Full Description
Writing history, the systematic effort to understand the human past, is a demanding intellectual endeavor. For historian Gordon H. Chang, it has also been a personal and moral enterprise intimately connected to his commitment to realizing a better world. This career-spanning anthology brings together significant essays, developing conversations across his broad-ranging research interests and personal history and engaging a range of topics, from diplomatic history and Asian American history to art history.
The book begins with a preface that reflects on the rise of Asian American studies as a field and the author's own scholarly trajectory. Each essay is accompanied by new headnotes that provide context. Essays examine the many ways that race, especially regarding Asian Americans, connects important historical episodes and social issues. Themes of geopolitical conflict, race, and transnational methods link writing produced over several decades, illustrating the arc of an intellectual career and the development of the field of Asian American studies. Ultimately, this book highlights Chang's abiding interest in providing historical context for issues facing Asian Americans, particularly during a time of rising geopolitical tensions and anti-Asian violence.
Contents
Introduction: Toward an Intellectual Memoir
Part I: War
1. JFK, China, and the Bomb
2. Eisenhower and Mao's China
3. Chinese Americans and China: A Troubled and Complicated Relationship
4. Whose "Barbarism"? Whose "Treachery"?: Race and Civilization in the Unknown United States-Korea War of 1871
5. China and the Pursuit of America's Destiny: Nineteenth-Century Imagining and Why Immigration Restriction Took So Long
Part II: Race
6. "Superman Is About to Visit the Relocation Centers" and the Limits of Wartime Liberalism
7. Social Darwinism Versus Social Engineering: The "Education" of Japanese Americans During World War II
8. Asian Americans and Politics: Some Perspectives from History
9. Chinese Railroad Workers and the U.S. Transcontinental Railroad in Global Perspective
10. History and Postmodernism
Part III: Culture
11. Emerging from the Shadows: The Visual Arts and Asian American History
12. Chinese Painting Comes to America: Zhang Shuqi and the Diplomacy of Art
13. America's Dong Kingman—Dong Kingman's America
14. The Many Sides of Happy Lim: aka Hom Ah Wing, Lin Jian Fu, Happy Lum, Lin Chien Fu, Hom Yen Chuck, Lam Kin Foo, Lum Kin Foo, Hom, Lim Goon Wing, Lim Gin Foo, Gin Foo Lin, Koon Wing Lim, Henry Chin, Lim Ying Chuck, Lim Ah Wing, et al.
15. The Life and Death of Dhan Gopal Mukerji
Appendix: Selected Work
Acknowledgments
Notes
Biographical Note
