Organizer and Chair: Dorothy Ko, Rutgers University
Discussants: Leo Ou-fan Lee, Harvard University; Gail M. Nomura, University of Michigan; Gary Y. Okihiro, Cornell University; Louisa Schein, Rutgers University; Nayan Shah, SUNY, Binghamton; Kevin S. Wong, Williams College
Part two of this back-to-back panel continues the discussion of nation, location, and citizenship in a different context: the institutional factors in U.S. academia that have produced the very subject of "Asia" and knowledge about it. As members of Asian studies, ethnic studies or Asian American studies programs, the panelists will lead discussions on whether and how these fields can learn from each other as equal partners. Whereas part one (session 72) interrogates the national paradigm, part two focuses on the possibilities and pitfalls of foregrounding the global and the transnational.
The six panelists have crossed myriad disciplinary and intellectual boundaries in their life and work. Leo Ou-fan Lee, whose books on modern Chinese literature are themselves part of the canon in Chinese literature, has been shaping debates on "Greater China" and Asian pop culture. Gail M. Nomura, past president of the Association for Asian American Studies, has been a pioneer in studying gender and labor relations in Japanese American communities. Gary Okihiro, an Africanist by training, has published extensively on rural Japanese American communities, the anti-Japanese movement in Hawaii, and the internment of Japanese Americans during Second World War. Both Professors Nomura and Okihiro are leaders in fostering conversations on the institutional and intellectual links between Asian American studies and Asian studies.
Louisa Schein, an anthropologist who has worked with the Hmong/Miao people in Providence, Rhode Island, Fresno, California, Laos, and Guizhou, China, has always fit uncomfortably in any area or field. Nayan Shah, who studied medical intervention in San Francisco Chinatown, can converse equally well about South Asian and Chinese diasporas. Kevin Scott Wong, who majored in Asian studies, found new possibilities in graduate school by combining Chinese and U.S. history. He is now preparing, among other things, a book manuscript on the impact of the Second World War on Chinese Americans.
Representing multiple positions, this diverse group of scholars will lead discussions about how the contested terrains in between Asian studies, Asian American studies and ethnic studies can be fertile ground for the generation of new practices and knowledge.