Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month: Scholarly Journals and E-books

By Erica Bruchko, US history and African American Studies librarian and Guo-hua Wang, International Area Studies Team leader

How do we understand the American experience of immigration and migration, of war and American empire, of race and identity, and of social movements for economic and racial justice?

These are important questions for scholars of Asian and Pacific American Studies, a field devoted to exploring the historical and contemporary experiences of people of Asian descent in the United States. As we celebrate Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, take some time to explore this scholarship in Emory’s databases and on our physical and virtual bookshelves.

Databases

Our library has acquired many resources on Asian American and Pacific Islanders. You can find full text materials and bibliographical information on these online databases:

Ethnic NewsWatch This database provides thousands of scholarly, full-text articles for area and ethnic studies such as Asian American Studies and Pacific Islanders.  Ethnic NewsWatch provides vast content and is a unique and valuable resource for minority perspectives.

Bibliography of Asian Studies BAS is published worldwide and collects bibliographic information pertaining to East, Southeast and South Asia.  Its particular emphasis is on the humanities and social sciences.  It provides representative coverage of Asian American Studies in the following journals: Journal of Asian American Studies, Asian American Literary Review, Amerasia Journal, and the Asian American Journal of Psychology.

Academic Search Complete This is a multidisciplinary database that includes a great deal of full text journal articles and other publications on Asian American Studies.  With the right search terms, you can surely find and retrieve the sources you need.

JSTOR This full text database covers a wide variety of journal articles in the humanities and other disciplines. Searches of any Asian American Studies terms can bring you plenty of results to choose from.

Project MUSE Project Muse is another comprehensive multidisciplinary database that contains the most recently published major scholarly journals. The subject areas consist of literature, history, cultural studies, and of course, Asian American Studies.

E-journals

Woodruff Library has also subscribed to some e-journals on Asian American and Pacific Islander Studies, listed below. You can simply click the titles and read the full text journals.

• Journal of Asian American studies
• Amerasia Journal
• Asian Pacific American Law Journal
• Asian American Law Journal
• Asian American Policy Review
• Asian American Journal of Psychology
• A. magazine : the Asian American quarterly
• Asian/Pacific Island nursing journal
• Lavender Godzilla : voices of the Gay Asian Pacific Alliance
• Asian and Pacific Islander population in the United States
• Asian American Pacific islands law journal
• Performance report for Asian American & Pacific Islander activities
• Asian American literary review
• Asian American Policy Review
• Journal of Southeast Asian American education & advancement : JSAAEA
• Asian American literature discourse & pedagogies
• Chinese American Forum
• Yolk

E-books

The Emory Libraries have over 1.2 million e-books in our collections. To find materials on Asian American and Pacific Islanders, search for the subject term Asian American and the keyword “electronic resource” in discoverE. Here are some introductory texts to help jumpstart your research:

Companion to Asian American Studies, Kent A. Ono (2005)

Asian American Studies Now: A Critical Reader, Thomas C. Chen and Jean Yu-wen Shen Wu (2010)

The Routledge Companion to Asian American and Pacific Islander Literature, Rachel Lee (2014)

The Cambridge Companion to Asian American Literature, Crystal Parikh and Daniel Y. Kim (2015)

The Oxford Handbook of Asian American History, David K. Yoo and Eiichiro Azuma (2016)

The Routledge Handbook of Asian American Studies, Cindy I-Fen Cheng (2016)

Interested in researching a particular Asian American Community? Here are a few searches to get you started:

• Japanese American Studies
• Korean American Studies 
• Chinese American Studies
• South Asian American Studies
• Pacific American Studies 
• Filipino American Studies

In 2010, Jean Yu-wen Shen Wu, co-editor of the Asian American Studies Now: A Reader, remarked, “one of the defining characteristics of the field is its continuous grappling with inclusion and redefinition, as well as the great diversity of perspectives of those engaged in this endeavor.” What is your perspective on Asian American Studies? Do some research at the Emory Libraries and join the conversation! Visit our  Asian and Pacific American Libguide to learn more!