May is Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month—a celebration of Asians and Pacific Islanders in the United States. In celebration of this month’s festivities, we are so pleased to offer a glance at some our most recent and most enjoyed books and journal articles.
Faithful Transformations: Islamic Self-Help in Contemporary Singapore
Nurhaizatul Jamil
A provocative and rich ethnography, Faithful Transformations tells the stories of Malay Muslim women desiring piety and self-improvement as minoritized subjects in contemporary Singapore while exploring the limitations of self-care.
Journal of American Ethnic History
“Asian American Disability: A History and Its Archives” by Naoko Wake
In a special issue on Asian American disability, guest editor Naoko Wake explores the concept of “ability” in the context of Asian American history, linking it to the “model minority” trope. Her article is concerned with the striking ways in which disability has been rendered invisible in Asian American history and historiography, despite the presence of mental and physical disability in Asian American lives and literature. While examining the reasons for this paucity and discussing a methodology for finding sources, she argues for the necessity to tell a range of disability histories of the immigrant community that has been long mischaracterized as excessively able.
Women’s Transborder Cinema: Authorship, Stardom, and Filmic Labor in South Asia
Esha Niyogi De
Innovative and essential, Women’s Transborder Cinema examines the works of South Asia’s women filmmakers from a regional perspective.
“Asian American Female Composers and Digital Memory” by Jennifer C. H. J. Wilson
This article asks how educators, researchers, scholars, and historians can use ubiquitous resources like Wikipedia to teach and create digital memory for underrepresented groups. Jennifer C. H. J. Wilson explores the gender gap in Wikipedia, efforts to write about Asian American female composers on the site, and her experience inside and outside the classroom with Wikipedia. By incorporating Wikipedia-related assignments, educators can better demonstrate the musicological issues of representation through the study of limitations in primary, secondary, and tertiary sources.
Bittersweet Sounds of Passage: Balinese Gamelan Angklung Cremation Music
Ellen Koskoff
A journey inside a tradition, Bittersweet Sounds of Passage reveals the overlooked music of an important ritual in Balinese village life.
American Philosophical Quarterly
“Anti-Asian Racism” by David Haekwon Kim and Ronald R. Sundstrom
Over the last twenty-five years, philosophers have offered increasingly more sophisticated accounts of the nature and wrongness of racism, but very little in this literature investigates what is distinctive to anti-Asian racism. David Haekwon Kim and Ronald R. Sundstrom discuss this conceptual gap and offer an account of anti-Asian racism not beholden to civic narratives that center a black-white binary. In their view, xenophobia, as a form of civic ostracism, plays a distinctive role in anti-Asian racism (and sexism) and is worth philosophical study, but the correlated phenomenon of xenophilia is also present and morally complex.
Joseph Jonghyun Jeon
Insightful and engaging, Bong Joon Ho offers an up-to-date analysis of the genre-bending international director.
Bulletin of the Council for Research in Music Education
“In/Visible Voices: Investigating Asian American Music Teachers’ Experiences Through the Lens of AsianCrit” by Katy Ieong Cheng Ho Weatherly
This study explored the experiences of six Asian American public school music teachers in the United States, utilizing Asian critical theory (AsianCrit) as a method of inquiry. The study brought to light the often invisible challenges these teachers confront, both in their personal upbringing and within the educational system. The findings underscore the need for greater representation of Asian American music teachers and recognition of the barriers they frequently face.
Inside Chinese Theater: Community and Artistry in Nineteenth-Century California and Beyond
Nancy Yunhwa Rao
Illustrated with seventy photographs, Inside Chinese Theater is an expert and eloquent journey into the early decades of Chinese opera in America.
Women, Gender, and Families of Color
“Asian/Asian American Higher Education Practitioners during rising Anti-Asian Violence and COVID-19 Global Pandemic” by Pamela K. Sari, Monica M. Trieu, and Casiana A.J. Warfield
The authors share their experiences navigating academia during the rise of anti-Asian violence and the COVID-19 global pandemic with two specific goals in mind: 1) to document and amplify their underrepresented voices within academia during this period, and 2) to use their experiences to demonstrate the importance and continued need for collaboration and unified efforts in strengthening student services across campus in the otherwise siloed practice of large research universities. Ultimately, they seek to archive their narratives of pedagogy and activism during a global pandemic as a “counterhegemonic exercise” to resist erasure and to stake a claim within academic institutional memory.
Phonographic Modernity: The Gramophone Industry and Music Genres in East and Southeast Asia
Edited by Fumitaka Yamauchi and Ying-fen Wang
Ambitious and expansive, Phonographic Modernity examines the bloc of East and Southeast Asia within the larger global history of sound recording.