PLEASE MARK YOUR CALENDAR WITH THE NEW DATE!
Wednesday, March 22 / 4PM
STERN LOUNGE Austin Room 217
“The Good Asian in the Good War”
Guest Lecture by K. Scott Wong
*Approved as an Honors Event*
Using oral history interviews, Chinese American newspapers, mainstream magazines, and government documents, this talk will trace the transition of the social image of Chinese Americans during WWII from being a pariah to a paragon, becoming the “Good Asian” in the “Good War.” While Japanese Americans were being incarcerated due to their alleged relationship to Japan, Chinese Americans gained new-found social acceptance, laying the foundation for the “model minority” image of Asian Americans that would develop in the post-war era.
K. SCOTT WONG is Charles R. Keller Professor of History at Williams College (MA) where he teaches a variety of courses in Asian American history, comparative immigration history, history and memory, and the history of race and ethnicity in American culture. He has written numerous articles in journals and anthologies. His most recent monograph is “Americans First”: Chinese Americans and the Second World War (Harvard University Press, 2005.) He co-edited, with Sucheng Chan, Claiming America: Constructing Chinese American Identities during the Exclusion Era (Temple University Press, 1998). He also co-edited Keywords for Asian American Studies (New York University Press, 2015) with Cathy J. Schlund-Vials and Linda Trinh VÅ�, and Asian America: A Primary Source Reader (Yale University Press, 2016) with Cathy Schlund-Vials and Jason Oliver Chang. He has been a series editor for the Asian American History and Culture series published by Temple University Press. When he is not working, he can be found fly-fishing for trout in the Berkshires or trying to fingerpick old blues tunes.
Sponsored by the Asian/Asian American Studies Institute in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, this event is free and open to the public.
For more information, contact: Ms. Fe Delos-Santos at fe.delos-santos@uconn.edu