“Recognition” as Pedagogy: Finding Asian American Identity in the Midwest

Abstract: This essay explores my pedagogical and conceptual imperatives while teaching and updating an Asian American Studies minor in the Midwest and engaging with the tension of activism and disavowal of the Asian American racial experience. I propose a pedagogy of recognition as a generative model to discuss Asian American upbringings, tensions in our experiences of being Asian Americans, and as a curricular approach on a campus like Washington University in St. Louis (WashU). The central questions that inform the architecture of the essay are: How do we comprehend and situate the lack of recognition of histories of establishment that have been so central to Asian American scholarly academic frameworks? How are we selectively recognizing national histories of struggle, such that our younger counterparts disavow, even challenge them, as parts of their own legitimate spectrums of experiences? Further, how do we recognize the diversity that constitutes Asian America itself, and how can such a recognition shift the conversation about Asian American achievements as encoded in the narrative of the model minority? How can “recognition” be a foundational goal in Asian American Studies and a method of reckoning with difference in the 21st century?