Introduction (2000)

Introduction John M. Liu and Gary Y. Okihiro The end of certain time periods frequently occasion reflection - assessments of accomplishments, identification of issues yet to be addressed, making resolutions, no matter how unrealistic, and taking strides toward realizing those decisions. With the changeover to a new year, century, and millennium, this certainly seems the appropriate time to engage in such thoughts. Thus, the editors have designated all three numbers of volume three of the Journal of Asian American Studies for the year 2000 as its millennial trilogy. Whether the year represents the end of the second Christian millennium or the beginning of the third, we leave for our readers to decide. Each of the millennial trilogy is dedicated to a specific topic in Asian American studies: number one, pedagogy and community; number two, articulations of race; and number three, cultural productions. The editors developed the initial framework and proposed it to JAAS’s editorial board, which enthusiastically approved the plan. Moreover, several board members volunteered to serve as guest editors. Shirley Hune and Phil Tajitsu Nash have edited this issue on pedagogy and community. The guest editors for number two on the articulations of race are Yen Le Espiritu, Dorothy Fujita Rony, and Nazli Kibria, while Soo-Young Chin, Peter Feng, and Josephine Lee will edit number three on cultural productions. Obviously, these themes far from exhaust the topics currently raised and discussed within the field, and these three special issues can not comprehensively cover the numerous dimensions encompassed within each theme. Nonetheless, the trilogy touch upon many of the questions [End Page 1] that Asian Americanists have confronted as well as the new areas of exploration and explication. The choice of these subject matters is meant primarily to serve as a stimulus for further dialogues among our colleagues, as are the following comments. The first issue on pedagogy and community raises questions about why we teach Asian American studies and for whom. Those questions were critical to the formation of the field and remain so, particularly as Asian American studies becomes increasingly institutionalized on campuses in various regions of the country, despite continued resistance and/or neglect from academia. In the past decade, there has been what appears to be an explosion of academic positions available for Asian Americanist scholars as new programs have been established in geographic areas where Asian American studies has been traditionally strong, such as the Pacific Coast schools, but also on campuses, for instance, in Arizona, Connecticut, Illinois, and Texas, places where the field did not foresee establishing a presence at the time of its genesis. This relative cornucopia of academic positions and programs has raised anew questions at whom Asian American studies programs should be directed. Its institutionalization mandates an examination of how far the field has wandered from the impulses that gave rise to Asian American studies. To serve the community was a founding principal in the establishment of Asian American studies programs. Over the past three decades, the complexity of this community has increased with the continuous migration of ethnically diverse Asian populations into an ever-changing U.S. political economy. Some of the political and intellectual currents generated by this development are renewed debates among scholars and activists as to who comprises the community served by Asian American studies? what criteria are to be used and who determines these criteria in assessing the quality and worth of the scholarship now being produced? and what purpose does this scholarship serve? Those were among the key issues confronted by participants during the eventful 1998 Annual Meeting of the Association for Asian American Studies in Honolulu. Transitory answers to the questions emerging from the new multiplicities of Asian American communities include the greater participation by Asian Americanists in public policy debates and the articulation of new [End Page 2] theoretical orientations to encompass issues such as sexuality and diasporic/transnational cultural identities. New directions and paradigms also necessitate a re-examination of how we teach Asian American studies. Since its inception, Asian American studies has striven to be interdisciplinary, but what does this entail? Being interdisciplinary can be narrowly interpreted as crossing established disciplinary boundaries within either the humanities or social sciences. It...