Wednesday, September 30, 2015

Week 3 Blogs: Winnie Chen

Christopher Lee’s “Diaspora, Transnationalism, and Asian American Studies: Positions and Debates” focuses on the study of diaspora and “how Asian American Studies has come to conceive of its object of study as transnational” (Lee 2005). Originally emerging from Judaic Studies to discuss the historical scattering of Jewish communities throughout, the term diaspora has been used to explore transnational experiences affected by displacement and dispersal, sociocultural formations of people, and the idea of “home” and “homeland”. Asian America in a transnational description puts the East and the West together in relation, keeping in check that carefully merging Asian American Studies and Asian Studies will help further the diasporic studies. Transnationalism is put into play when the intersectionality of multiple identities is applied to the research because diaspora is formed by new cultural and social spaces that may or may not provide a place of home. Diaspora is not just one thing, but it is a mixture of identities, adaptations, and cultures.

Question: Diasporic communities have long since existed throughout time and history, but will it be possible in the future when diaspora becomes an individual identity?

Works Cited:

Anderson, Wanni W. Displacements and Diasporas: Asians in the Americas. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers UP, 2005. Print.

image: http://apcla.org/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/AsianAmmuralall.jpg

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