Asian America through the Lens

Jun Xing is Professor of Ethnic Studies and Director of the Difference, Power and Discrimination Program at Oregon State University. Trained as a cultural historian, he specializes in U.S. immigration history, American ethnicity, popular culture, and the history of cultural relations between the United States and East Asia. Dr. Xing is the author of Reversing the Lens: Ethnicity, Race, Gender and Sexuality through Film, and Baptized in the Fire of Revolution: The American Social Gospel and the YMCA in China, 1919-1937.

The sheer growth in number of Asian American independent films over the past few years requires a comprehensive critical survey of the work that is being generated....There is also a rapidly growing body of critical literature on Asian American film that Xing has mastered well and synthesizes for the reader. The author has 'done his homework' by providing an overview of related work on the topic, and in doing so carves out an important niche for his own contribution. His comparative analysis of the cinema practice of other nondominant groups such as African Americans and Latinos helps greatly in contextualizing Asian American film within the larger framework of marginalization or outright exclusion from the dominant media.

• chapter 1 I: Introduction1. Cultural Essentialism and Asian American Filmschapter 2 2. Between a Weapon and a Formulachapter 3 3. Asian American Aestheticschapter 4 II: Cinematic Asian Representation1. Representation as Imagechapter 5 2. Politics of Representationchapter 6 3. The Institution of Representationchapter 7 III. Documentaries as Social History1. History as Subject: Personal Diary Films and Family Portraitschapter 8 2. History As Consciousness: Biographies and Communal Historieschapter 9 3. History as Representation: Social-Issue Documentarieschapter 10 IV: Hybrid Cinema by Asian American Women1. Avant-Garde Film as Historychapter 11 2. Time and Subjectivitychapter 12 3. Screen Space as Social Spacechapter 13 V: Conclusion1. A Cinema in Transition: "Cross-Over" Filmschapter 14 2. Films from the Asian Diasporachapter 15 Appendix: Theories on Ethnicity and Filmchapter 16 Noteschapter 17 Bibliographychapter 18 Filmographychapter 19 Index