Transformative Journey to Critical Scholarship: Counterstories of East Asian Doctoral Students Through the Lens of AsianCrit

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Saturday 3:45 pm
  In Roundtable Session: Motivation, Care, and Resilience: Sustaining a Transformative Educational Journey

Abstract

This roundtable explores how East Asian international doctoral students navigate intersecting identities as model minorities, “forever foreigners,” and emerging critical scholars in U.S. academia. Using Asian Critical Theory (AsianCrit), we trace our transformative journeys across three stages: initial conformity to dominant academic norms, reflexive engagement with inclusive epistemologies, and the embodiment of critical praxis. Through counter-storytelling, we reveal struggles with racialization, linguistic marginalization, and disciplinary exclusion, alongside acts of resistance that reconfigure scholarly identity. By challenging monolithic narratives, we foreground the complexities of negotiating power, culture, and agency. This dialogue advances equity-centered discourse in higher education by amplifying marginalized voices and reimagining frameworks of difference and intersectionality across transnational, racialized academic spaces.

Authors

• Xiaolu Zhang, George Mason University

• Jihyae Choe, George Mason University

• Yueyang Shen, Boston College