Expanding AsianCrit through Transimperial Curricular Inquiry: Korean American Ethnic Studies and the LA Uprising Lesson

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Thursday 9:45 am
  In Roundtable Session: Decentering the ethos of decolonial curriculum

Abstract

Taking up AsianCrit and transnational decolonial feminists' call, we address the impacts of U.S. imperialism, militarism, nativist racism, and global racial capitalism on Asian American experiences. We situate our inquiry in the Korean American diaspora as a specific site of racial formation and re-read California’s Korean American Ethnic Studies Model Curriculum as a transnational curricular project. Focusing on a lesson about the 1992 Los Angeles Uprising - a site of “difficult knowledge” - we examine how Korean American histories are taught, sanitized, or contested. Through our curriculum inquiry, we argue that CRT approaches need deeper engagement with transimperial inheritances to examine how race is not only lived in place, but also learned, transmitted, and reproduced across time and geopolitical space.

Authors

• Jeong-Eun Rhee, Long Island University - C.W. Post Campus

• Sohyun An, Kennesaw State University