Asian American Studies is an interdisciplinary field of study that critically examines the histories, social and political formations, lived experiences, and perspectives of Asian American/Pacific Islander communities. It emerged out of the social movements of the 1960s and 1970s and was formally instituted at San Francisco State University and UC Berkeley in 1969. Closely linked to other Ethnic Studies fields, Asian American Studies provides critical vocabularies and theories, grounded in grassroots struggles for social justice.
Today Asian American Studies programs can be found in many major colleges and universities around the country. At UC Irvine, the Department of Asian American Studies was founded out of student activism in the early 1990s and, aside from establishing the minor and major, now has the first 4+1 B.A/M.A. program in Asian American Studies in the country. The Department collaborates closely with the UCI Libraries Southeast Asian Archive, a distinctive collection focused on the Vietnamese, Laotian, Hmong, and Cambodian diaspora.
The UCI Libraries Southeast Asian Archive collects, preserves, and makes accessible primary and secondary source materials documenting the history of the Cambodian, Hmong, Laotian, and Vietnamese diaspora. Collection strengths include Southeast Asian American experiences of resettlement and community formations since the Vietnam War, Cambodian Genocide, and geopolitical turmoil in the former French-occupied "Indochina" in the latter half of the 20th century.
To view FINDING AIDS to archival collections in the SEAA, please visit the Online Archive of California
To search for book, film, thesis and dissertation titles in the SEAA collection, use UC Library Search
