Asian American Studies in the Midwest: An Organizational History of Program Building, 1970–2010

Abstract

This dissertation examines how students, faculty, and staff members (whom I call advocates), justified and established distinct Asian American Studies (AAS) programs at the Big Ten research universities and colleges in the Committee for Institutional Cooperation for Asian American Studies Consortium between 1970 to 2010. I am inspired by Fabio Rojas’s sociological study on how the Black Studies movement became a stable academic discipline at postsecondary organizations. I use his conceptual framework to understand how Midwestern advocates organized their programs based on changes that occurred at the national, regional, and field levels. Using a blend of archival resources and oral history interviews, I trace the debates, arguments, and actions of Midwestern advocates in their efforts to strengthen program building and promote AAS as a rigorous academic discipline at Big Ten universities and colleges. I argue that these advocates pushed the field of AAS in new directions by decentering it from dominant ideas of West Coast program building and intellectual history. They reimagined AAS teaching and scholarship around Midwestern Asian American communities, perspectives, and experiences. Through this reimagination, they promoted the Midwest as a “regional center,” a hub of knowledge and teaching to compete with AAS programs that were created in California during the 1960s social movements. Yet, in their efforts to strengthen Midwestern AAS programs, they pushed the field further away from its core values, created during the 1960s social movements, of challenging inequitable practices in higher education while advocating for marginalized communities. Called deradicalization, Midwestern advocates minimized arguments that were deemed too political and reframed AAS as a teaching and research contribution to the academy.