Remapping Asian American History exemplifies the emerging trends in the writing of Asian American history, and fills substantive gaps in our knowledge about particular Asian ethnic groups. Edited by noted scholar Sucheng Chan, the essays in this volume uses new frameworks such as transnationalism, the political contexts of international migrations, and a multipolar approach to the study of contemporary U.S. race relations. These concerns, often ignored in earlier studies that focused on social and economic aspects of Asian American communities, challenge some long-held assumptions about Asian American communities and point to new directions in Asian American historiography. Historians, students, and teachers of anthropology, Asian and Asian American Studies, race and ethnic studies, U.S. immigration history, and American Studies will find this collection invaluable.
Sucheng Chan is a Chinese-American historian, scholar, and author, recognized for her contributions to Asian American Studies. She was the first to establish a full-fledged autonomous Department of Asian American Studies at a major U.S. research university and became the first Asian American woman to hold the title of provost in the University of California system. Born in Shanghai in 1941, Chan and her family moved to Hong Kong in 1949, Malaysia in 1950, and later to the United States in 1957. She earned a BA in Economics from Swarthmore College (1963), an MA in Asian Studies from the University of Hawaiʻi (1965), and a PhD in Political Science from UC Berkeley (1973). Chan taught at several UC campuses, including Berkeley, Santa Cruz, Santa Barbara, and San Diego. She retired due to post-polio syndrome but continued to contribute to the field, donating her extensive collection of research materials to academic institutions. She has authored and edited numerous books on Asian American history, immigration, and race relations, including This Bittersweet Soil: The Chinese in California Agriculture, 1860–1910 (1986) and Entry Denied: Exclusion and the Chinese Community in America, 1882–1943 (1991). Throughout her career, Chan received numerous accolades, including the Guggenheim Fellowship (1988), multiple Outstanding Book Awards from the Association for Asian American Studies, and the Lifetime Achievement Award from the same organization in 1997. She is married to Mark Juergensmeyer, a scholar of religion and global studies.