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The image of the Apsara, a celestial dancer in Cambodian myth, is closely associated with Cambodian cultural preservation practices like Cambodian classical dance. The Apsara, its aesthetic features and its association with Cambodian cultural preservation have taken on new meaning in Cambodia's diasporic communities. In the diaspora, Apsara aesthetics have come to symbolize Cambodian heritage, history and identity, becoming a major feature of performances by Cambodian diasporic artists. However, orientalist expectations of Asian performers in the diaspora, paired with both the forgotten history of colonial intervention in Cambodian arts and state-sanctioned initiatives towards Cambodian nationalism, contributes to orientalist (and thus racialized) expectations of Cambodian diasporic performance. Mixed-race artists fail to fit neatly into the dominant narratives of Cambodian performance and have been marginalized by the Cambodian diasporic community's dominant conceptions of performance that are rooted in cultural preservation. As people that sit outside of the aestheticized markers of Cambodian-ness, mixed-race artists often struggle to have their work and their subjectivities recognized by their communities. To circumvent questions of their racial legibility, mixed-race Cambodian American artists construct performances that are strategically padded with markers of Khmer identity by engaging with Apsara aesthetics. This article will explore how three different SoCal-based artists have negotiated their Cambodian American identity and cultural politics through performance and/or performance related materials (ads, images, etc.). I will be using examples from the work of music artist and violinist Chrysanthe Tan, theater practitioner Kalean Ung, and autoethnographic engagement with my own creative projects to show how examining the work of multi-racial Cambodian American performing artists can bring forth the complex dynamics of Cambodian diasporic cultural politics and belonging. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we offer a specific example from our programmatic research and teaching praxis during the COVID-19 anti-Asian hate pandemic period. We demonstrate how Asian American Studies community-centered knowledge coproduction and narrative generational wealth investment can address critical experiences of young learners from underrepresented, religiously-diverse populations through content that supports culturally sustaining child development and challenges disparately impactful realities of racism, misrepresentation, and systemic Western biases which undermine their health and wellbeing. Focusing on religious themes in relation to child development was not an explicit intention of our collaboratively developed storybook project titled, Hira Makes a Sound. Nevertheless, centering a women-led, intergenerational Nepali immigrant story in both our process and final product necessarily led to foregrounding religious, cultural, and spiritual dimensions of diasporic family and community life that are essential to coping and development for the fictional lead character, Hira, and her loved ones. Robust story data themes—paradoxically grounded in the ether of a shared Gurung worldview—provide generative lessons for researchers, educators, artists, and community advocates who work with or need to account for the lived experiences of young learners within religiously diverse, multi-generational immigrant family households and community ecologies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article summarizes a roundtable discussion of scholars that took place at the Association for Asian American Studies Conference in San Francisco, 2014. Hailing from various academic disciplines, the participants explored the relationship between the emerging field of Hmong/Hmong American Studies and Asian American Studies. Questions of interest included: In what ways has Asian American Studies informed Hmong/Hmong American Studies, or failed to do so? In what ways does Hmong/Hmong American Studies enrich/challenge Asian American Studies? What are the tensions between these two fields and other related fields? How do/should the new programs in Hmong/Hmong American Studies relate to the existing Asian American Studies programs regarding curriculum, activism and/or resource allocat ion? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective of this article is two-fold: First, it argues for critical engagement between Hmong Studies and Asian American Studies. Second, to illustrate the productivity of such engagement this article analyzes the media coverage of an incident involving Hmong American farmers and their white neighbors in Eagan, Minnesota, June 2010. The focal question is how media discourses around farming and immigration serve to racialize Hmong American identities. This analysis shows that Hmong Americans experience "Asiatic racialization" in that they are either discursively cast outside of the imagined American nation, or included contingent upon assimilation and conformity. Critiquing both the exclusionary and assimilative narratives, this article explicates the inherent contradictions of the U.S. nationalism, referencing both existing Hmong Studies literature and Asian Americanist discourses on race and nation. Both bodies of work foreground the historical and social construction of identities, as well as the simultaneous intertwined workings of race, class, gender/sexuality and nation. Critical dialogues could generate new ideas and possibilities for both Asian American Studies and Hmong Studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses theater and aesthetic form in the context of Asian American studies. Some differences between Asian American theater and Asian American literature are noted. The theories of the writer Gilles Deleuze are cited, and a deconstructive model of critique proposed by Kandice Chuh in her book "Imagine Otherwise" is mentioned. A distinction between the terms "Asian/American" and "Asian American" is presented, and a formalist interpretation of two plays by Naomi Iizuka, "At the Vanishing Point" and "36 Views," is included.

The extensive literature concerning America's exclusion of Asians has emphasized primarily the domestic contexts for restricting trans-Pacific migrations. Fears of a 'Yellow Peril' invasion and conquest were used to justify the earliest American attempts to limit the entry of races and nationalities deemed too different and incompatible to integrate and participate on equal terms in a republic dominated by European arrivals and their descendants. Asian American Studies scholars in particular have mined the rich vein of documents delineating the formative legacy of anti-Asian laws, ideologies, and institutions shaping the still deeply troubled patrolling of American borders today. Less attention has turned to the influence of foreign policy considerations and their role in carving out categories of migrants exempted from exclusionary laws. For example, the Chinese Exclusion Law of 1882 made exceptions for merchants, merchant family members, students and teachers, diplomats, and tourists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay discusses formalistic analyses present in ethnic studies, examining the nature of a "new formalism" found in Asian American studies. An example of the emerging "new formalist" direction of Asian American literary criticism, the author states, can be seen in Zhou Xiaojing and Samina Najmi's anthology "Form and Transformation in Asian American Literature." Other topics include formal aspects of literature as an integral part of ideology and a formalist approach to the revaluation of early Asian American literary texts.

The article reports that the Association for Asian American Studies has presented Professor Paul T. Takagi with the Lifetime Achievement Award on April 19, 2008.

This essay examines the proliferation of Asian American studies in educational institutions in Taiwan since the 1980s, citing the popularity of Amy Tan's "The Joy Luck Club" and David Henry Hwang's "M. Butterfly." It is evident in the involvement of scholars in organizing conferences on Asian American literary studies and publishing their research in international journals and in the interest of students in the critical study of Chinese American literature.

This article discusses the intergenerational and intercultural conflicts facing immigrant families. The article notes that social workers are often in need of a measure to assess this phenomenon, and, to that effect, the authors examine the Immigrant Families (ICIF) Scale. The scale can measure the perspective of the parent or the child, while also highlighting the intergenerational relationships. The researchers examine the impact of the ICIF scale on Southeast Asian American refugee families, as well as Southeast Asian American college students with refugee parents.

The author talks of his experiences teaching an Asian American history survey class for undergraduates at the University of Michigan. The teacher begins his classes with a discussion of the academic scene in the late 1960s. It was this period that sparked the beginning of Asian American studies under pressure by students and activists of the time. The author refuses to have his class on the list of recommended courses that would help students meet their "race and ethnicity" requirement as this would increase his class size with students "forced" to be there as opposed to those with an honest interest in the subject.

This paper provides an overview of the probability sample designs and sampling methods for the Collaborative Psychiatric Epidemiology Studies (CPES): the National Comorbidity Survey Replication (NCS-R), the National Study of American Life (NSAL) and the National Latino and Asian American Study of Mental Health (NLAAS). The multi-stage sample design and respondent selection procedures used in these three studies are based on the University of Michigan Survey Research Center's National Sample designs and operations. The paper begins with a general overview of these designs and procedures and then turns to a more detailed discussion of the adaptation of these general methods to the three specific study designs. The detailed discussions of the individual study samples focus on design characteristics and outcomes that are important to analysts of the CPES data sets and to researchers and statisticians who are planning future studies. The paper describes how the expected survey cost and error structure for each of these surveys influenced the original design of the samples and how actual field experience led to changes and adaptations to arrive at the final samples of each survey population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The study presented here explored three factors that may explain why distinct Asian American groups have higher educational expectations than do whites: favorable socioeconomic and background characteristics, demonstrated academic ability, and parents' high expectations. With data from the National Educational Longitudinal Study, the authors used linear and logistic multivariate regression models to examine these differences in educational expectations. The analyses indicated that although all Asian American ethnic groups have higher expectations than whites, the higher educational expectations of Asian American groups that are well assimilated into U.S. society are principally influenced by socioeconomic and demographic factors. Parental expectations generally explain a large portion of children's high educational expectations for all Asian American groups. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, the author comments on the study conducted by A. L. Klatsky and M. A. Armstrong regarding the health of risks Asian Americans in the U.S. The author said that the information known about the health risks and morbidity patterns of Asian Americans has been based on some epidemiologic surveys in Hawaii and at the West Coast. The study conducted by Klatsky and Armstrong considered an alternative data source for studying Asian American health risks. The author commended the researchers for evaluating the nativity differences in cardiovascular risks of the group.

Asserts that Asian American studies should be viewed as part of a social movement for educational reform. Origins of ethnic and women's studies; Role of Asian American in democratizing higher education; Increase in Asian American student enrollment at colleges in the United States; Needs and conditions which must be addressed.