Asian Pacific American Studies

In fall 2005 American Studies welcomed a sibling: the Asian Pacific American Studies minor (APAS). The effort to launch the program began in 2003, when an Asian Students Union committee lobbied administrators and faculty for Asian-American representation among newly hired professors. Two new faculty from American Studies — Pensri Ho and Sylvia Chong — took the reins.

“American Studies has been a very welcoming home for our study,” says Chong. Like American Studies, APAS draws its strength from such disciplines as English, anthropology, sociology and studies in women and gender. The program seeks to familiarize students with the historical and contemporary experiences of Asian Pacific Americans. Courses interweave print materials with other sources — film, cultural artifacts, oral history and the graphic arts.

Thanks to its solid interdisciplinary approach, the APAS minor gives students a firm grounding in cultural critique. In Chong’s course on American Orientalism and World War II film, movies not only serve as barometers of American attitudes toward Asian-American experience but also provide insight into the politics of the entertainment industry. “We ask, ‘How did Americans understand Japanese culture and Japanese-Americans?’ We’re also being quite critical of the film industry.”

From Indian politics to transnational migration, Asian-American drama to the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, APAS courses have a broad reach. Yet issues of race and racial identity underlie much of the curriculum. “I want students to be more  conscious of what it means to be ‘raced,’” explains Ho. “That applies to both whiteness and nonwhiteness.”