The increasing size and diversity of the Asian American population, its growing significance in American society and culture, and the expanded appreciation, both popular and scholarly, of the importance of Asian Americans in the country’s present and past – all these developments have converged to stimulate wide interest in scholarly work on topics related to the Asian American experience. The general recognition of the pivotal role that race and ethnicity have played in American life and other countries, has also fostered this heightened attraction.
Although Asian Americans were a subject of serious inquiry in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, they were subsequently ignored by the mainstream scholarly community for several decades. In recent years, however, this neglect has ended, with an increasing number of writers examining a good many aspects of Asian American life and culture. Moreover, many students of American society are recognizing that the study of issues related to Asian American speak to, and may be essential for, many current discussions on the part of the informed public and various scholarly communities.
The Stanford series on Asian America seeks to address these interests. The series will include work from the humanities and social science, including history, anthropology, political science, American studies, law, literary criticism, sociology, and interdisciplinary and policy studies. Of particular interest are works based on previously unexploited primary sources, works that are comparative of social experiences, and works that give voice to previously voiceless people and that reflect the diversity of the Asian American experience.