Asia, Pacific, and Diaspora Studies

Contact Us

(202) 885-2583

Fax: (202) 885-1837

crgc@american.edu

Battelle Tompkins , Room T-21 on a map

Asian Studies 4400 Massachusetts Avenue NW Washington, DC 20016 United States

The Asia, Pacific, and Diaspora Studies Program (APDS) is one of six interdisciplinary programs which make up the Department of Critical Race, Gender, and Culture Studies, housed in the College of Arts and Sciences. The APDS program is dedicated to the interdisciplinary study of Asia, and the Pacific, as well as their diasporic communities, in a dynamic global context. APDS students critically study the diverse people, cultures, and ideas that move in and across Asia, the Pacific, and their many diasporic communities in the Americas and beyond. Students explore the history and legacies of imperialism and colonialism, as well as the dynamics of gender/sexuality, class, and ethnicity and racial relations. The program’s lively, interdisciplinary course offerings are both deeply local and attentive to national and world-wide frameworks. They are grounded in critical inquiry and a concern for social justice.

Our program offers both an undergraduate BA in Asia, Pacific, and Diaspora Studies and a Minor as well as a Graduate Certificate.

Asia, Pacific, and Diaspora Studies draws from a wide spectrum of experts and courses across the University and the Washington DC region, affording students the opportunity to learn with both breadth and depth. Faculty from a wide variety of departments within CAS as well as from the School of International Service, the School of Public Affairs, and the School of Communications contribute to the program.

The Asia, Pacific, and Diaspora Studies program supports students interested in the acquisition of Asian languages such as Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Persian, and Arabic.

APDS students are also encouraged to spend time abroad as part of their academic experience. Options include studying in a wide variety of Asian nations or learning about Asian diasporas in a number of locations around the world. If you are interested in studying abroad, please consult with the APDS Director and with an AU Abroad Counselor to plan your program of study.

Header artwork by Shyama Kuver.

Bulletins

Drs. Kaplan, Wong and Dorr just signed an advanced contract with University of Washington Press for our forthcoming anthology, Abolition Everywhere. Building from our national convening this past spring, this collaborative project convenes scholars and practitioners working to dismantle policing and the carceral state with those deploying abolitionist frameworks to stage critical interventions in other movements and areas–including militarism and war, land and climate justice, housing and property, im/migration and reproductive justice–to construct a new model and agenda for research and action. Together we examine the convergent formation of abolitionist theory and praxis across a range of social movements to productively complicate and/or expand how we understand the inner workings of carceral power across different sites and scales. Given the urgencies of our current political moment, our aim is to strengthen conversations and connections across these movements and traditions.

Transpacific, Undisciplined. Lily Wong co-edited an anthology, Transpacific, Undisciplined (University of Washington Press 2024), with Christopher B. Patterson and Chien-ting Lin. Lily was also awarded the Solidarity Award at AAPI Women Lead’s Building New Worlds conference. The book foregrounds complex entanglements within, across, and beyond the Pacific — antinuclear coalitions centering Native survivance from Okinawa to the Dakotas to Micronesia, refugee figures and automated empathy in virtual reality, cross-strait erotic intimacy in Taiwanese teahouses — to activate generative connections against fixed national and methodological boundaries.

Eating More Asian American, by Ji-song Ku, Manalansan, and Mannur. Anita Mannur’s co-edited anthology, Eating More Asian America: A Food Studies Reader, has been published by New York University Press.

Quynh Vo published a chapter, "Transpacific Rupture: Neoliberal Relationalities and Economic Violence in the COVID Era," in Transpacific, Undisciplined (University of Washington Press 2024).

I Will Not Go, edited by Mohabir (book cover). Suzanne Persard’s series of poems are included in the groundbreaking anthology of Indo-Caribbean translations I Will Not Go: Translations, Transformations, and Chutney Fractals, (Kaya Press, 2024), edited by Rajiv Mohabir. Suzanne read selections from the book launch in New York City, which was part of the Brooklyn Book Festival.