Description: Who Is the Asianist? reconsiders the past, present, and future of Asian studies through the lens of positionality and an analysis of race with an emphasis on Blackness in Asia. This book insists that change within Asian studies will occur only when it reckons with the entirety of the scholars, geographies, and histories that it comprises.
Brief description:
Marvin D. Sterling is Associate Professor of Anthropology at Indiana University, Bloomington.
He is author of Babylon East: Performing Dancehall, Roots Reggae, and Rastafari in Japan (Duke UP 2010).
Review Quotes: In this uniquely conceived volume, editors Will Bridges, Nitasha Tamar Sharma, and Marvin D. Sterling have assembled a cast of progressive-minded contributors whose collective aim is to decenter Asian Studies from its customary self-absorption and circumscription and propel the discipline into a broadened engagement with and advocacy for Black Studies. Through its eclectic and insightful scholarship contending that such intersectionality can only benefit the interests of all parties, no work currently matches Who Is the Asianist? as an indicator and expression of the emerging imperatives within Asian Studies for racial equity and justice. More so than any other now available, this book fully represents and reflects the expanding vision and transformed agenda of the future that Asian Studies is destined to embrace.--Don J. Wyatt, McCardell Distinguished Professor, Middlebury College and Chair, Diversity and Equity Committee, Association for Asian Studies