The Insurgent Pacific: Race and State Power in the Making of the U.S. Empire

Moon-Ho Jung (Washington) speaks at Rice University.

Abstract: This presentation will critique standard narratives of Asian American and U.S. history that tend to treat Asian Americans as “immigrants” deserving or striving for inclusion (citizenship) in the U.S. nation-state. By exploring how Asians came to be politicized and racialized subjects of the U.S. empire before World War II, I will seek to reframe our notions of movements across the Pacific. In particular, my talk will trace the historical origins of the national security state, the heart and soul of the U.S. empire, to a series of  U.S. “foreign” and “domestic” policies targeting Asians on both sides of the Pacific. In doing so, I will assess the different ways transnationalism has been invoked and rebuked in Asian American Studies and suggest the need to critique the domestic/foreign divide in the study of U.S. history.