In January 2002, in an effort to gauge student interest in Asian American Studies, the Freeman Foundation gave the University $1.9 million dollars over the course of four years to bring visiting professors specializing in Asian American Studies to campus. Part of the money also sponsored student research relating to Asia and the Asian Diaspora.
Now, six years later, the University still does not offer a formal major in Asian American studies, although there are a few related courses, usually found under the American Studies department’s course listings. Although the Asian American Student Collective submitted a proposal to President Michael Roth calling for the institutionalization of Asian American Studies at the University, it remains to be seen what the exact future of these courses or a potential program will be.
Professor Su Zheng, of the East Asian Studies Program and the Music Department, served on the steering committee for the 2002 grant.
“The underlying idea of this initiative was that learning about Asia is no longer limited by geographical boundaries of Asia,” Zheng said. “The aim was to develop courses that place East Asian studies in broad interdisciplinary and transnational contexts and to integrate the study of the Asian Diaspora into the undergraduate curriculum.”
The field of Asian American Studies first grew out of student protests at the University of California Berkeley in the late 1960s, in response to American involvement in the Vietnam War. Since then, courses and programs in Asian American Studies have been implemented at universities across the country—but not at Wesleyan.
“Asian American Studies is a thriving interdisciplinary field, now in its fourth decade, which encompasses the history, literature, politics, and cultures of Asian Americans in the United States, as well as immigration and diaspora beyond U.S. borders,” said Professor J. Kehaulani Kauanui of the American Studies and Anthropology departments. “It is a critical field that also implicates how we understand the formation of the U.S. nation-state in relation to the legal construction of race, citizenship, imperialism, war, labor, capitalism, and more.”
Zheng noted that students have supported the 2002 Initiative to bring visiting professors to the University.
“I think the responses were very positive from the students’ side,” she said. “The enrollment for their courses was very good, the attendance to their lectures was excellent. From informal conversations I got the impression that students were enthusiastic about their experiences with these professors.”
In spring 2007, however, the end of the Initiative coincided with the advisory committee denying tenure to Professor Allan Isaac—the only professor whose job description formally included teaching Asian American Studies courses.
Although Issac won his tenure case on appeal this spring, some students remain troubled by the impermanence of Asian American Studies courses at the University.
“If Asian American Studies is contingent on a few key professors and courses, there is no guarantee that Asian American Studies as a field of study will exist for future Wesleyan students,” said Melanie Cherng ’08.
Theodora Fan ’08 gave a more personal insight as to the importance of Asian American Studies to her.
“It offered a different lens that really forced me to explore different avenues of thought, interaction, and learning, which helped to shape how I interact with the University,” Fan said. “I really felt like I was a Wesleyan student.”
Yet, the issue of institutionalizing Asian American Studies at the University remains a concern for a key group of students.
“If we believe that the purpose of education is to understand the world that we live in, how can we begin to understand contemporary conflicts around immigration, race and racism, labor rights, and so much more, if we do not know what has shaped these conflicts?” Aparna Lakshmi ’08 asked. “Here at Wesleyan, how can we even begin that process without courses in Asian American Studies and ethnic studies? Why do we continue to see the contributions of the Renaissance and the Enlightenment as more important to our present reality than the Chinese Exclusion Act and the U.S. occupation of the Philippines?”
Moreover, Kauanui explained the general misconception that some academic departments are based on ethnic or racial categories.
“I think it’s a misnomer to see [Asian American studies] as a field that is based on race or ethnicity,” she said. “It’s precisely that narrow understanding of ethnic studies as a whole—whether it be Native American Studies, African American Studies, Latino Studies, Arab American Studies, or Asian American Studies—that has led to the marginalization of these academic fields in the first place, where they are too often written off as ’niche’ areas of interest.”
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