Asian American & Pacifika Studies

The contemporary movement for Asian American history education is deeply rooted in the broader historical struggle for Asian American Studies. Emerging as a formal academic discipline in the late 1960s, Asian American Studies was born from the activism of Black, Indigenous, Chicanx, and Asian American students during the 1968–1969 strikes at San Francisco State College and the University of California, Berkeley. In the late 1980s and 1990s, Asian American Studies saw significant national growth propelled by college student activism. In the wake of these first two waves of the Asian American movement, historian Erika Lee has described recent legislative mandates for Asian American education as its “third era,” now focused on K-12 education. The Third Wave of the Asian American Studies Movement: Advocating for & Advancing Asian American Studies in K-12 Classrooms highlights the various efforts to center Asian American experiences, narratives, and histories in K-12 classrooms across the United States. In states where legislative mandates have passed, there remain significant disorganization and challenges with providing the resources educators need to implement the mandated instruction. In particular, the lack of funding for curricular development and teacher professional development has left organizers and educators with few resources. This has resulted in uneven approaches that vary widely in terms of their criticality – an essential component of ethnic studies writ large. At the same time, there have been incredible successes and alternative approaches to creating Asian American-focused teaching and learning spaces, but few of these examples have been documented in scholarly journals due to the lengthy publication process and nascent nature of these movements. The Third Wave of the Asian American Studies Movement: Advocating for & Advancing Asian American Studies in K-12 Classrooms offers an innovative and intimate glimpse into the experiences of educators, organizers, and youth who insist on centering Asian America in and out of the classroom. In doing so, educators and youth will find examples of classroom practices and the impact of Asian American Studies on them personally and academically. The Third Wave of the Asian American Studies Movement: Advocating for & Advancing Asian American Studies in K-12 Classrooms will be targeted to academics, educators, and community organizers. For scholars of Asian American Studies broadly (including historians, sociologists, anthropologists, educators), this book will offer a rare glimpse into very recent efforts for Asian American Studies from the last five years and will be a vital addition to college, university, and public libraries. Among researchers and teacher educators interested in Asian American education, the chapters provide in-depth insight into contemporary Asian American Studies curriculum and instruction. Ethnic studies scholarship is largely published by researchers who have not participated in traditional teacher preparation and are unfamiliar with K-12 classroom praxis. The authors contributing to this volume consist of classroom teachers, their students, teacher educators, education scholars, and community organizers – that is, individuals who are deeply and directly involved in the day-to-day efforts to raise awareness, teach, and learn about Asian American Studies in public schools. While more and more states continue to pass legislative mandates for the teaching of Asian American histories, few resources are available that highlight the critical consciousness, pedagogical challenges, and professional development necessary to bring such requirements to fruition. The Third Wave of the Asian American Studies Movement: Advocating for & Advancing Asian American Studies in K-12 Classrooms can be adopted by instructors to address this gap in the field. The strategies, successes, and challenges described in this book will be a vital resource for those interested in promoting the teaching of Asian American Studies in their own schools, districts, communities, and states.Perfect for courses such as: Introduction to Asian American Studies; Ethnic Studies; Asian American Education; Asian American Studies & Education; Multicultural Education in the United States; Current Issues in Educational Policy; Current Issues in Social Studies Education

In this moment of heightened political repression, racial retrenchment, and global anti-Blackness, the urgency of confronting anti-Blackness within, through, and across communities of color has never been greater. As book bans spread, Critical Race Theory (CRT) is vilified, and diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives are dismantled, we must reckon with the reality that anti-Blackness is not an aberration, but an organizing logic of racial formation and global white supremacy. This edited volume brings together scholars, educators, and community organizers to interrogate the ways anti-Blackness is perpetuated within / through / across Latinx and Asian American communities—and the complex, often contradictory practices of complicity, resistance, and solidarity that emerge in response. Drawing on interdisciplinary perspectives from disciplines / professions like education, ethnic studies, sociology, psychology, cultural studies, social work, and gender studies, Asian and Latinx Anti-Blackness in Schools and Communities: Complicated Stories of Complicity and Resistance refuses simplistic narratives that position non-Black communities of color solely as victims or solely as perpetrators. Instead, contributors adopt a both/and framework, naming the ways Latinx and Asian communities have benefited from proximity to whiteness (as it relates to anti-Blackness) while also highlighting the histories, ruptures, and refusals that open / reveal possibilities for coalition and collective liberation. Organized into three sections—Anti-Blackness With/In, Through, and Among Latinx & Asian Communities, Geographies and Spaces; Anti-Blackness in Latinx & Asian Teaching, Pedagogy, and Curriculum; and Anti-Blackness and the Precarity of Racial Categories—the chapters combine empirical research, conceptual essays, narrative, and autoethnographies. Together, they explore topics such as racial formation, racial hierarchy, racial triangulation, the intersections of Blackness, the policing of language and accent, and the lived experiences of multiracial individuals navigating contested racial boundaries. The book situates these discussions within the shifting demographic and political landscape of the United States, where the 2020 Census revealed a decline in the white population alongside an increase in racial diversity, and where Kamala Harris’s historic tenure as the first Black and Asian American Vice President (and presidential candidate) illuminated both the promise of representation and the persistence of racial hierarchy. These contexts underscore a central question animating the volume: How do Latinx and Asian communities—within schools, neighborhoods, and transnational networks—navigate the tensions between inclusion and erasure of Blackness in the broader racial imaginary? Ultimately, this volume is both critique and invitation. It challenges readers to: confront how anti-Blackness is reproduced in everyday practices and institutional structures; to reckon with the privileges and harms tied to racialized positioning; and to imagine relational, historical, and spatial practices of accountability within / through / and among Latinx and Asian communities. By centering the voices of scholars and storytellers committed to racial justice, Asian and Latinx Anti-Blackness in Schools and Communities offers not only a sharper understanding of racial dynamics beyond the Black–white binary, the impact of the binary, but also concrete pathways toward dismantling anti-Blackness and building enduring, justice-oriented solidarity.

Moments & Movements: Counterstories for Critical Asian American+ Studies in Education is a collection of counterstories born from community and shared commitments to challenge the ways diverse diasporas and experiences of people from the Asian continent and the Pacific Ocean are largely made invisible, silenced, and erased. By defying reductionist narratives, the collection highlights stories built upon generations of struggle, resistance, advocacy, and joy, that impart wisdom for the current moment and for Asian American+ movements in the future, particularly movements based in education. The book’s topics, located at the nexus of multiple and interconnected fields, such as education, race/ethnic studies, policy and community studies, have broad appeal to a cross-section of university academics; P-12 teachers and leaders; and community educators and activists. Using the framing of Critical Asian American+ Studies, the chapters in this volume emphasize criticality as central to the work of educators committed to more just futures. The plus (+) symbol in “Asian American+” highlights the volume’s efforts at diverse inclusion and openness to various groups under a broad umbrella geographic category, including voices of various Pasifika, Arab and Middle Eastern communities, without eliding their distinct histories, cultures, politics, and experiences or erasing the tensions within and across the broader category of Asian American studies. The book is organized thematically into four sections that reflect key moments in an ongoing movement. This organization acknowledges that readers may be at different points in their journeys towards developing more critical perspectives or knowledge of Asian American, Arab/Middle Eastern American, and Pasifika peoples’ experiences in education. The first section, "The Moment We Begin", focuses on foundational beginnings, telling stories of how the authors made important first steps in creating the change they wished to see in their educational spheres. The second section, "Building an Inclusive Movement", examines how educators sustain and deepen their work within and outside of classrooms. The third section, "Extending the Movement", then looks at Critical Asian American+ Studies outside of classrooms and schools by attending to educational leadership, families and teacher identities, policy arenas, and educational, cultural, and community activism. Finally, in the fourth section, "Envisioning New Worlds", chapters attend to what justice-focused, future-oriented movements might look like for Critical Asian American+ Studies. All too often, critical community-grounded work can feel daunting. This collection pushes beyond prescribed borders that separate our communities and separate us into our own educational spheres (e.g. P-12, higher education, teacher education) and roles (professor, teacher, principal, student). As one of the few edited collections with such diverse perspectives, this collection provides multiple paths forward in Asian American, Arab/Middle Eastern American, and Pasifika Studies, inspires with its counterstories of struggle and success, and challenges readers to consider their own next steps.Perfect for courses such as: Asian Americans in Education; Critical Studies in Education; Multicultural Education/Sociocultural Foundations in Education; Ethnic Studies/Asian American Studies; Social Justice in Education; Critical Pedagogy and Education; Urban Education; Race, Ethnicity, and Education; Introduction to Education; School and Society