Asian American Studies at Stanford

Started in 1997, the Asian American Studies Major and Minor offer students interdisciplinary analytical tools to actively study and research the Asian American experience. Asian American Studies classes cover a broad selection of topics and are offered in departments ranging from History to English to Music, representing the breadth of interests among our diverse faculty members. Whether you are a declared Asian American Studies major or simply interested in learning more, we hope you will find some useful information on what we are, who we are, what we teach, and what some of our alumni have done with a degree in Asian American Studies.

Courses	Program	Faculty	Journal


	Students	Events	Resources

David Palumbo-Liu, a professor of comparative literature, was recently elected chair of the 46th Faculty Senate, which will convene at the start of the 2013-14 academic year. Currently, he is the senate's vice chair.

Palumbo-Liu, who earned a doctorate in comparative literature at the University of California-Berkeley in 1988, joined Stanford's faculty in 1990 as an assistant professor. He became a full professor in 2001.

He is the undergraduate program director and chair of Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity and of Asian American Studies at the Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity. He also is the director of the Department of Comparative Literature and the department's director of graduate studies.

Palumbo-Liu is most interested in issues regarding social theory, community, race and ethnicity, justice, globalization, ecology and the specific roles that literature and the humanities play in helping people address each of these areas.

His latest book is The Deliverance of Others: Reading Literature in a Global Age, published by Duke University Press in 2012.

A Letter from the Director
By David Palumbo-Liu, Director of AAS

Asian American Studies connects the study of Asians in America and in transit between to the historical connection of Asian countries, the United States, and the rest of the world. The last century has been called the "Pacific Century" by many scholars of American history, and the twenty-first promises to be equally influenced by trans-Pacific flows of people, finance, culture, information, technology, and commodities. In our Asian American courses, you will learn how identities and values have been and are shaped in this exciting, and often confusing, mix. Our classes cross disciplinary boundaries-psychology, history, music, art, literature, anthropology. The program promotes the development of close professional relationships among faculty, students, and staff that will provide students the intellectual and administrative support to obtain a rewarding academic experience and a set of knowledge and skills that can be taken into many professional fields and endeavors.

Students have access to a variety of special resources, including academic and peer mentoring, summer paid internships, community-based learning, and special programs sponsored by the program and Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity. We not only learn, we learn to make a difference, using our new critical, analytical, and practical skills. Graduates from the program have gone on to become Rhodes scholars, lawyers, educators, doctors, community activists, and business executives. I invite you to learn more about AAS and the very special community that supports our academic mission. Please contact me at any time-I look forward to getting to know you and your personal and academic interests.

David Palumbo-Liu
Director, AAS