Dissertation on Chinese Christian home schooling available

Laura Li-Hua Sun has just completed her dissertation entitled DARE TO HOME SCHOOL: FAITH AND CULTURAL EXPERIENCES OF CHINESE CHRISTIAN MOTHERS (Biola University) and has made it available for the interested public. You can download it at these links:

http://www.geocities.com/sunl99/001__PreliminaryPages0522.pdf
http://www.geocities.com/sunl99/002_body.pdf

Call for Papers - East of California Asian American Studies Conference (Oct 1, 2007 deadline)

August 20, 2007

We're sending out a Call for Papers for EOC panels for the April 16-20, 2008 AAAS annual conference (to be held in Chicago, IL--please see the AAAS conference website, (http://www.aaastudies.org/index.tpl ). Attached is a description of the CFP (due date, Monday--Oct. 1), but we are also pasting it below (although the formatting may be off). Please forward to any interested parties and list serv--we'd like to see many new people come to AAAS and be part of EOC.

Best wishes,
East of California Caucus Co-Chairs
Jennifer Ho (UNC Chapel Hill) & Cathy Schlund-Vials (UCONN, Storrs)

======================

CFP: Annual Association of Asian American Studies Conference (AAAS)
Chicago, IL, April 16-20, 2008 [http://www.aaastudies.org/index.tpl]
East of California / Roundtables and Panels

Brief Overview:
Taking advantage of this year’s conference theme, “Where is the Heart of Asian America?: Troubling American Identity and Exceptionalism in an Age of Globalization and Imperialism” and location (Chicago, IL), the East of California caucus proposes two roundtables and two academic sessions that consider new directions for the field with regard to professionalization, further institutionalization, and academic practice. Mindful that Asian American Studies was founded on both theory and practice, the proposed roundtables and panels acknowledge the extent to which the field continues to grow and expand, particularly East of California.


“Centering the Margins: Revising and Re-envisioning East of California” (Roundtable)
Asian American Studies has historically been focused on work and scholarship in California. However, as the emergence of programs across the country suggests, geographic considerations of the field no longer adequately accommodate for the heterogeneity of scholarship in Asian American Studies. Nor does such a location – “east” of California – immediately enable conversations of the field outside of simple geographic designation. This roundtable brings together administrators, faculty, and graduate students whose work reflects the need for further dialogue about the future of Asian American Studies. What are struggles that exist on the institutional or programmatic level? What about the issue of resources and the often lack of resources with regard to faculty numbers and student demands? How do these struggles suggest a potential for a larger Ethnic Studies collaboration in various sites? Additionally, we are interested in hearing from scholars whose main field of inquiry may not be Asian American studies but who nonetheless have an academic and/or activist interest in Asian American issues and in teaching Asian American subjects.


“Surviving in Academia: From First Year Graduate Student to Tenured Faculty Member” (Roundtable)
This roundtable is focused on the multiple levels of professionalization that occur from the graduate to the post-graduate level. Given that the field has grown considerably and that positions and programs are in new locations, how does thinking in terms of East of California shift the conversation about professionalization? How does one select a program? What about the job market? How does one negotiate a postdoctoral position? What about the ever-pressing need to publish? How does one broker a contract or negotiate an often complicated terrain of politics and missions? The experiences of graduate students to tenured faculty will allow this roundtable to present shared knowledge as a means of negotiating and surviving Academia as Asian Americanists.


“Re-Centering Asian American Narratives” (Panel)
As reflected in the larger field of Asian American Studies, Asian American scholarship about narrative is often located on the West Coast. However, as demographic shifts occur with regard to APA populations, and as more and more Asian American bodies move to locations like the Midwest (and the South), what is the impact on cinematic or literary narrative between the two coasts? In other words, how do narratives that take place outside of both the West Coast and the Eastern Seaboard , M. Evelina Galang’s collection of stories set largely in Chicago, Her Wild American Self, Ruth Ozeki’s second novel set in Idaho, All Over Creation, Susan Choi’s The Foreign Student, which moves between Sewanee, TN, Korea, and Chicago, the newly released memoir by Bich Minh Nguyen, Stealing Buddha’s Dinner, set in Grand Rapids, Michigan, or films like Renee Tajima-Pena’s My America or Honk if You Love Buddha or the groundbreaking documentary by Tajima and Rea Tajiri Who Killed Vincent Chin? force a reconsideration of narrative that brings us as scholars and academics back to Lisa Lowe’s now famous assertion of heterogeneity, hybridity, and multiplicity? What is the unique shape of narratives that take place in the heartland, away from the coasts, and how does a repositioning of Asian American narratives influence our understanding of where Asian America exists?



“Alternative Spaces in Asian America” (Panel)
EOC was founded as an alternative space to discuss issues of Asian American studies outside of the West Coast. Similarly, the internet, with its proliferation of blogs, social sites like Facebook and MySpace, and a growth of on-line journals, has become yet another alternate space to discuss Asian American issues. This panel brings together scholars, activists, and intellectuals, whether formally trained or home grown, to discuss the internet as an alternative space to explore Asian American identity, epistemology, pedagogy, activism, and social networking. What are the limits to using different spaces (blogs, on-line journals, social networking sites) to explore Asian American identity? What are the pleasures, perils, and pitfalls of doing Asian American studies in these alternative spaces? How can “traditional” academics make effective use of the internet to engage with more “organic” intellectuals to promote social justice and change as well as to create networking across the blogosphere and internet communities?


Requirements for Submission:
*Roundtable
--1 page cv
--1 page outline for 5-7 minute remarks

*Panel
--1 page cv
--1 page abstract (250 words) for 15 minute paper/presentation

Please send electronic copies of all materials to both Cathy Schlund-Vials and Jennifer Ho by Monday, October 1, 2007.

SF Chronicle: Evangelicals Build Flock on UC Berkeley Campus

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/05/21/ASIANGOD.TMP

Monday, May 21, 2007

This article appeared on page B - 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle

UC BERKELEY
Evangelicals build flock on campus
At Cal, Christian groups find eager adherents among Asian American students
Vanessa Hua, Chronicle Staff Writer

The end-of-the-year mood in a classroom at UC Berkeley's Warren Hall was giddy as a crowd of mostly Asian American students watched a slide show of good times and candid shots and shared stories of intense pressure from their parents.

They weren't celebrating their culture, though. They were celebrating Christ.

"So here I am, all of me," the students sang. "Finally, everything. Wholly, wholly, wholly, I am wholly, wholly, wholly yours."

For three hours, they shared impassioned testimonies of faith and prayed for one another, laying hands in turn on each person receiving support. The graduating seniors passed down a 6-foot wooden cross for next year's senior leaders to keep in their apartment.

Asian Americans dominate evangelical Christian groups at UC Berkeley, far outstripping their share of enrollment, even as the number of Asian Americans on campus has grown markedly. The trend is visible to varying degrees at several of the nation's elite universities.

With this shift has come the realization by college ministries that faith is not always colorblind -- no matter the Christian ideal -- and that they should tailor their outreach to different communities instead of a one-size-fits-all approach.

"Our mission is to reach the whole campus, but you can't reach the whole campus in one particular way," said Paul Tokunaga, the national Asian American ministries coordinator for InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, which has been a leader in ethnic outreach. Founded in 1941, InterVarsity serves more than 35,000 students and faculty nationwide.

At Cal -- which now has among the highest Asian American attendance in the nation at 43 percent of undergraduates -- InterVarsity was predominantly white until the late 1980s. Within a couple of years, it became predominantly Asian American and now offers separate fellowships for Filipino, black and Latino members. The "multiethnic" fellowship is the largest, but its roughly 200 members are mostly East Asian, with a handful of white students and members of other races.

Many students attend Christians fellowships affiliated with their local churches instead of joining campus ministries, so it is hard to gauge the overall proportion of evangelical students attending UC Berkeley.

Attendance at weekly fellowships offered by InterVarsity and Campus Crusade for Christ -- large group sessions with singing and speakers and small groups for intimate Bible discussions -- isn't meant to replace going to church. But it enables worship during the week and offers a social network, which is important at large schools, where students seek subgroups to avoid feeling lost.

One night this spring, roughly 20 students in InterVarsity's new Ethnic Identity small group delved into Bible passages about Queen Esther, a Jew under Persian rule who must decide whether to speak for her people, who are facing genocide. One discussion led by senior Jon Akutagawa grew lively as the students started to relate to Esther's experience.

"Esther never revealed her ethnic identity," said Akutagawa, 21, a Japanese American with black-framed glasses and a modern take on Abe Lincoln's beard.

"Is it OK not to be fully open to whom we are to get ahead? Look at politics or economic power," he said. "Is it OK for us to choose to make more money?"

Joyce Lin, 21, said people sometimes tell her that she's their only Asian friend. The daughter of immigrants, she grew up in San Bruno and attended a Chinese Christian church. Most of her friends are Asian American. This year, when she began working as a physical trainer with the football team, which is mainly African American and white, she began hearing "that I'm actually really cool."

"I go out of my way to prove stereotypes are not how I act usually," Lin said.

Hatty Lee, 20, had a different take.

"Why should I have to feel what I do represents my race?" asked Lee, who grew up in Los Angeles. "I am who God made me to be.

"I don't represent Korean Americans, I represent God," said the slender South Korea native, who plans to major in music and psychology.

The magazine Christianity Today dubbed the trend "the tiger in the academy," saying "Asian students are more likely to show Christian commitment" than other ethnic groups, including white students.

It is hard to back up such a generalization because very small proportions of students on any given campus join student fellowships. But Collin Tomikawa, an InterVarsity official for the East Bay, said evangelical groups could attract many more Asian Americans.

"We're only touching the tip of the Asians," he said.

Tomikawa said the group has tried to diversify its staff, hoping to make prospective members from all ethnic backgrounds feel welcome. But as students recruit their friends to join, many evangelical groups have found they are continuing to attract a disproportionately Asian American membership, he and others said. And some members of other ethnicities and races have responded by seeking fellowship elsewhere.

But senior Heather Brent, one of a scattering of white students at the year-end celebration at Warren Hall this month, said she learned about herself by joining the multiethnic fellowship.

"It took a long time for me, learning what it means to be white and about white privilege. I grew up thinking you should be colorblind," Brent said. "Now, I think, 'Be educated on who you are.' "

Evangelical groups have consistently appealed to Asian Americans because Asians often share common values, despite coming from different ethnicities, said Russell Jeung, an assistant professor of Asian American Studies at San Francisco State University.

"Because Asians have a hard work ethic, they need to work to experience grace," he said. "They try to earn God's favor, just like they earn a parent's approval."

Asian Americans may also be drawn to evangelical groups because they are more accustomed than other students to identifying with a group rather than seeing themselves foremost as individuals, said Tommy Dyo, former leader of the Asian American Christian Fellowship, a national evangelical organization. He now heads the Asian American ministry for Campus Crusade for Christ.

"A lot of what we are taught in general society is that it's very individual, that it's all you," Dyo said. "But Asian Americans are attached to the greater whole."

That collective sense often stems from Asian Americans' relationship with their parents, leaders said. Christie Heller De Leon explained the pressure of parental expectations in a speech at InterVarsity's most recent Asian American conference, held the same weekend as ethnic-specific get-togethers for black, Latino, multiracial and white students in Northern California.

"Our parents have been dreaming about us since we were in the womb," said De Leon, a Filipina and a staff leader at UC Davis. "Dreams full of blessings and happiness. Yet sometimes the dream is so specific it feels like a script, handed down, ready for us, already written and ready for us to step into the role."

God's love is different, they say.

"You receive the blessing before you've done anything good," De Leon said. "Despite anything bad that you have done."

Through Cal's InterVarsity, 20-year-old Jianni Xin said she has explored her ethnic identity as an Asian American Christian. Though many in the fellowship were raised in Christian families, Xin and others contend with parents who do not understand their faith.

Her mother, a Chinese immigrant, thinks Xin should seek blessings from her grandmother and believes Christianity is taking Xin from her family.

"She's a really traditional woman. In China, she didn't know of any Christians there. I guess she wants me to focus on my studies," said Xin, 20, a sophomore from San Francisco. "She thinks I'm dating God."

Reflecting on the year, InterVarsity leader Akutagawa said the ethnic identity group struggled with understanding what "gifts or heritage" that Asian Americans offer, compared with white and black churches.

"We tried to understand how we as Asian Americans contribute to the spiritual backdrop of America," said Akutagawa, a bioengineering major who grew up in Southern California. "There's still not a definite answer. We're trying to figure out who we are in America, how we fit in, and what things we can bring to the culture here."

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Campus fellowships

It is difficult to compare the membership in evangelical Christian fellowships at different schools because they are not organized in the same manner. But InterVarsity fellowships at private elite schools and large state schools across the country began to experience "Asianization" in the early 1990s, said Collin Tomikawa, an InterVarsity area director for the East Bay.

By 2006, InterVarsity's 205-member multiethnic fellowship at UC Berkeley was 80 percent Asian American (while the campus was 43 percent Asian American). And the Campus Crusade for Christ chapter's 125-member multiethnic ministry was more than 60 percent Asian American, and its Korean ministry had 75 members.

At Stanford in 2006, Asian Americans accounted for roughly 40 percent of InterVarsity members but only 25 percent of undergrads. At UC Davis, Asian Americans are about 40 percent of the fellowship and of enrollment. At UC Santa Cruz, they account for one-third of InterVarsity and about 20 percent of students overall. MIT's and Harvard's InterVarsity fellowships each have significant Asian American memberships, too.

In contrast, at San Francisco State University, the 75-member InterVarsity chapter had nine Asian American members in 2006, even though Asian Americans account for one-third of the campus's undergrads.

-- Vanessa Hua

© 2007 Hearst Communications Inc

NATIONAL CONFERENCE (June 9, 2007): "Rise of Korean American Studies: 15 Years after the 1992 Los Angeles Civil Unrest"

The UCLA Asian American Studies Center cordially invites you to attend . . .

Rise of Korean American Studies:
15 Years after the 1992 Los Angeles Civil Unrest

Saturday, June 9, 2007
9:00 AM- 4:30 PM
Viewpoint Conference Room, Ackerman Student Union, "A" Level, UCLA Campus.

Free and Open to the Public
Please pre-register and reserve a free lunch via email or by phone (310.825.2974). Park in Lot 6 (next to Pauley Pavilion), $8/day

An Invitation

We would like to convene a conference on the status of Korean American Studies in order to commemorate the 1992 unrest. This national conference will be the third one commemorating the 1992 Los Angeles Civil Unrest. We propose to critically reflect on what kinds of knowledge have been produced about Korean Americans. Its main objective is to discuss the status of the field, to clarify the mission of Korean American Studies, to share our strategies, and our vision. We would also like to invite you to share your assessment of the field, strategy, or vision. In addition, we would like to come together to mourn the victims of the Virginia Tech shootings and offer condolences to their families and friends. Korean American community leaders and ordinary Korean immigrants on the street have taken it upon themselves to apologize for the actions of gunman Seung Hui Cho, citing a sense of collective guilt and shame simply by virtue of a shared ethnicity. We would like to reflect on how the Korean American community coped with the enormity of this horrific event, beyond concerns about a racial backlash.

9:00- 9:30 Registration

9:30-10:00 Welcoming Remarks

10:00- 11:00 Session I: Humanities
Moderator/Discussant: Grace Hong (UCLA)
Discussants: Elaine Kim (UC Berkeley), Laura Kang (UC Irvine),
Ji-Yeon Yuh (Northwestern University)

Break (10 min)

11 :10- 12 :10 Session II: Social Sciences
Moderator: Kyeyoung Park (UCLA)
Discussants: John SW Park (University of California, Santa Barbara), Pyong Gap
Min (Queens College and the Graduate Center, CUNY),
Jung-Sun Park (California State University, Dominguez Hills)

12:10- 1:10 Session III (over lunch): Community-Based Research
Moderator: Ailee Moon (UCLA)
Discussants: Eun Sook Lee (National Korean American Service & Education
Consortium - NAKASEC), Hae Jung Cho (Koreatown Youth and
Community Center - KYCC), (Asian Pacific Counseling and Treatment Center)

Break (10 min)

1: 20- 2:20 Session IV: Asian Americanists
Moderator/Discussant: Lane Hirabayashi (UCLA)
Discussants: Min Zhou (UCLA), Purnima Mankekar (UCLA),
L.M. San Pablo Burns (UCLA)

Break (10 min)

2:30- 3:30: Plenary Session: Korean American Studies Programs and Activities
Moderator: Elaine Kim (UC Berkeley)
Discussants: Edward T. Chang (UC Riverside), Hyojoung Kim (California State
University, Los Angeles), Kyeyoung Park (UCLA),
Jeongduk Yi (Chonbuk National University, Korea)

--
Don T. Nakanishi, Ph.D.
Director and Professor
UCLA Asian American Studies Center
3230 Campbell Hall
PO Box 951546
Los Angeles, CA 90095-1546
phone: (310) 825-2974
fax: (310) 206-9844
e-mail Dr. Nakanishi
Please visit the Center's web site: www.sscnet.ucla.edu/aasc

Conference on Local Cultures and the Global Church (Notre Dame, Indiana, June 24-27, 2007)

From: H-Net Announcements:

Local Cultures/Global Church: Challenges and Mission in the History of Women Religious, June 24-27, 2007

This conference explores women's missionary work in Asia, Africa, Australia, Latin America, work among diverse groups in the United States and Europe as well as the challenges of cultural diversity within communities. Papers address aspects of women's and gender history, history of religions, cultural history, peace history and the history of the global connections of citizens and residents of the United States. Keynote speakers Angelyn Dries, St. Louis University, will speak on "Women Religious: Mission and World Christianity," and Meg Guider, Weston Jesuit School of Theology, will speak on "Mission in the Americas: The Challenge of Reciprocity." The NGOMA group, a Chicago ensemble of nine musicians, will provide a musical journey through African-American history. Scholars and the general public are welcome to participate.

Kathleen Cummings
University of Notre Dame
1135 Flanner Hall
Notre Dame, IN 46556
Phone 574-631-8749
Email: cushwa.1_AT_nd_DOT_edu
Visit the website at http://www.nd.edu/~cushwa

Call for Papers: Asian Americans and the New South

Call for Papers:

Asian Americans and the New South (University of Georgia Press)
Edited by Khyati Y. Joshi and Jigna Desai

Description

The American South has a rich and vibrant tapestry of longstanding Asian American communities as well as exponentially growing recent ones. In addition to the historical presence of Asian Americans for the last two centuries (e.g., Chinese Americans in Mississippi and Filipino Americans in New Orleans), geographically diverse areas including Atlanta, the Research Triangle (Chapel Hill, Raleigh -Durham), New Orleans, Orlando and Nashville, have also become sites of recent immigration and internal migration. In an attempt to recognize and reckon with these historical and emerging minority communities, scholarly fields are beginning to map these unique histories, new communities, and the South's changing racial formations. This interdisciplinary anthology seeks to bring together essays that touch upon a wide-ranging number of topics that reflect the breadth and depth of the Asian American presence in the South. Historical perspectives on Asian Americans in the South. Contributions will be sought for an anthology exploring the historical, political, cultural, social, and/or economic issues associated with Asian Americans in the South. We would be interested in manuscripts that examine any of the following:

• Historical Perspectives on Asian Americans in the American South
• Asian American Religious Communities
• Past and emerging AA racial formations
• The South as regional and transnational crossroads
• Interethnic and panethnic relations among Asian Americans
• Multiracial and interracial relations
• Katrina and its consequences
• Education
• Social movements in the South
• Labor, class and social organizing
• Internal migration or transnationalism
• Public health, illness and/or the body
• Gender & Sexuality
• Policies, politics, and/or politicians in Asian American communities
• The impact of organizing around current immigration policies
• Past and emerging AA racial formations
• Second and third generation identities

Timetable:

Abstracts Due: 06.01.07

Final Drafts Due: 11.15.07

Manuscript Length: 6000-8000 words

For more information contact:

• Khyati Y. Joshi, Assistant Professor, School of Education, Fairleigh Dickinson University * khyati-AT-fdu-DOT-edu
• Jigna Desai, Associate Professor, Women's Studies & Director, Asian American Studies Program, University of Minnesota * desai003-AT-umn-DOT-edu

Khyati Y. Joshi
Assistant Professor
School of Education
Fairleigh Dickinson University
Teaneck, NJ 07666
v-201.692.2826
f-201.692.2603

2007 statistical portrait of APNA populations

The UCLA Asian American Studies Center, as an official U.S. Census Information Center (as a co-partner with National Coalition for Asian Pacific Community Development), is pleased to provide this 2007 statistical portrait of the Asian American and Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander populations produced by the US Census Bureau for Asian Pacific American Heritage Month, which will take place in May, 2007. The portrait provides current census data, population projections, and internet links that should be useful for research, planning, writing and general educational purposes. Please see the "Editor's note" at the end of this announcement for more information. The first section provides information on "Asians," while the second part highlights "Native Hawaiians and Other Pacific Islanders".

Asians

14.4 million
The estimated number of U.S. residents in July 2005 who said they were Asian or Asian in combination with one or more other races. This group comprised about 5 percent of the total population. California had the largest population (4.9 million) of people of this group. <http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/releases/archives/population/006808.html>

<http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/releases/archives/population/007263.html>

3%
Percentage growth of the Asian population between 2004 and 2005, the highest of any race group during that time period. The increase in the Asian population over the period totaled 421,000. <http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/releases/archives/population/006808.html>

3.3 million
Number of Asians of Chinese descent. Chinese-Americans are the largest Asian detailed group, followed by Filipinos (2.8 million), Asian Indians (2.5 million), Vietnamese (1.5 million), Koreans (1.4 million) and Japanese (1.2 million). These estimates represent the number of people who are either of a particular detailed group only or are of that group in combination with one or more other Asian detailed groups or races. (Source: 2005 American Community Survey)

Education

49%
The percentage of single-race Asians 25 and older who have a bachelor's degree or higher level of education. This compares to 27 percent for all people 25 and older. (Source: 2005 American Community Survey)

86%
The percentage of single-race Asians 25 and older who have at least a high school diploma. This compares to 84 percent for all people 25 and older. (Source: 2005 American Community Survey)

20%
The percentage of single-race Asians 25 and older who have a graduate or professional degree (e.g., master's or doctorate). This compares with 10 percent for all people 25 and older. (Source: 2005 American Community Survey)

The Asian population comprises many groups who differ in languages spoken, culture and length of residence in the United States. This is reflected in the demographic characteristics of these groups. For instance, 68 percent of Asian Indians 25 and older had a bachelor's degree or more education, and 36 percent had a graduate or professional degree. The corresponding numbers for Vietnamese-Americans were 26 percent and 7 percent, respectively.
(Source: 2005 American Community Survey)

Income, Poverty and Health Insurance

$61,094
Median household income for single-race Asians in 2005, the highest among all race groups.
<http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/releases/archives/income_wealth/007419.html>

Median household income differed greatly by Asian group. For Asian Indians, for example, the median income in 2005 was $73,575; for Vietnamese-Americans, it was $50,925. (Source: 2005 American Community Survey)

11.1%
Poverty rate for single-race Asians in 2005, up from 9.8 percent in 2004. <http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/releases/archives/income_wealth/007419.html>

17.9%
Percentage of single-race Asians without health insurance coverage in 2005, up from
16.5 percent in 2004.
<http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/releases/archives/income_wealth/007419.html>

Businesses

Source for the statements referenced in this section, unless otherwise indicated:
<http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/releases/archives/business_ownership/006814.html>

1.1 million
Number of businesses owned by Asian-Americans in 2002, up 24 percent from 1997. The rate of increase in the number of Asian-owned businesses was about twice that of the national average for all businesses.

More than $326 billion
Receipts of Asian-American-owned businesses in 2002, up 8 percent from 1997. An estimated 319,468 Asian-owned businesses had paid employees, and their receipts totaled more than
$291 billion. There were 49,636 Asian-owned firms with receipts of $1 million or more, accounting for 4.5 percent of the total number of Asian-owned firms and nearly 68 percent of their total receipts.


In 2002, more than three in 10 Asian-owned firms operated in professional, scientific and technical services, as well as other services such as personal services, and repair and maintenance.

2.2 million
Number of people employed by an Asian-owned business. There were 1,866 Asian-owned firms with 100 or more employees, generating nearly $52 billion in gross receipts (18 percent of the total revenue for Asian-owned employer firms).

46%
Percentage of all Asian-owned firms that were either Chinese-owned or Asian Indian-owned.

Nearly 6 in 10
Proportion of all Asian-owned firms in the United States that were in California, New York, Texas and New Jersey.

New York, Los Angeles, Honolulu and San Francisco Cities with the highest number of Asian-owned firms.

1 in 3
Proportion of Asian-owned businesses that were home-based. This is the lowest proportion for any minority group. <http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/releases/archives/business_ownership/007537.html>

Languages

2.3 million
The number of people 5 and older who speak Chinese at home. After Spanish, Chinese is the most widely spoken non-English language in the country. Tagalog and Vietnamese have more than 1 million speakers each. (Source: 2005 American Community Survey)

Serving Our Nation

293,321
The number of single-race Asian-American military veterans. About one in three was 65 and older. (Source: 2005 American Community Survey)

Jobs

47%
The proportion of civilian employed single-race Asians 16 and older who work in management, professional and related occupations, such as financial managers, engineers, teachers and registered nurses. Additionally, 23 percent work in sales and office occupations, 15 percent in service occupations and 11 percent in production, transportation and material moving occupations. (Source: 2005 American Community Survey)

Counties

1.4 million
The number of Asians (alone or in combination with one or more other races) in Los Angeles County, Calif., in 2005, which tops the nation's counties. <http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/releases/archives/population/007263.html>

Age Distribution

35.1
Median age, in years, of the single-race Asian population in 2005. This is younger than the corresponding figure of 36.4 years for the population as a whole. (Source: 2005 American Community Survey)

The Future

33.4 million
The projected number of U.S. residents in 2050 who will identify themselves as single-race Asians. They would comprise 8 percent of the total population by that year.
<http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/releases/archives/population/001720.html>

213%
The projected percentage increase between 2000 and 2050 in the population of people who identify themselves as single-race Asian. This compares with a 49 percent increase in the population as a whole over the same period of time.
<http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/releases/archives/population/001720.html>

Native Hawaiians and Other Pacific Islanders

990,000
The estimated number of U.S. residents in July 2005 who said they are Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander, or Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander in combination with one or more other races. This group comprised 0.3 percent of the total population. There were 282,000 Native Hawaiians or Other Pacific Islanders in Hawaii, which led all states.
<http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/releases/archives/population/006808.html>

<http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/releases/archives/population/007263.html>

1.5%
Percentage growth of the Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander population between
2004 and 2005, the highest of any race group except for Asians. <http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/releases/archives/population/006808.html>

Education

15%
The percentage of single-race Native Hawaiians and Other Pacific Islanders 25 and older who have at least a bachelor's degree. This compares with 27 percent for the total population this age. (Source: 2005 American Community Survey)

83%
The percentage of single-race Native Hawaiians and Other Pacific Islanders 25 and older who have at least a high school diploma. This compares with 84 percent for the total population this age. (These two percentages are not significantly different from one another.) (Source: 2005 American Community Survey)

4%
The percentage of single-race Native Hawaiians and Other Pacific Islanders 25 and older who have obtained a graduate or professional degree. This compares with 10 percent for the total population this age. (Source: 2005 American Community Survey)

Income, Poverty and Health Insurance

$54,318
The three-year average (2003-2005) median income of households whose householders reported their race as Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander but did not report any other race. <http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/releases/archives/income_wealth/007419.html>

12.2%
The three-year average (2003-2005) poverty rate for those who reported their race as Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander but did not report any other race.
<http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/releases/archives/income_wealth/007419.html>

21.8%
The three-year average (2003-2005) percentage without health insurance for those who reported their race as Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander but did not report any other race.
<http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/releases/archives/income_wealth/007419.html>

Businesses

Source for the statements referenced in this section: <http://www.census.gov/Press-Release/www/releases/archives/business_ownership/007092.html>

28,948
Number of Native Hawaiian- and Other Pacific Islander-owned businesses in 2002, up 49 percent from 1997. The rate of growth was more than three times the national average. The 3,693 Native Hawaiian- and Other Pacific Islander-owned businesses with paid employees employed more than 29,000 and generated revenues of $3.5 billion.

2,415
Number of Native Hawaiian- and Other Pacific Islander-owned firms in Honolulu alone. Honolulu led the nation.

$4.3 billion
Receipts for Native Hawaiian- and Other Pacific Islander-owned businesses in 2002, up 3 percent from 1997. There were 727 Native Hawaiian- and Other Pacific Islander-owned firms with receipts of $1 million or more. These firms accounted for 2.5 percent of the total number of Native Hawaiian- and Other Pacific Islander-owned firms and 66.8 percent of their total receipts.

In 2002, nearly 21,000 Native Hawaiian- and Other Pacific Islander-owned firms operated in health care and social assistance; other services (such as personal services, and repair and maintenance); retail trade; administrative and support, and waste management and remediation services; professional, scientific and technical services; and construction.

28
Number of Native Hawaiian- and Other Pacific Islander-owned firms with 100 or more employees. These firms generated $698 million in gross receipts - 19.9 percent of the total revenue for Native Hawaiian- and Other Pacific Islander-owned employer firms.

53%
Percentage of all Native Hawaiian- and Other Pacific Islander-owned firms in Hawaii or California. These two states accounted for 62 percent of business revenue.

Serving Our Nation

28,084
The number of single-race Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander military veterans. One in five was 65 and older. (Source: 2005 American Community Survey)

Jobs

23%
The proportion of civilian employed single-race Native Hawaiians and Other Pacific Islanders 16 and older who work in management, professional and related occupations, such as financial managers, engineers, teachers and registered nurses. Meanwhile, 30 percent work in sales and office occupations, 22 percent in service occupations and 15 percent in production, transportation and material moving occupations. (The percentages for management, professional and related occupations and service occupations are not statistically different.) (Source: 2005 American Community

Age Distribution

30.6
The median age of the single-race Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islander population in 2005, much younger than the median age of 36.4 for the population as a whole. (Source: 2005 American Community Survey)

Note: American Community Survey estimates are based on the population of one race only and do not include those living in group quarters.

--
Don T. Nakanishi, Ph.D.
Director and Professor
UCLA Asian American Studies Center
3230 Campbell Hall
PO Box 951546
Los Angeles, CA 90095-1546
phone: (310) 825-2974
fax: (310) 206-9844
e-mail: dtn-at-ucla-dot-edu
Please visit the Center's web site: www.sscnet.ucla.edu/aasc

Book Review _ Immigrant Faiths

H-NET BOOK REVIEW
Published by H-AmstdyATh-net.msuDOTedu (February, 2007)

Karen I. Leonard, Alex Stepick, Manuel A. Vasquez, and Jennifer Holdaway, eds. Immigrant Faiths: Transforming Religious Life in America. Lanham: AltaMira Press, 2005. 259 pp. Notes, bibliography, index. $59.00 (cloth), ISBN 978-0-7591-0816-5.

Reviewed for H-Amstdy by Jodi Eichler-Levine, Department of Religion, Columbia University.

Crossing National and Religious Boundaries

Ironically, Immigrant Faiths: Transforming Religious Life in America, an excellent anthology that presents many new models for studying religion and migration in America, displays one of the most classically flawed conceptualizations of "religion" in its title: with the prominence of the term "faiths," its front cover reiterates the traditional nineteenth-century Protestant focus on religion as that which is believed, a conceptualization that has long since been critiqued, not least by many of the scholars writing within this volume itself. Nonetheless, Immigrant Faiths provides a collection of rich case studies on the dynamics of migration and religious life in the United States. The essays, which come from a range of disciplines including history, sociology, and religious studies, make up a volume that represents work affiliated with the International Migration Program of the Social Science Research Council.

The collection is framed by an introduction from editor Karen Leonard and by broad essays from two of the volume's other editors, both of whom attempt to assess the state of the field. The opening piece, by anthropologist Alex Stepick, examines how religious issues have affected migration studies, while the closing essay, by religionist Manuel A. Vasquez, assesses how the question of migration has influenced scholars in religious studies; the two studies complement well.

The book's main body of essays represents a wide variety of work. Chapters by Derek Chang and Danielle Brune Sigler bring an historical angle to the project as a whole. Chang's piece, on American Baptist Home Missions among Chinese immigrants and ex-slaves in the late nineteenth century, examines the overlap of civic and religious discourse in the group's activities. Similarly, Sigler addresses complexities of race, religion, and leadership in her biographical study of Charles Manuel "Sweet Daddy" Grace, an immigrant from Cape Verde who founded the Holiness-influenced United House of Prayer for All People.

Transnationalism is another major theme of the volume; it receives strong treatment in Kenneth J. Guest's "Religion and Transnational Migration in the New Chinatown," which chronicles how religious communities are part of the complex ways that recent Fuzhounese immigrants in New York relate to their new daily life in America and to their home villages in China.

Although some of the volume's contributors make a point of unpacking the idea of "religion," such discussions could have been more nuanced. Stepick, for example, argues that Nietzsche is "dead wrong today, at least for immigrants" (p. 11), an observation that is not really news in religious studies; indeed, as Leonard notes in the introduction, one of the goals of this anthology was to move beyond traditional Western conceptions of religion, taking into account the general demise of the "secularism" hypothesis. For the most part, the volume succeeds in this area; in particular, Ronald Nakasone and Susan Sered's essay, "Ritual Transformations in Okinawan Immigrant Communities" attends to rich complications in the identities of Okinawan immigrants and argues against faith-oriented conceptions of religion. Similarly, Guest notes that the practices of Fuzhounese immigrants cannot easily be reduced to any singular tradition (p. 150). Even Nakasone and Sered, however, rely upon somewhat older literature in their overt theorizing of religion. It would be interesting to see how various essays in this volume might work in conversation with Thomas Tweed's Crossing and Dwelling: A Theory of Religion (2006), which was published after Immigrant Faiths went to press.

Another way in which this volume moves beyond older paradigms of religious studies is in its attention to domestic religion and to other non-congregational instances of lived religion. Pyong Gap Min's "Religion and the Maintenance of Ethnicity among Immigrants: A Comparison of Indian Hindus and Korean Protestants" is particularly strong in this area; similarly, in "The Protestant Ethic and the Dis-Spirit of Vodou," Karen Richman examines the nuanced varieties of religious practice among the Haitians of Palm Bach country, including "performance events" centered around cassette players with recorded "letters"; she notes how "creative uses of cassette tape and video recorders have resulted in a reconfiguration of the boundaries of the ritual performance space, allowing immigrants to continue to serve their spirits back home" (p. 175).

At the same time, there is plenty of attention to more public religious practices, including Marie Friedmann Marquardt's "Structural and Cultural Hybrids: Religious Congregational Life and Public Participation of Mexicans in the New South" and Thomas J. Douglas's "Changing Religious Practices among Cambodian Immigrants in Long Beach and Seattle." The overlaps of civic and religious life emerge throughout the book, as in Marquardt's description of a "human-sized paper mache replica of the Statue of Liberty with a huge red question mark wrapped around its body" (p. 198), which had been made and used by one congregation's youth in public protests; this anecdote illustrates the question of how immigrants' religious identities are performed in the public square, and how their identities as Americans are performed within church buildings. Questions of civic life and national (or transnational) identities were thus a recurring theme, one that was highlighted in the volume's framing essays and that should come to the fore more explicitly in future work in this field, particularly in light of the major protests concerning U.S. immigration policy in May 2006, and given the continuing post-9/11 challenges facing many immigrant communities.

As other reviewers have noted and as Leonard acknowledges, it is unfortunate that the book does not contain any case studies on Muslim immigrants.[1] Likewise, although this was specifically a volume tilted towards the "new" religious communities entering America, more transhistorical comparisons with studies of Jewish, Irish, Italian, and other earlier waves of immigration would have provided a deeper conversation. A few of the book's authors, notably Stepick and Min, do employ such comparisons, to good effect.

Some of the ground not covered here has already been taken up in Religion and Immigration: Christian, Jewish, and Muslim Experiences in the United States (2003), edited by Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad, Jane I. Smith, and John L. Esposito, also published by Alta Mira Press; these two volumes might complement one another well in a classroom setting. Similarly, Making Muslim Space in North America and Europe (1996), edited by Barbara Daly Metcalf, provides strong work on the Muslims who are missing from this volume. Overall, Immigrant Faiths is a valuable and timely collection of essays, with nuanced case studies and assessments of the flexibilities and complications of immigrant religions; it will be useful in the classroom and the library alike for scholars of religion, migration, and American Studies.

Note

[1]. Sarah Stohlman, review of Immigrant Faiths: Transforming Religious Life in America, ed. Karen L. Leonard et al., Sociology of Religion 6.3 (2006): 334.


Copyright (c) 2007 by H-Net, all rights reserved. H-Net permits the redistribution and reprinting of this work for nonprofit, educational purposes, with full and accurate attribution to the author, web location, date of publication, originating list, and H-Net: Humanities & Social Sciences Online. For any other proposed use, contact the Reviews editorial staff at hbooksATmail.h-net.msuDOTedu.

Book Review _ Consuming Citizenship: Children of Asian Immigrant Entrepreneurs

H-NET BOOK REVIEW
Published by H-ChildhoodATh-net.msuDOTedu (December, 2006)

Lisa Sun-Hee Park. Consuming Citizenship: Children of Asian Immigrant Entrepreneurs. Asian America Series. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2005. xii + 169 pp. Tables, notes, bibliography, index. $19.95 (paper), ISBN 978-0-8047-5248-0.

Reviewed for H-Childhood by Melissa R. Klapper, Department of History, Rowan University.

Status and Sacrifice

Lisa Sun-Hee Park's sociological study of the children of Chinese American and Korean American immigrant small-business owners takes as its departure point the challenge facing second generation members of the "model minority." While they are expected by both their families and American social imperatives to acculturate into "good Americans," both their families' cultural and economic structures and an unstated yet still deeply felt American racism make such acculturation difficult to secure. Park argues that Chinese and Korean American children resolve this conflict through consumption of American cultural prescriptions for achievement as well as material goods. They attempt to secure social citizenship by following injunctions to work hard, to parlay advanced education into economic security, and to purchase markers of upward mobility that can be publicly displayed, such as luxury cars and homes. Only this kind of outcome can repay their parents' many sacrifices and demonstrate their claim to the American success story.

In order to explore the experiences of Korean and Chinese American children of immigrant entrepreneurs, Park conducted a series of in-depth interviews with more than one hundred adolescents and young adults and their families. She visited her subjects in their homes and workplaces, visiting several different regions of the United States. All the families she investigated were beneficiaries of the post-1965 U.S. immigration reforms that for the first time in decades allowed significant migration from Asia. The majority of the adolescents and young adults grew up in families that owned small businesses. These businesses functioned as the economic, social, and familial focal points of their lives. Park convincingly demonstrates the critical role played by family businesses in the experiences of her subjects. As a result of their parents' entrepreneurship, Chinese and Korean American young people began to work early, spent little time with their families outside their places of business, and served as literal and figurative translators for their parents. They also developed commitments to repaying their parents both by surpassing them in educational and economic achievement and by buying them goods that would make their sacrifices appear worthwhile.

The theme of sacrifice appears repeatedly in this study. Virtually everyone Park interviewed referred to his/her parents' sacrifices in making the difficult decision to migrate, working so hard, and, in some cases, giving up professional accomplishment in Korea or China to secure a better future for their children. In one interesting chapter, Park explores the ways in which the children recast their parents' migration narratives into an American mold by adopting familiar elements of rags-to-riches stories or Western tales of rugged, iconoclastic heroes. Yet there are other sacrifices as well, though possibly not as apparent to the people Park interviewed. It seems that many Chinese and Korean American young people feel such an obligation to repay their parents that they sacrifice their own dreams and desires. Nearly all the interview subjects had either gone into medicine, law, and business or were preparing to do so; these were the professions they assumed would have the greatest possible earning power and were therefore the only options open to them. Following their own interests at the expense of economic potential would disappoint their parents and inhibit their ability to repay them with either cultural or economic capital. As Park notes with a wink, "Apparently, it is not so impressive to tell the neighbors that your child decided to become a sociologist" (p. 110). Parental expectations clearly impose a kind of family discipline that some of the children could identify but few were willing to challenge, having been inculcated from the earliest ages that the ultimate success of their families would depend on their educational and economic achievement. Because many, though not all, of the subjects lived in tightly knit ethnic neighborhoods, family discipline was further reinforced by the cultural expectations of the community. Park also argues that the label of "model minority" exerts its own influence, as the willingness of American society as a whole to accept Asian immigrants depends heavily on the same kind of educational and economic attainment that Chinese and Korean immigrant families require of their children.

Perhaps inevitably, the children have a mixed reaction to these expectations and particularly to the small businesses that are supposed to provide the launching pad for their success. Many resent having to work so many hours in family businesses, often at the expense of time spent with peers. They regret the fact that they have little family time outside the business and compare their own families unfavorably with the "American" families they encounter in the media. They cringe when they see their parents act in a servile manner to appease customers. Since relatively few of the businesses are very successful, though many are stable, they express astonishment that their parents continue working so hard for so little reward. On the other hand, many of the children, especially young adults who by going away to college achieved a measure of independence, acknowledge their parents' success in building businesses out of nothing. They point out that they did have family time at the businesses, though not the kind of leisurely family time they might have liked. Few seem troubled by the fact that they were not paid for their work in the family businesses, since they received allowances and money for whatever they needed. They openly admit to manipulating their parents by claiming they needed more time and money for school-related activities.

Park's explorations of this ambivalence highlight the most engaging part of the book, the voices of the Korean and Chinese children and young adults themselves. The book is peppered with quotes from the interviews, and by subtly focusing on a few people so that the reader comes to know these individuals, Park makes good use of what were clearly meaningful encounters between sociologist and subjects. This feature of the book is particularly important in enlisting the reader's confidence, since by her own admission Park did not seek a scientific sample of interview subjects. When Sky speaks at length about her adolescent experience of realizing she was the lone Asian amid her group of white friends (p. 50), or when Robert confesses his near panic at his parents' dreams of retirement, which include his marriage to their best friends' daughter and all of them moving into a big house together that Robert's good job will enable him to purchase (pp. 125-126), the book comes alive. There are enough similarities among the various narratives sampled throughout the book to help support Park's conclusions about the family structures and coming of age experiences of the children of immigrant entrepreneurs.

Where the book is somewhat less successful is in the application of a variety of social theories to lived experience. Park wants to make connections between social citizenship and consumption, but it is never entirely clear how these theoretical categories relate to the experiences she describes. For example, although she demonstrates that Korean and Chinese children seek high status, high-paying careers, the extended metaphor she employs about immigrant children "consuming" a particular brand of the American dream falls flat. It may be that the relative brevity of the book prevents her from exploring the theoretical basis of her project; as it is, though, the book suffers from some of the usual problems of lightly revised dissertations in insisting on a theoretical overlay that does not add as much as it could to what is certainly an interesting topic within the sociology of immigration.

Still, there is a great deal of interest for historians of childhood and immigration in this book. Focusing on both Korean and Chinese populations allows Park to discuss the construction of an "Asian" identity, an issue that was also part of the experience of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century immigrants from Japan, China, and Korea. It is fascinating to speculate on the process by which the most feared and loathed populations of turn-of-the-century immigrants became models of achievement for post-1965 immigrants and immigration policy. All the conflicts over language, acculturation, education, and work that faced turn-of-the-century immigrant children resurface, though slightly altered, in the experiences of the children of Chinese and Korean immigrant entrepreneurs. The development of adolescence in the earlier part of the twentieth century was shaped in part by the experiences of immigrant children; by the late twentieth century, what Chinese and Korean young people resent most of all is the impingement of their family structure on their own experiences of adolescence. Then and now, constant cultural negotiation is a central feature of immigrant children's lives.

Copyright (c) 2006 by H-Net, all rights reserved. H-Net permits the redistribution and reprinting of this work for nonprofit, educational purposes, with full and accurate attribution to the author, web location, date of publication, originating list, and H-Net: Humanities & Social Sciences Online. For any other proposed use, contact the Reviews editorial staff at hbooksATmail.h-net.msuDOTedu.

UC Irvine seeks Part-Time Asian American Studies faculty

Part-time Non Senate Faculty
Department of Asian American Studies
University of California Irvine

The Department of Asian American Studies at the University of California Irvine invites applications for part-time Non Senate Faculty positions with primary responsibility in teaching upper division interdisciplinary courses in Asian American Studies for 2007-08. Minimum annual base salary is $39,096; appointments will be made at 37.5% for one course. Appointment date for Fall Quarter 10/02/07-12/31/07, Winter Quarter 2008 1/01/08-03/31/08, Spring Quarter 2008 4/1/08 to 6/30/08.

The applicants should demonstrate specialization in the following area of Asian American Studies:

Introduction to Asian American Studies
Filipino American Experience
Korean American Experience
Asian American Literature
Asian American Women
Asian American Education
Asian American Public Health
Asian American Public Policy
Asian American Selected Topics, e.g. Geography, Law, Urban & Regional Planning, Arts and Music

Applicants with a Ph.D. preferred. Applicants with an ABD or M.A. or equivalent will be considered. UC graduate students must have filed their dissertation or have a degree in hand by mid September 2007 to be eligible to teach Fall 07, mid December 2007 to be eligible to teach in Winter 08 and by mid March 2008 to be eligible to teach in Spring 08. Applicants must have a general understanding of the Asian American historical experience and specialization in a field that complements the existing Asian American Studies curriculum at UCI. Demonstrated ability to teach effectively on a culturally diverse campus and commitment to mentor multicultural students. Priority will be given to those with university teaching experience.

Asian American Studies at the University of California, Irvine offers a B.A. Degree in Asian American Studies, and undergraduate minor, and a graduate emphasis.

Send via e-mail to jfkurataATuciDOTedu followed by a hard copy of your application letter, curriculum vitae, teaching evaluations, sample syllabi and names and addresses of three references by June 1, 2007:

Steven Mailloux, Interim Chair
Department of Asian American Studies
University of California Irvine
300 Krieger Hall
Irvine, CA 92697-6900.

The University of California, Irvine is an equal opportunity employer committed to excellence through diversity and has an Advance Program for Faculty Equity and Diversity.

Asian Theological Summer Institute, May 29-June 3, 2007 (Philadelphia, PA)

The Asian Theological Summer Institute (ATSI) is a program of the Lutheran Theological Seminary at Philadelphia. ATSI is supported by the Henry Luce Foundation to encourage and promote "Asian Theological Studies" among Asians and Asian-Americans enrolled in theological education at the Ph.D and Th.D level in the United States. The Institute will function as an intensive doctoral level seminar and mentoring program. The Institute is bringing together well-known scholars and theologians to serve as instructors and mentors in themes related to Asian and Asian-American theology, hermeneutics, religious pluralism and post colonial studies.

The first ATSI is scheduled from May 29-June 3 in Philadelphia. Prof. Kwok Pui Lan, Prof. Andrew Sun Park, Prof. Eleazar Fernandez, Prof. R. S. Sugirtharajah and Prof. Paul Rajashekar will serve as instructors and mentors. The project has already received a good response from students and 15 students from diverse Asian cultural and linguistic backgrounds have been selected to participate. These doctoral students are studying in divinity schools and seminaries in the Eastern United States. More applications to participate in the program were received than anticipated. Those who could not get in this year will be invited for the second ATSI to be held in the summer of '08. A full report of the project will be shared with you later this summer. For more information you may contact Dr. Paul Rajashekar.

Symposium on Religion in China, July 13-15, 2007, Shanghai, China

FROM H-ASIA
April 4, 2007

This announcement below is for international scholars or scholars residing outside mainland China. Scholars in China should contact Professor Xiangping Li at Shanghai University.

Symposium on Religion in China, July 13-15, 2007, Shanghai, China

The Fourth International Symposium on the Social Scientific Study of Religion in China is to be held on July 13-15, 2007 at Shanghai University. The theme of the Symposium is "Religious identities, religious congregations, and social change." The keynote speakers include

Dr. Nancy T. Ammerman (Professor of Sociology at Boston University, USA);

Dr. Grace Davie (Professor of Sociology at the University of Exeter, UK).

Participation in the Symposium is open to international scholars across different disciplines (for example, sociology, anthropology, history, political science, and economics). We welcome all proposals for presentation in the social scientific study of religion. We especially welcome proposals about religious identities, local religious groups (congregations), religion and economy, and empirical studies of religion among the Chinese (Chinese societies and diasporas).

Please submit the title and a detailed abstract by April 30, 2007. Notification of inclusion on the program will be made by May 15, 2007. Registration deadline is June 1, 2007. The complete paper is due by July 1, 2007. Total registration fee is $200, which covers hotel and meals and a banquet during the symposium. Presentation may be in English or Chinese, and interpretation between Chinese and English will be provided for the presentations.

In conjunction, the Fourth Summer Institute for the Social Scientific Study of Religion will be held on July 16-27, 2007, at Shanghai University. The Summer Institute participants are scholars and graduate students at Chinese universities, who are to attend the Symposium as well.

Proposals for presentation should be e-mailed to Dr. Fenggang Yang. Requests for additional information may be sent to Dr. Yang through e-mail or by phone: 765-494-2641. For information of previous symposia and summer institutes, you may visit the WebPages at http://www.cla.purdue.edu/sociology/religion/

Fenggang Yang
Purdue University

Asian Pacific American Studies in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Arizona State University

JOB: 12 month Lecturer Position

Asian Pacific American Studies in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Arizona State University invites applications for a 12-month lecturer position on a renewable one-year contract.

Teaching load is 3/3/1/1 on a semester and dual summer session schedule. During the academic year, the lecturer will teach 2 lower division surveys, one upper division course, and supervise APAS certificate internships in the community, including local oral history projects.

Preference for candidates with teaching experience, especially in areas of Asian American and/or Pacific Islander studies and studies of race, ethnicity, and culture. Must possess a masters or graduate emphasis in Asian Pacific American Studies or Ethnic Studies. Starting salary 50K, plus benefits.

More information about the program may be found at http://www.asu.edu/clas/apas

Files that are submitted and complete by April 30, 2007 will be given full consideration. If not filled, applications will be reviewed every two weeks until the search is closed.

Please send letter of application, samples of syllabi including one for an Introduction to APAS, c.v., and three letters of reference to:

Asian Pacific American Studies Lecturer Search
Arizona State University
PO Box 874401
Tempe, AZ 85287-4401

Background check required upon hire. EOE/AA.

Korean Immigrant Nationalism lecture at University of Washington

Please join Korean American Historical Society in welcoming

Richard S. Kim, PhD.
"Diasporic Dilemmas: Korean Immigrant Nationalism and Transnational State-Building, 1903-1945"

A lecture on efforts undertaken by the Koreans in the United States to free their homeland from Japanese colonialism.

This event also marks a new start for KAHS in terms of leadership and organization.

Thursday, April 12 at 7:00 PM
University of Washington
Simpson Center for the Humanities,
Communications Bldg. Room 226

Richard Kim is Assistant Professor of Asian Asian American Studies at the University of California, Davis. He received his Ph.D. in History from the University of Michigan in 2002. He also obtained a M.A. in Asian American Studies from the University of California, Los Angeles. His research and teaching interests include Asian American history, Korean American Studies, U.S. immigration history, race and ethnicity, colonialism and nationalism, globalization, transnationalism, and diaspora. Professor Kim is currently working on a book manuscript on Korean immigrant nationalism and diasporic politics as well as a volume on Asian Americans in rural America. (http://asa.ucdavis.edu/faculty_kim.shtml)

Korean American Historical Society is dedicated to collecting, maintaining, and transmitting the heritage and achievements of Koreans living in the United States and abroad. For more information, see http://kahs.org/

Book Review _ The Illusion of Cultural Identity

H-NET BOOK REVIEW
Published by H-SAfrica@h-net.msu.edu (January, 2007)

Jean-Francois Bayart. The Illusion of Cultural Identity. Translated by Steven Rendall, Janet Roitman, Cynthia Schoch and Jonathan Derrick. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005. xiii + 303 pp. Notes, bibliography, index. No price listed (cloth), ISBN 978-0-226-03961-9.

Reviewed for H-SAfrica by Thomas Blaser, Department of Political Studies, School of Social Sciences, University of the Witwatersrand.

The End of Culture?

Jean-Francois Bayart has written an erudite and entertaining journey around the world in politics and culture that is pertinent to the contemporary politics of identity.[1] According to the author, this book summarizes the last three decades of his writings in which he was concerned with "the complex relationships between cultural representations and political practices, popular modes of political action, and the political imaginaire -- in short, ... 'politics from below' and 'political utterance'" (p. ix). Through this research agenda, Bayart pursues two main objectives. The first intends to do away with reified notions of culture and identity, as encountered in what he calls culturalism, which are at the root of violence and war. The second is an eloquent advocacy for a social science analysis that studies the social imaginary.

Bayart suggests culture does not have an inner core and so-called cultural identity does not lead to a corresponding political identity. Rather, political identities are political, ideological, and historical constructs. This is recognized as the dominant approach to the study of culture, known as constructivism, trumping primordial and instrumental approaches. Yet if we follow the political realities illustrated here, we can see how cultural representations are easily reified and used for political mobilization. This is particularly the case with Western Islamophobia, especially after September 11 and the disastrous war on terror. Bayart's analysis of modern Islam is a welcome antidote to the usual stereotypes encountered in Western media and academia. He also shows how little factual credibility underlines similar stereotypes about Asia, China, and Japan, and the "wonders" that Confucianism is supposed to have brought to the economic miracle of the Asian tigers.

The African continent suffered lethal consequences from a French (and Western) culturalist imaginaire. The belief in the existence of tribal identities and the explanation of politics with the particularities of African culture led to catastrophic policies fueling the Rwandan genocide. In breaking with such reifications of ethnicity, Bayart sets out to demonstrate that ethnicity is a modern phenomenon related to the colonial state. We are here very far from the myth of a perennial, traditional African culture which is at the heart of the culturalist argument and the political relativism that denies Africans access to the universal (p. 33). Instead, Bayart restores the universality of culture without celebrating the triumph of the enlightenment. Universality is for him the reinvention of difference and he remains critical of the culturalist discourse that restrains "concrete historical societies in a substantialist definition of their identity by denying them the right to borrow, to be derivative" (p. 245).

Bayart argues that culturalism commits three methodological errors. First, it assumes that culture is a corpus of representations that is stable over time when in fact culture oscillates between two forms: culture is the tradition that is transmitted and the irruptions and deviances that inflect new directions into cultures (p. 65). Second, culture is represented as a corpus that is closed in itself. Quite to the contrary, Bayart argues that culture is marked by a dialectic of permanence and change (p. 67). Third, culturalists claim that each culture demands a specific political orientation. However, Bayart makes it quite clear with his examples, drawn from politics around the world, that such "purity" has little factual basis. Rather, political cultures (as is manifest in popular culture and despite the claims of the proponents of invented traditions) incorporate foreign representations and practices (p. 68). Hence he claims that "traditional culture" does not exist--culture is "constantly being negotiated" (p. 30). As is the case with the emergence of invented traditions and imagined communities on the African continent, "colonized and colonizers often acted together, sometimes within the same institutions, the same intellectual currents, and the same beliefs, but most often with differing objectives, and almost always in the mode of a working misunderstanding" (p. 42). The nation, the tribe, and the village community is a myth, but they were the allegories around which the genesis of modernity was discussed (p. 47). The interactions between the colonizer and the colonized involved cultural operations that went beyond enclosed cultures.

The study of these cultural operations is facilitated by an analysis of political performance, as is made visible in utterance or enunciation. The reception of cultural phenomena, ideologies, and institutions contribute to the formation of these very same utterances and enunciations. In the act of enunciation, actions are reshaped because "to espouse a cultural representation is ipso facto to recreate it" (p. 110). The cultural heterogeneity of political societies appears in the variety of "discursive genres" of politics. These discursive genres not only include discourse but also gestures, music, and clothing (p. 110). Bayart encourages his colleagues to study the cultural reasons for political action, instead of analyzing political cultures (p. 121). As an example, he points to beliefs in the invisible, like witchcraft, that are African cultural practices and argues that they enable Africans to reinvent their difference in a globalizing world and thereby allow them to accede to universality (p. 131). I am not sure if beliefs in the invisible hold such a benevolent promise. While they reflect cultural particularities to be taken seriously, they can also contribute to confusion and dislocation, with detrimental effects upon the political landscape.

In the second part of the book, Bayart explains how and why studying the imaginary of society is an important contribution to political analysis. As his example above shows, the focus on the imaginary allows us to understand better the usage and function of a belief system in society and how it contributes to the creation of meaning. Equally important, his analysis of social imaginaries that is an established approach in French historical writing, with such outstanding authors as Jacques Le Goff, creates greater clarity about what is superficially labeled post-modern.[2] Too often, such approaches of the linguistic turn, making use of intertextuality, deconstruction and narratology, are criticized for seeing history only as an illusion, a fiction, or a myth.[3] But I think Bayart shows well that these ways of imagining play an important role in society. While looking at imaginaries certainly involves the study of representations, it does not mean that there is no external reality independent of our representations.[4] In many ways, interpretation and acts of imagination are tied to materiality, such as time and space compression that is a result of the industrial revolution (p. 182). Diverse practices such as hair-styles, cuisine and clothing express a political ethos. How an imaginary is related to the material is best illustrated with the passions that the wearing of the "Muslim" scarf elicited in France. Indeed, the imaginaire of clothing can leave its mark on politics in an industrial and disenchanted society (p. 200).

What then is the social imaginary? Charles Taylor defines it as "the way our contemporaries imagine the societies they inhabit."[5] Such imagination is an integral part of society since it enables people to live together through the creation of common meanings. The imaginary has a historical dimension, and we can find in historical action and in the universe of meanings a radical imaginaire (p. 133). Passions are part of that imaginary and Bayart argues that not only Max Weber but also Spinoza, Alexis de Toqueville and Montesquieu tried to relate these to tangible realities. Weber, in particular, suggests that individuals and groups have economic interests, but they also have ideals expressed in lifestyles that reflect a particular ethoi; this is part of the imaginaire of social action which cannot be reduced to instrumentalism and rationality (p. 134). Through the imaginary, we gain insights into the "belief, the miraculous, rumour and rite" of modern society, but also how heritage and innovation are in a constant dialog (p. 137). For instances of this, we may look at the role of dreams and their influence on political decision-makers, and how they relate to religious aspects of politics (pp. 138-144), or how politics follow scenarios borrowed from other cultural genres (pp. 145-150) and the role of political rituals (pp. 151-152). In sum, the imaginary is the seat of passions, of aesthetics, and of symbolic activity (p. 163).

Bayart argues that bringing the study of politics and the study of the social imaginary together means looking at how the human subject is constituted (p. 152). By doing so, we investigate how subjectivity is produced or, in other words, subjectivation. This involves the production of modes of existences or lifestyles. Politics and the state constantly interact with processes of subjectivation, like in the sexualization of power relationships. For example, in France in the 1990s populism was related to a certain view of virility (p. 153). Often, the political passions carried by an imaginary cannot be managed--the imaginary remains autonomous (p. 160). Above all, Bayart argues, political subjectivation is marked by contradiction and ambivalence, intrinsic characters of politics (p. 165). Contrary to what culturalists would do, this ambivalence cannot be attributed to certain cultures only and it is an integral part of our analysis of politics. Imaginaries do not have a definitive political meaning. As historical phenomena, they are "amorphous nebula ... ambivalent from a political point of view" (p. 229). Through their radical ambivalence, imaginary social meanings hold together, and thus hold together society -- this holding together is not demonstrated and is never assumed to be demonstrable (p. 233). Without doubt, it is for these reasons that the workings of the imaginary are, at times, difficult to penetrate: how can we grasp a socio-historical phenomenon that often remains intractable and elusive? Nonetheless, Bayart reveals how a look at social imaginaries may provide new perspectives on old problems.

Notes

[1]. First published as L'Illusion Identitaire (Paris: Fayard, 1996).

[2]. In the earlier published Le Politique par le Bas en Afrique Noire, Bayart, Achille Mbembe, and Comi Toulabour explain lucidly the importance of "post-modern" writers such as Michel Foucault and Michel de Certeau, in their approach to the study of African popular cultures and social imaginaries. Such explanations provide us with excellent insights into post-modern approaches beyond generalizations. Le Politique par le Bas en Afrique Noire: Contributions a une Problematique de la Democratie (Paris: Karthala, 1992).

[3]. Arthur Schlesinger Jr., "History and National Stupidity," New York Review of Books 53, no. 7, April 27, 2006: 14-16

[4]. Ibid.

[5]. Charles Taylor, Modern Social Imaginaries (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004), p. 6.

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Call for Articles: Special Issue of Journal of American-East Asian Relations

From H-ASIA
March 25, 2007

Call for Articles: Special Issue of Journal of American-East Asian Relations
********************
From: Professor Dong Wang

"Christianity in China as an Issue in the History of United States-China Relations"

The Journal of American-East Asian Relations publishes cutting-edge academic articles on trans-pacific international relations with a world-wide readership in North and South America, Europe, and Asia. Contributions are sought from scholars in all fields of the social sciences and humanities for a special issue of the Journal, entitled "Christianity in China as an Issue in the History of United States-China Relations."

Characterized by some researchers as "the fastest growing wing" of the evangelical movement today, Chinese Christianity has been one of the main sources of exchange and controversy in the relationship between the United States and China. Taking stock of the rich body of literature on the history of Christianity in China, especially in the area of state-church relations, the indigenous church, and missionary enterprises, this special issue aims to further the current scholarly discussion at a new level. To this end, we are interested in original articles of up to 8,000 words which locate Christianity as an international and local issue through the historical consideration of diplomatic, political, economic, social, military, theological, religious or cultural interplay.

Centering upon mutual ties across the Pacific, essays might explore-but are not limited to-topics which address the following questions:

1. Since the first contact between the two nations in the late 18th century, how have the actions, perceptions, expectations, and representations of Christianity shaped the two-way Sino-American encounters in light of both Chinese and English-speaking perspectives?

2. How did American evangelical imports become part of the Chinese scene through resistance, involvement, accommodation, adaptation and collaboration? What were the links between American Christian enterprises and the local realities in which they were set?

3. What role did Christians and Christianity play in American and Chinese literary or political discourse at a particular historical and cultural moment?

4. How was the "China evangelical cause" promoted and marketed in America? How did Christian presence and experience in China change Christianity in the United States?

This special issue is planned for publication in summer 2008.

Inquiries and manuscripts should be sent to the Guest Editor of the special issue by December 1, 2007:

Dong Wang (Guest Editor and Associate Editor of the Journal of American-East Asian Relations)
Associate Professor of History
Executive Director of East-West Institute of International Studies
Gordon College
Wenham, MA 01984
U.S.A.
Tel: 001-978-867-4842
E-mail Professor Wang
Web: http://www.gordon.edu/ewi

2007 UCLA Luce Center Conference on Korean Christianity

2007 UCLA Luce Conference on Korean Christianity
April 27, 2007
4357 Bunche Hall, UCLA

Topic: Korean Christianity between Indigenization and Globalization

09:10 Welcoming Remarks
Dr. John Duncan, Director of the UCLA Center for Korean Studies; Dr. Sung-Deuk Oak, Luce Fellow, UCLA

Session 1

09:20-10:20 Dr. Donald Clark, Trinity University in Texas
"Post-Colonial Studies and Korean Christianity"
Response by Dr. Young Lee Hertig, Azusa Pacific University and ISAAC

10:20-11:20 Dr. Rhie Deok Joo, Methodist Theological Seminary, Seoul
"The Early Revival Movements and the Indigenization of Christianity in Korea"
Response by Dr. Sung-Deuk Oak, UCLA

11:20-11:45 Discussion

11:45-1:00 Lunch

Session 2

1:00-2:00 Dr. Anselm Kyongsuk Min, Claremont Graduate University
"Korean Christianity between Tradition and Globalization: Resources, Challenges, Opportunities"
Response by Dr. Young Lee Hertig, Azusa Pacific University and ISAAC

2:00-3:00 Dr. Sung Gun Kim, Seowon University
"Korean Protestant Christianity in the Midst of Globalization"
Response by Dr. Sung-Deuk Oak, UCLA

3:00-4:00 Dr. Young-chan Ro, George Mason University
"Korean Diaspora, Christianity, and the Globalization of Korean Culture"
Response by Dr. Young Lee Hertig, Azusa Pacific University and ISAAC

4:00:-4:40 Discussion
Closing Remarks

Sung-Deuk Oak
UCLA Center for Korean studies
11371 Bunche Hall
Phone: (310)825-3284
Fax: (310)206-3555
Email Dr. Sung-Deuk Oak
Visit the website at http://www.isop.ucla.edu/korea/

Symposium - Look East: Locating Asia in Asian American Studies (USC)

On April 20, 2007, the University of Southern California will host a special symposium entitled, LOOK EAST:LOCATING ASIA IN ASIAN AMERICAN STUDIES.

This symposium explores the opportunity to more fully engage Asia as a site for rethinking Asian American experience and consciousness. Today's extensive global networks and relative ease of travel have fueled the growth of a surprising reverse "brain drain" as well as the formation of transnational families, expatriate communities, and new conceptions of ethnic and national identity. Put together these trends address the significance for studying Asian Americans in Asia. At the same time, cities like Tokyo, Seoul, and Beijing have become magnets for global migration, which calls for comparison between immigrants there and in America's more familiar ethnic communities. Researchers, then, have the chance shed light on Asian America through the study of comparative immigrant enclaves, reverse migration, and other processes taking place in Asia.

This is an all-day event that will feature presentations by many distinguished faculty in Asian American Studies. The event is FREE, but space is limited, so attendees must contact Wendy Cheng ASAP to reserve a space.

LOOK EAST: LOCATING ASIA IN ASIAN AMERICAN STUDIES
April 20, 2007
Parkside International Residential College, USC
Room 1016
10 a.m. ˆ 5:15 p.m.
For parking, enter Gate 6. For campus map:
www.usc.edu/about/visit/upc/driving_directions


SCHEDULE

10:00 ˆ 10:30 Registration and Opening Reception

10:30 ˆ 10:45 Opening Remarks

10:45 ˆ 12:15
Roundtable 1: Reflecting on Homeland(s)
 L O N K U R A S H I G E , University of Southern California
"Japan and Japanese American Studies"
 X I A O J I A N Z H A O , University of California, Santa Barbara
"China, Chinese, and Chinese Immigrants in the Study of Chinese America"
 V I E T N G U Y E N , University of Southern California
"Not Like Going Home: On Ambivalent Returns to the Source"
 K A R E N T E I Y A M A S H I T A , University of California, Santa Cruz
"Travessia"

12:15 ˆ 1:15 Lunch at Parkside Commons

1:15 ˆ 2:45
Roundtable 2: Transnational Identities, Work, and Politics
 M A R Y Y U D A N I C O , Cal Poly Pomona
"Gyopos in Transition: Experiences of Korean Americans living in Korea"
 R H A C E L P A R R E N A S , University of California, Davis
"Liminal, Partial, and Bare-Life Citizenship: The Racial and Economic Incorporation of Asian Temporary Labor Migrants in Asia and the United States"
 A U G U S T O E S P I R I T U , University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
"`The Philippine Problem': A Century of Trans-Pacific Movements and Debates"

2:45 ˆ 3:00 Break

3:00 ˆ 4:15
Roundtable 3: Diasporic Cultures and Communities
 E D W A R D J . W. P A R K , Loyola Marymount University
"Predicament of Transnationality: Koreans in Beijing and Tokyo"
 T H E O D O R E S . G O N Z A L V E S , University of Hawai'i at Manoa
"Lost in Manilla"
 P H U O N G N G U Y E N , University of Southern California
"Farewell, Saigon, I will be back, I swear: The Music of Post-1975 Vietnamese Refugee Nationalism"

4:15 ˆ 5:15 Closing Session: Discussion of Asia Study Tour

5:45 ˆ 7:45 Dinner at offsite location

Space is Limited. Please register with Wendy Cheng ASAP.