This essay features a roundtable conversation between scholars working at the intersections of race and matter. It takes a dialectical and conversational approach to embody the methods of its contents. It speaks to the paradox of contouring a field that presses upon subject/object divides, questions and theorizes the boundedness of a liberal human subject and situates its analysis by recognizing relational positionality and citational generosity with other thinkers in the field. It asks: How might Asian American studies think matter differently? How might feminist science studies think race differently in regard to matter? As evidenced by contributors in this Special Section, racialized matter provides alternatives to the violences of racialization and its imbrication in racial capitalist histories of trade, technocultures, and environments. This roundtable opens entry points for those exploring intersections of feminist new materialisms, STS, and studies of race—from its entangled genealogies to its animating new directions. It asks, “How did we get here, and where do we go from here?”

Edith Maude Eaton wrote “The Chinese Lily” and “The Story of One White Woman Who Married a Chinese” while writing in a discursive context shaped by violent socio-political forces that encoded disease and danger in foreign bodies. The mainstream scholarship on Eaton’s life and work focuses on the author’s diasporic positionality, and the few scholars who explore disability in Eaton’s work approach it metaphorically, highlighting its negative attributes as a manifestation of imperial forces. Informed by disability studies and Asian American studies, this article examines two of Eaton’s short stories in which disability appears neither as a stigmatic label that marks inferiority or danger nor as a symptom of imperial violence, but as a fundamental part of human experience. Using the trope of shared vulnerability as an aesthetic and analytical frame, this article argues that Eaton’s immigrant figures use disability as a source of empowerment that allows them to share vulnerability, build unexpected care communities, and resist the combined forces of racism and ableism. Ultimately, the argument is that in Eaton’s literary reimagination of immigrant lives, sharing vulnerability is an act of resistance and subversion.

Childhood mistreatment (CM)/victimization, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and lifetime substance-use disorders (LT-SUD) are major behavioral health concerns. Their associations were established in mainstream populations but remain under-investigated in Latinx Americans. This study aimed to model the mediating effect of PTSD in the link between CM and LT-SUD among Latinx Americans. Using a nationally representative sample (N = 2,554) from the National Latinx and Asian American Study, three path models were performed for the whole-group, U.S.-born, and foreign-born Latinx (aged 18 or over), controlling for known predictors for Latinx' mental health. Latinx reported high rates of childhood physical (32%) and sexual (11.8%) abuse. Latinx subgroups significantly varied in educational attainment, LT-SUD, income, English proficiency, and self-reported discrimination. A fully constrained multiple group path analysis demonstrated direct effects of childhood physical mistreatment (CPM) and childhood sexual mistreatment to lifetime PTSD; PTSD significantly mediated the relationship between CPM with LT-SUD. No significant differences in path coefficients were observed among the Mexican, Cuban, and Puerto Rican subgroups. Findings suggest that CPM may contribute to using substance to avoid physical and emotional pain, which lends support for the self-medication hypothesis. Latinx who were traumatized by both physical and sexual abuse are more likely to use substances as a negative coping strategy. The study underscores the need for assessing the role of substance use as a coping mechanism for Latinx individuals who have experienced childhood traumatic victimization. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2026 APA, all rights reserved).

The impact of trauma on immigrants' mental health is well-documented, but less is known about how pre- and post-migration trauma affects mental health within the context of family relationships. The objective of the study is to examine the role of family dynamics in shaping the association between trauma exposure and psychological distress among Latino immigrants in the U.S. This study is based on a sample of Latino immigrants (N = 1,569) from the National Latino and Asian American Study (NLAAS; 2002-2003). Moderation and mediation analyses were performed to test the associations between trauma exposure, family relationships, and psychological distress. Both pre-migration trauma and post-migration trauma were significantly associated with greater levels of psychological distress. While family cohesion was not directly linked to distress, it moderated the impact of trauma exposure, with high family cohesion reducing distress from both pre-and post-migration trauma. Family conflict was not only directly associated with increased levels of distress but also mediated 35% of the relationship between post-migration trauma and distress (indirect effect = 0.458, p < .05, 95% CI [0.104, 0.812]). Furthermore, conflictual family relationships exacerbated the detrimental mental health impacts of both pre- and post-migration trauma. The mediating and moderating role of family relationships in the adverse mental health impacts of trauma exposure among Latino immigrants underscores the need for culturally tailored, family-centered interventions that enhance family bonds and manage conflicts to mitigate trauma-related psychological distress in this vulnerable population.

Between Visibilities: Asian American Studies from the Margins

BackgroundStudies suggest perceived social support from family and friends acts as a protective factor against cognitive decline, especially in older adults. However, few studies have focused on first‐generation immigrants in the United States. This study investigates how the perceived social support is differently associated with specific cognitive domains in first‐generation older Asian Americans.MethodData were collected from 141 first‐generation older Asian Americans (Chinese, Korean, and Vietnamese) participating in an ongoing ARISE (Asian Americans & Racism: Individual and Structural Experiences) pilot study who are 65 years old or older in California. Participants completed cognitive and psychosocial assessments in their preferred languages (Mandarin, Korean, and Vietnamese). Verbal encoding and memory were assessed using the Auditory Verbal Learning Test. Basic attention and auditory working memory were measured using Digit Span Forward and Backward, respectively. Perceived social support from family and friends was assessed using the 6‐item National Latino and Asian American Study Social Network Scale on a 5‐point Likert scale (1 = strongly disagree, 5 = strongly agree). Multivariable linear regression and moderation analyses were performed, controlling for age, gender, and education.ResultParticipants were aged 65–88 years (Mean = 74.55, SD = 5.40); 50.3% were female, 74.3% had at least a high school education, and 82.8% expressed positive support level. Greater perceived social support was associated with better verbal encoding (β = 0.233, SE = 0.154, p = 0.003), but worse auditory working memory (β = ‐0.249, SE = 0.039, p = 0.001). Depression moderated the relationship between social support and working memory (β = ‐0.026, SE = 0.012, p = 0.033), with the negative impact being more pronounced at higher levels of depression. No significant associations were found for memory or basic attention (p = 0.065, p = 0.790).ConclusionThese findings highlight the complex dynamics of social support in cognitive function among older first‐generation Asian Americans. Social support positively influenced verbal encoding, underscoring the importance of support systems for this population. However, more studies are needed to examine the role of mental health conditions, such as depression, in the relationships between social support and working memory.

Research demonstrates that discrimination is detrimental to health. However, most discrimination research does not examine Latino ethnic differences and often relies on unidimensional alpha scales. Such an analytic strategy obscures ethnic differences, can mask the multidimensional nature of discrimination, inflate reliability estimates, produce attenuated or spurious relationships, and bias parameters. To address these issues, we use data from the National Latino and Asian American Study to (1) examine group differences on the Everyday Discrimination Scale (EDS), (2) conduct a confirmatory factor analysis of the EDS to assess its fit and dimensionality for each Latino ethnic group, and (3) evaluate how alternative scaling approaches affect the relationship between discrimination, depression, and chronic health conditions. Results reveal significant group differences in perceived discrimination and show that a second-order factor with two dimensions—subtle and overt discrimination—fits well across all Latino groups. The relationship between discrimination and health is stronger when discrimination is modeled as a second-order factor. These findings indicate that (1) alternative scaling approaches may be more appropriate than alpha scales, (2) more precise measurement of discrimination can better capture its impact on health, and (3) disaggregating panethnic categories such as “Latino” that is essential for understanding ethnic stratification and health.

My sinuous life as a humanist traversing disciplinary, periodic, geographical, and national borders has yielded palpable wonders, the most wonderful being the opportunity to live and connect many lives. I was made bilingual, bicultural, and cosmopolitan in colonial Hong Kong, a classicist at Pepperdine University, a Renaissance scholar at Berkeley, an intersectional Americanist at UCLA, and a polyglot comparatist by UCEAP. The many splendors of literary America unraveled by Bruins of disparate stripes have driven me to herald the variegated beauty of Chinese American heritage at UCLA. I have gone from being an outsider, a suspect even, in both English and Asian American studies to being a humanist resource. It behooves me to usher in, among the Bruins, my mother tongue—the language of the Tang poets, gold miners, and the Transpacific railroad workers, and to stage Cantonese opera. “In my end is my beginning”.

The Third World Strikes and Asian American Studies as an Institutional and Intellectual Project

Abstract: In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and increased visibility for the Black Lives Matter (BLM) and #StopAsianHate movements, colleges and universities around the country experienced a renewed call for the institutionalization of Asian American studies. Despite this surge in energy for an already decades-long movement, many program-building initiatives have taken years to materialize and eventually fallen to the wayside. To address the mismatch between student demand and institutional impasse, we organized a course that focused on the history of Asian American studies activism at Dartmouth over the decades. In the course, students conducted archival research on the past iterations of the movement and communicated the results to the wider campus community, showing that Asian American students had always carved out a space for themselves within the historically white institution. In the process, the collective past served as a community-building initiative that brought together students, faculty, staff, and alums and reaffirmed the present call for Asian American studies.

Abstract: This article makes a case for foregrounding activism in South Asian American studies (SAAS) as a means of grappling with contemporary political crises and structural inequalities. Situating SAAS within the broader field of Asian American studies (AAS), I engage two key interventions: Tamara Bhalla and Pawan Dhingra’s call to centralize “privilege” in SAAS (particularly caste- and class-based) and Diane Fujino and Robyn Rodriguez’s reminder to re-center activism in shaping forward directions for AAS. I explore how SAAS might continue taking inspiration from the original political commitments of ethnic studies—communal self-determination, liberation, and cross-racial solidarity—while also recognizing the diaspora’s internal complexities and contradictions. Drawing from my own experiences as an ethnic studies educator and a grassroots organizer, I illustrate how an activist-oriented approach can more deeply connect SAAS scholarship with on-the-ground struggles. These include movements addressing labor exploitation, environmental justice, and racialized/gendered violence as well as transnational solidarities that bring South Asian Americans into shared cause with other marginalized groups. In articulating these possibilities, I argue that the future of SAAS is best served by cultivating commitments that bridge rigorous academic inquiry with ongoing grassroots organizing.

Abstract: This exploratory paper addresses the question, “How can Asian American studies benefit from computational sociology?” I answer this question with the following four points. 1) Educators who understand and/or utilize computational sociology will be current with social science methodology, and thus well-positioned to research and teach both innovatively and preemptively. 2) Creating and using large data sets will allow AAS to scale systematically, particularly in the efforts to discover and recover. 3) Students who can conceptualize or use computational sociology will gain more portable human capital. 4) Increasing computational power and more sophisticated software will bridge AAS not only with computational sociology, but also with complexity science and artificial intelligence/generative artificial intelligence, and thus advance AAS to unprecedented horizons. The article concludes with limitations, caveats, and areas of future research, particularly via complexity science, to keep Asian American studies both relevant and innovative.

Abstract: This essay explores my pedagogical and conceptual imperatives while teaching and updating an Asian American Studies minor in the Midwest and engaging with the tension of activism and disavowal of the Asian American racial experience. I propose a pedagogy of recognition as a generative model to discuss Asian American upbringings, tensions in our experiences of being Asian Americans, and as a curricular approach on a campus like Washington University in St. Louis (WashU). The central questions that inform the architecture of the essay are: How do we comprehend and situate the lack of recognition of histories of establishment that have been so central to Asian American scholarly academic frameworks? How are we selectively recognizing national histories of struggle, such that our younger counterparts disavow, even challenge them, as parts of their own legitimate spectrums of experiences? Further, how do we recognize the diversity that constitutes Asian America itself, and how can such a recognition shift the conversation about Asian American achievements as encoded in the narrative of the model minority? How can “recognition” be a foundational goal in Asian American Studies and a method of reckoning with difference in the 21st century?

BackgroundThe COVID-19 pandemic forced the world to quarantine to slow the rate of transmission, causing communities to transition into virtual spaces. Asian American and Pacific Islander communities faced the additional challenge of discrimination that stemmed from racist and xenophobic rhetoric in the media. Limited data exist on technology use among Asian American and Pacific Islander adults during the height of the COVID-19 shelter-in-place period and its effect on their physical and mental health.ObjectiveThis study aims to examine Asian American and Pacific Islander adults’ attitudes, perspectives, and experiences regarding their use of technology during the COVID-19 pandemic.MethodsWe collaborated with community partners and used social media to distribute the COVID-19 Effects on the Mental and Physical Health of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders Survey Study, a nationwide multilingual survey available in English, Chinese, Korean, Samoan, and Vietnamese. The survey was administered from October 2020 to February 2021, and participants rated their level of agreement (1=not at all to 5=extremely) on 6 items assessing their attitudes toward technology use. Thematic analysis was conducted on responses to the open-ended question “Is there anything else you want to tell us about your use of technology during COVID-19?” The qualitative responses were reviewed, analyzed, coded, and organized into corresponding themes.ResultsThe mean age of respondents was 45.9 (SD 16.3; range 18-98) years, with 5398 participants completing the quantitative survey and 1115 (20.66%) providing unique responses to the open-ended question. In the quantitative survey, 68% (3671/5398) of the respondents reported being comfortable using technology; the majority indicated that it helped them keep up with the news (4318/5398, 79.99%), maintain social connections (4102/5398, 75.99%), and provide care for others (2537/5398, 46.99%). However, responses were mixed regarding the usefulness of technology for health: 39.99% (2159/5398) agreed that it was helpful for mental health but disagreed regarding physical health. Four main themes emerged from the qualitative analysis: (1) technology was critical for functioning across many aspects of life and maintaining physical, mental, and emotional well-being; (2) technology was often the only means of interpersonal social connections; (3) overuse led to negative physical and mental health outcomes; and (4) technology use was associated with multiple challenges and barriers.ConclusionsOur findings revealed diverse perspectives and experiences related to technology use by Asian American and Pacific Islander adults during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. Dependence on technology may have exacerbated social inequities, particularly for those with lack of access to devices and Wi-Fi and limited English proficiency, affecting their ability to work, apply for jobs, and communicate virtually. Further qualitative research would be beneficial in amplifying the perspectives of Asian American and Pacific Islander adults to uncover concerns and address health disparities.

Abstract: This article uses the American political scientist Francis Fukuyama as a case study to address an important question: Why do so many Asian Americans hold the United States in high regard despite its long record of anti-Asian racism and violence? By analyzing Fukuyama’s writings about Japan, China, and Asian Americans published in the aftermaths of the Vietnam War, the Cold War, the War on Terror, and the COVID-19 pandemic, this article positions him as not only an opponent of those who predict the coming “Asian Century” but also a proponent of the “American Century.” Even though Fukuyama’s worldview clashes with that of Asian American studies scholars, the article raises the possibility that his ideas might resonate with a sizable portion of the Asian American population.

Abstract This article finds that a subset of animated films produced in mainland China are interpreted as Chinese, diasporic Chinese, and Asian American films. It explores how Sino-US animated co-venture films are produced in mainland China for domestic and international consumption. This builds upon scholarship on Chinese film and Sino-US co-productions in three ways. First, it explores an emerging strategy that uses co-ventures, defined as mainland registered companies that are oftentimes 51 % mainland owned and 49 % foreign owned, to produce animated films. The Sino-US animated films studied in this article include White Snake (2019), Over the Moon (2020), and Wish Dragon (2021). Each film offers a unique approach that is shaped by narrative, aesthetics, and distribution. Second, I explore the tension between the construction of “Chineseness” by Sino-US co-venture animated films and the “Chineseness” theorized in Asian American Studies. Third, a close reading of these films highlights differing representations of “Chineseness” rooted in Chinese and diasporic Chinese identities. I find that China’s fashioning of “Chineseness” for both domestic and international audiences has coincided with an increase in Asian American representation in Hollywood. By examining Sino-US animated co-venture films, this article studies the evolving dynamics of transborder flows in Chinese cinemas and their impact on representation.

To explore mental health help-seeking behaviours among East Asian American dementia caregivers and construct a theory grounded in their behaviour patterns. Qualitative using constructivist grounded theory design. We recruited 20 East Asian American dementia caregivers between August 2023 and March 2024 using purposive sampling. We conducted one-on-one interviews and analysed the data using constructivist grounded theory coding. We constructed a theory including six concepts and 22 categories. While 'providing care', caregivers manage caregiving tasks and personal life, experiencing caregiving challenges. 'Individual capacity' is a key to perceiving caregiving situations and 'considering seeking support'. Various factors can affect 'using support'. Different types of support can be used separately or in combination. When receiving adequate support, caregivers can 'gain benefits from support'. These benefits, alongside individual capacities, can shape caregivers' 'outlook on the present and the future'. This study explains the mental health help-seeking process within East Asian culture, broadening perspectives on diverse populations and highlighting insights into culturally tailored services. This study offers clinicians and communities insights into the mental health help-seeking process among East Asian American dementia caregivers and highlights strategies to encourage their use of mental health services. This theory incorporates aspects of East Asian culture, addressing a research gap in studies of Asian Americans. It may enhance understanding of culturally tailored approaches and facilitate future funding for research and services, considering cultural diversity. The Standards for Reporting Qualitative Research. No Patient or Public Contribution.

This article calls on scholars pursuing anti-racist scholarship across Asian studies, Asian American studies, and Black studies to interrogate reductive tendencies of compartmentalization and comparativism in considering the entanglements of racial Blackness and global China. Connecting a recent case of media racism that involved Chinese citizens in Africa to the geopolitics of anti-racism across sinophone and anglophone spheres, it argues that greater attention to the circulation and interaction of racial discourses and racializing practices is necessary for addressing the increasingly transnational formation of anti-Blackness in the Global South. Pushing back against what the author identifies as “homoracialism” in founding and ongoing scholarship on race and China in both Asian studies and Asian American studies, this article proposes a translational approach to anti-racist critique and action. Conceptualized as a social practice that sutures epistemic disjunctures and activates new communities of meaning, anti-racist translation foregrounds the embodied in-betweenness and activist transformation of diaspora subjects. The article provides examples of grassroots experiments of anti-racist translation in lesser-known social justice movements among diasporic Afro-Asian communities in Africa, China, and North America.

This essay serves three critical functions. First, it provides a brief historical summarization of the circumstances that have precipitated a reinvigorated and refocused engagement and even intersectionality between Black studies (or, as it is more commonly known today, Africana or African American studies), Asian American studies, and Asian studies. Second, in at least a preliminary way, it introduces the methodological approaches and thematic objectives of the four essays that form the foundation of this forum. Third, without pretensions to predictiveness, this essay concludes with deliberation on what is likely to come, by offering conjectural prognoses regarding the potential future content and contours of allyship not merely between Black studies and Asian American studies but also between the former and Asian studies, by asking—particularly in the latter case—the crucial question whether an authentic alliance of mutual cooperation is forthcoming or whether the quality of any relationship is destined to remain foreseeably something somewhat less substantive than its potential suggests is really possible.

Abstract The ‘model minority’, the phenomenon of some ‘minority’ communities (or some members within them) achieving social and economic advancement despite encountering the difficulties of assimilating into a mainstream society, is often described as a myth, especially as one of the central problematics in Asian American studies. Usually, the modern use of the word myth is pejorative: the model minority in this sense refers to a false empirical description of some minorities and should be quantitatively disaggregated and qualitatively debunked. In this article, I want to explore the model minority as another kind of myth, in the classical sense of mythos, a story that underwrites action in the world, making sense of a society's activities and justifying the existence of its institutions. In this way, my method in this article takes after what Sam Rocha calls the ‘pre-qualitative work’ of ontological enquiry that must come prior to the acts of qualitative fieldwork. My theological move will be to show that the mythos of the model minority narrates what Rocha has called in Folk Phenomenology a ‘gospel of “schoolvation”’, a message directed at minorities that schools will be their salvation from social and economic ostracization from the mainstream. I will move in three parts, first describing what the myth is, second to outline the theological power of the mythology, and third to engage Gary Okihiro’s 2016 text Third World Studies on how the legacy of the Third World Liberation Front might be mobilized to overcome it.