The influence of the U.S. as a colonial power in the Philippines and as a neo-colonial military presence in the Republic of Vietnam marks these two émigré communities in ways that both distinguish them from other Asian American groups and from each other. This panel will examine issues of negotiated identities, which are constituted against the backdrop of U.S. imperialism as a marker of colonial oppression, and recuperated as a talisman of bourgeois economic success. These papers will look at literature, film, and social institutions. They will examine how these communities mimic, translate, and transpose the signs of the hegemonic political and economic power of colonialism in ways that ambiguously retain and supercede notions of belonging to the erstwhile "homeland," in favour of a "new land" modernity. This panel will also look at another kind of translation: that across scholarly disciplines. While the scholarly aim of all these papers is to identify the construction of these hybridized identities, they are also concerned with reflection upon the methodological boundaries of the inquiries themselves. Looking at intellectual productions of migrant communities in this country and using them as ethnographic tools with which to reflect upon the reciprocal nature of the influences constructing the modern "global" subject represents an innovation in research that challenges the existing boundaries between Asian studies and Asian American studies.

Vu Hong Pham, Cornell University

This paper examines writings of Vietnamese American students during the Viet Nam War through student and academic publications. By centering these writings, I attempt to make interventions in the two fields of Vietnamese American and Viet Nam War Studies. In the former field, scholars have claimed 1975 as an entry-point for Vietnamese into America via a mass refugee exodus. Although post-1975 studies of this group require further attention, this paper serves as a starting point toward a longer and more multifaceted history of the Vietnamese American presence. Accordingly, it goes beyond the view of Vietnamese Americans as refugees, because it focuses on students at American universities. Instead of privileging adaptation issues, it will analyze the political stances expressed in their public discourses as they voiced their opinions on the war.

With regards to Viet Nam War studies, this paper maintains that a liminal perspective, different from both mainstream American and Vietnamese positions, requires analysis. Vietnamese Americans’ voices represent quite different views from both Americans and Vietnamese in Viet Nam. As both North and South Viet Nam were developing discourses of a national Vietnamese identity, these were being re-articulated by Vietnamese students in America, yet towards an American audience. As in Viet Nam, how are these American-oriented discussions of Vietnamese identity employed to further their authors’ agendas? What do the discourses in these writings indicate about the "essence" (or lack of) in Vietnamese identity? How do these writings provide a divergent view of the Viet Nam war from those of Americans?

Dan Duffy, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

Current work in various area studies supports the view that modernity arises in the colonial encounter. Imperialism and resistance map the nation and the international order onto the globe, and hail the modern subject. A review of Viet Nam studies scholarship suggests that the actors and institutions of modern literature in Viet Nam have taken deliberate and effective part in the twin projects of mapping and hailing. So far, so good. But how are these processes in play right now at nine public libraries in North Carolina, which offer substantial collections of Vietnamese-language materials to patrons? When librarians shelve stacks of Vietnamese books outside the nation of Viet Nam, what are they mapping? How do these books hail modern individuals who have rejected the nation of Viet Nam? My talk will discuss ethnography of these North Carolina collections, their founders and patrons, carried out in preparation for an itinerant dissertation project in the U.S., France, and Viet Nam entitled "Self-Reliance: What People Do with Vietnamese Books."

Benito M. Vergara, Jr., Cornell University

This paper explores intersections between class and national belonging among the Filipino middle class in the United States. I hope to show that the ambitions of Filipinos are in turn intertwined with ideas of national belonging and a multifaceted relationship between money and nation. I look at how these same notions of Filipino identity are evoked to regulate the class-based and national inclusion or exclusion of individuals outside the country.

I will examine these issues through the prism of Philippine mass media—specifically, how film portrays Filipino and Filipino American cultures. My paper traces its representation of the Filipino American community, and looks at how the media, itself shaped by its readers and viewers, cultivates identification and loyalties toward particular national forms. I discuss the perception that Filipinos in the United States have "lost" a certain cultural authenticity, primarily in terms of language, in exchange for what is perceived as a higher-class status. Because of this, Filipino immigrants in the United States are contrasted negatively with the "courageous" Overseas Foreign Workers, or OFWs, but are simultaneously held in high regard for their class achievements.

My paper is part of a general investigation of the relationship between mass media and cultural identity, and how this defines and reproduces the ambiguous postcolonial position of Filipinos in the United States.

Dierdre de la Cruz, Columbia University

This paper will examine a recent event for which Catholic imagery was deployed in order to dramatize Filipino diasporic movement to the United States. On September 11, 1999, the first-ever global birthday celebration of the Virgin Mary was held at Battery Park in New York City. Although the aim of this celebration was to demonstrate the urgent need to encourage the global worship of Mary, it was almost entirely organized by Filipinos from Manila under the direction of the Mary’s Army to Save Souls (M.A.S.S.) Media Movement. To complicate this apparent displacement of the Filipino Catholic community further, this lavish, day-long festivity—which included a fluvial parade of Filipino Marian images, prayer, visionary testimonies, and healing sessions—was beamed live via satellite to television stations around the Philippines. This live broadcast, I will argue, also served to transport "back home" the hybridized community of Filipino Americans in attendance.