Collective Past as a Community-Building Initiative: Teaching Asian American Studies Through the History of Student Activism

Abstract: In the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic and increased visibility for the Black Lives Matter (BLM) and #StopAsianHate movements, colleges and universities around the country experienced a renewed call for the institutionalization of Asian American studies. Despite this surge in energy for an already decades-long movement, many program-building initiatives have taken years to materialize and eventually fallen to the wayside. To address the mismatch between student demand and institutional impasse, we organized a course that focused on the history of Asian American studies activism at Dartmouth over the decades. In the course, students conducted archival research on the past iterations of the movement and communicated the results to the wider campus community, showing that Asian American students had always carved out a space for themselves within the historically white institution. In the process, the collective past served as a community-building initiative that brought together students, faculty, staff, and alums and reaffirmed the present call for Asian American studies.