Search results

The author, who is the Dean of the College of Ethnic Studies at San Francisco State University, reflects on her personal and professional experiences as a queer Asian American in academia and speaks to the significance of Queer Ethnic Studies in advancing educational equity and effective higher education administration.

"In the late 1890s, San Francisco -- a town reputed to be "wide and open"--appeared to be a place where men and women could configure their intimate lives in ways not permissible in other parts of America. Conversations on high rates of divorce, an open rejection of marriage, mannish women, and extramarital sex proliferated throughout the local newspapers, magazines, and theaters without condemnation. Yet as white people in the city explored and enacted new norms of romance and womanhood, increasing freedoms would be less accessible for Asians in America. White writers, lyricists, illustrators, and other producers of leisure culture projected anxieties of their own middle class gender and sexuality upon specifically Chinese and Japanese in news reports, short stories, and musicals. These characterizations would then conflate Chinese and Japanese, previously perceived as two separate races, into a single group. Amy Sueyoshi details how middle class white expansion of their own gender and sexual norms marked the formation of the pan-Asian "Oriental," a deeply sexual racialized stereotype, more than a hundred years ago" --

While the United States wrestles with a college completion crisis, the Division of Institutional Research at San Francisco State University found a high correlation between Ethnic Studies curriculum and increased student retention and graduation rates. Majors and minors in the College of Ethnic Studies graduated within six years at rates up to 92%. Those who were neither majors nor minors in Ethnic Studies also boosted their graduation rates by up to 72% by taking just a few courses in Africana Studies, American Indian Studies, Asian American Studies, Latina/Latino Studies, or Race and Resistance Studies. Faculty in the College of Ethnic Studies demonstrated significant levels of high impact instruction in the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) and senior exit surveys as compared with their colleagues across the university.

With a focus on historic sites, this volume explores the recent history of non- heteronormative Americans from the early twentieth century onward and the places associated with these communities. Authors explore how queer identities are connected with specific places: places where people gather, socialize, protest, mourn, and celebrate. The focus is deeper look at how sexually variant and gender non-conforming Americans constructed identity, created communities, and fought to have rights recognized by the government. Each chapter is accompanied by prompts and activities that invite readers to think critically and immerse themselves in the subject matter while working collaboratively with others