pedagogical issues. The Journal also publishes book, media, and exhibition reviews. As a much-needed outlet for the increasing volume of scholarship in the field, JAAS provides an avenue for a quick and lively exchange of ideas. Journal of Asian American Studies is the official publication of the Association for Asian American Studies (AAAS).
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Lantern Review: A Journal of Asian American Poetry (2009-2022) From 2009–2022, Lantern Review served the Asian American poetry community through its magazine, blog, and newsletter. Our doors are now closed, but we've chosen to leave our website up as an archive and a resource. We hope you'll continue enjoying our past issues and posts, as well as our resources page, for years to come. Thank you for being a part of our community!
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MELUS: The Society for the Study of Multi-Ethnic Literature of the United States First published in 1974, MELUS features peer-reviewed articles, interviews and reviews encompassing the multi-ethnic scope of American literature past and present. Most issues are thematically organized for greater understanding of topics, criticism and theory in the total picture of American literature MELUS hopes to present. MELUS is published by The Society for the Study of the Multi- Ethnic Literature of the United States for members and subscribing institutions. The Journal is a non-profit publication, supported solely by dues of Society members, library subscriptions, and funds from Patrons. The editorial office is supported by the University of Connecticut.
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Positions: East Asia Culture Critique Offering a fresh approach to East Asia and Asian American studies, positions employs theoretical and multidisciplinary methods in creating a provocative forum for vigorous debate. Through expansive scholarly articles, commentaries, poetry, photo spreads, and political and philosophical debates, contributors consider a broad variety of pressing questions from a striking range of perspectives. Thematic issues of positions tackling new, often pathbreaking areas of concern—or traditional areas of concern from a fresh vantage point—are interspersed with general issues offering original scholarship that crosses disciplinary and topical boundaries. The breadth and pace of the journal ensure that readers are challenged as well as informed.
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Verge: Studies in Global Asias Verge: Studies in Global Asias showcases scholarship on “Asian” topics from across the humanities and humanistic social sciences, while recognizing that the changing scope of “Asia” as a concept and method is today an object of vital critical concern. Deeply transnational and transhistorical in scope, Verge emphasizes thematic and conceptual links among the disciplines and regional/area studies formations that address Asia in a variety of particularist (national, subnational, individual) and generalist (national, regional, global) modes. Responding to the ways in which large-scale social, cultural, and economic concepts like the world, the globe, or the universal (not to mention East Asian cousins like tianxia or datong) are reshaping the ways we think about the present, the past and the future, the journal publishes scholarship that occupies and enlarges the proximities among disciplinary and historical fields, from the ancient to the modern periods. The journal emphasizes multidisciplinary engagement—a crossing and dialogue of the disciplines that does not erase disciplinary differences, but uses them to make possible new conversations and new models of critical thought.
Web Resources
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Asian-NationA comprehensive website created by C.N. Le, a Senior Lecturer Professor in the Sociology Department and Director of the Asian & Asian American Studies Certificate Program at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. The site functions as an information resource on the historical, political, demographic, and cultural issues that affect today's diverse Asian American population.
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The Asian American Literary ArchiveFounded in 2023, the Asian American Literary Archive is a crossroads between artists, scholars, and archivists for preserving, creating, and animating Asian American literary history.
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Asian American Writer's WorkshopFor over 30 years, the Asian American Writers’ Workshop has been dedicated to publishing and amplifying Asian diasporic literary culture. Operating from a radically inclusive ethos, AAWW expands the definitions of who is a writer and who is Asian. Through a diverse lineup of programming and our award-winning magazine, The Margins, AAWW serves as a vital sanctuary space for writers and readers alike. In cultivating and curating the next generation of storytellers, AAWW works to mobilize the literary community toward a more just future.
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California Cultures: Asian AmericansThe 2000 US Census reported that 49% of all Asian Americans lived in the West. California became home to thriving immigrant communities from China, Japan, the Philippines, Korea, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Hong Kong, Thailand, and other parts of Asia. The greatest concentration of these 3 million Asian Americans was in the San Francisco Bay Area; large numbers also settled in Los Angeles, Orange, San Diego, Fresno, Sutter, Yuba, and Sacramento counties. The growing political strength of Asian Americans, which is just beginning to be exercised, is the guiding theme for the University of California digital collection.
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The Canon of Asian American Literature (Post45)This dataset traces the Asian American literary canon through nearly 1,900 scholarly citations from 1971 to 2023, capturing which authors and texts have shaped the field over time.
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The Chinese in California, 1850-1925The Chinese in California, 1850-1925 illustrates nineteenth and early twentieth century Chinese immigration to California through about 8,000 images and pages of primary source materials. Included are photographs, original art, cartoons and other illustrations; letters, excerpts from diaries, business records, and legal documents; as well as pamphlets, broadsides, speeches, sheet music, and other printed matter. These documents describe the experiences of Chinese immigrants in California, including the nature of inter-ethnic tensions. The collection contains more than 3000 digital items.
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Densho Digital RepositoryHear the story of the Japanese American incarceration experience from those who lived it, and find thousands of historic photographs, documents, newspapers, letters and other primary source materials from immigration to the WWII incarceration and its aftermath.
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Documenting the South East Asian American ExperienceSEAAdoc is an educational resource of the Southeast Asian Archive at the UC Irvine Libraries focusing on post-1975 refugees and immigrants from Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam and the communities they have developed in the United States. It contains 1,500 visual images and 4,000 pages of searchable text selected from the Archive to represent a cross section of our holdings.
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Filipino American LiteratureA page from Emory University gives a brief description of Filipino American literature highlighting the major themes and works of fiction and poetry with links to related sites.
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Japanese American Relocation Digital Archive (JARDA)On December 7, 1941, Japan bombed Pearl Harbor. The next day, the United States and Britain declared war on Japan. Two months later, on February 19, 1942, the lives of thousands of Japanese Americans were dramatically changed when President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 9066. The Japanese American Relocation Digital Archives (JARDA) contains thousands of primary sources documenting Japanese American internment, including diaries, letters, photographs, drawings, and camp newsletters.
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Korean American Digital ArchiveThe documentary record of the Korean experience in America remains dispersed and difficult to access. The Korean American Digital Archive brings more than 13,000 pages of documents, over 1,900 photographs, and about 180 sound files together in one searchable collection that documents the Korean American community during the period of resistance to Japanese rule in Korea and reveal the organizational and private experience of Koreans in America between 1903 and 1965.
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Lantern Review Asian American Literature Resources PageWebpage with a list of Asian American literature-focused magazines, literary magazines, literature-focused blogs, presses, and podcasts.
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Pioneering Punjabis Digital ArchiveThis is the full repository for the Pioneering Punjabi Digital Archive, the most extensive collection of archival material documenting the first significant South Asian community in the United States. The collection includes over 1,300 photographs, rare archival films, letters, newspaper articles, songs, and audio interviews of South Asians who arrived in California from the Punjab region of north India beginning in the 1890s from UC Davis.
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Poetry Foundation | Asian American Voices in PoetryThis collection is intended to introduce new readers to Asian American poets and to help those who are interested in learning more about these poets and their poetry. It is an ongoing project to make visible the vastness and variety of U.S. literary culture and to expand our notions of human experience in our time.
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Smithsonian Asian Pacific American CenterFrom our establishment in 1997 as an initiative critical to the mission of the Smithsonian until today, the vision for the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center has been to enrich the American Story with the voices of Asian Pacific Americans.Asian Pacific America is the story of a vibrant, diverse, and resilient set of communities that have been part of the American experience for more than two hundred years. It is the story of two continents and a constellation of islands joined by the migration, exchange, and competition of people and ideas.
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South Asian American Digital Archive (SAADA)The South Asian American Digital Archive (SAADA) documents, preserves, and shares stories from South Asian American history and experience.
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The Welga Digital ArchiveThe mission of the Welga Archive, Bulosan Center for Filipino Studies (WA-BCFS) is to provide access to documentary and ephemera material regarding the Filipino and Filipino American experience. To ensure access of collections, WA-BCFS will digitize and make available applicable documents and photographs for academic purposes. A series of oral history interviews will be presented to supplement archival holdings.
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