Transpacific Studies: Framing an Emerging Field: 25 (Intersections: Asian and Pacific American Transcultural Studies) - Tapa dura

The editors of Trans-Pacific Studies . . . seek critical and subaltern perspectives to study a new field of inquiry which will combine the lessons of Asian Studies, Asian-American Studies and American Studies into a re-figurative dynamic. As such, each of the above disciplines must be shaken from their routine pathways and familiar boundaries and draw inspiration from the contemporary movements of people and scholars--as well as goods and ideas--as both the stuff and the frame of this emergent region. . . . All in all, this volume has taken an important step in developing methods, perspectives and approaches to a new field of inquiry.--Prasenjit Duara "International Journal of Asian Studies, 14:1 (January 2017)" [T]his book is much more than a postcolonial intellectual effort. Indeed, one of the virtues of this book is that it opens the arena to an enriching dialogue about the scope and content of transpacific studies as an emerging field. . . . Moreover, the justification for a volume on the transpacific does not require a straw man: the social spaces that fill the intra-Pacific relations--which are aptly developed in most chapters--are rich enough to justify the intellectual effort of rethinking the Pacific as an area of study. Despite its limitations, the editors should be commended for their openness to views that do not necessarily reflect their own, and this ambitious book is a valuable resource for scholars and the general public with an interest in the Pacific.--Pedro Iacobelli "International Social Science Review, 91:1 (2015)"

The anthology's contributors include geographers (Brenda S. A. Yeoh, Weiqiang Lin), sociologists (Yen Le Espiritu, Hung Cam Thai), literary critics (John Carlos Rowe, J. Francisco Benitez, Yunte Huang, Viet Thanh Nguyen), and anthropologists (Xiang Biao, Heonik Kwon, Nancy Lutkehaus, Janet Hoskins), as well as a historian (Laurie J. Sears), and a film scholar (Akira Lippit). Together these contributors demonstrate how a transpacific model can be deployed across multiple disciplines and from varied locations, with scholars working from the United States, Singapore, Japan and England. Topics include the Cold War, the Chinese state, U.S. imperialism, diasporic and refugee cultures and economies, national cinemas, transpacific art, and the view of the transpacific from Asia. The essays gathered here collectively demonstrate the energy, excitement, and insight that can be generated from within a transpacific framework.