Original essays and interviews by artists and scholars who are making, defining, questioning, and theorizing Asian American dance in all its variety.

A collaboration between well-established and rising scholars, Futures of Dance Studies suggests multiple directions for new research in the field. Essays address dance in a wider range of contexts—onstage, on screen, in the studio, and on the street—and deploy methods from diverse disciplines. Engaging African American and African diasporic studies, Latinx and Latin American studies, gender and sexuality studies, and Asian American and Asian studies, this anthology demonstrates the relevance of dance analysis to adjacent fields.

Poised at the intersection of Asian American studies and dance studies, Choreographing Asian America is the first book-length examination of the role of Orientalist discourse in shaping Asian Americanist entanglements with U.S. modern dance history. Moving beyond the acknowledgement that modern dance has its roots in Orientalist appropriation, Yutian Wong considers the effect that invisible Orientalism has on the reception of work by Asian American choreographers and the conceptualization of Asian American performance as a category. Drawing on ethnographic and choreographic research methods, the author follows the work of Club O' Noodles—a Vietnamese American performance ensemble—to understand how Asian American artists respond to competing narratives of representation, aesthetics, and social activism that often frame the production of Asian American performance.

DIVA critical examination of what constitutes the varied positions grouped together as Asian American, seen in relation to both American and transnational forces./div

What are the library services and resources that Asian Pacific Americans need? What does it mean to be an Asian Pacific American librarian in the 21st century? In Asian American Librarians and Library Services: Activism, Collaborations, and Strategies, library professionals and scholars share reflections, best practices, and strategies, and convey the critical need for diversity in the LIS field, library programming, and resources to better reflect the rich and varied experiences and information needs of Asian Americans in the US and beyond. The contributors show that they care deeply about diversity, that they acknowledge that it is painfully lacking in so many aspects of libraries and librarianship, and that libraries and the LIS profession must systematically integrate diversity and inclusion into their strategic priorities and practices, indeed, in their very mission, such that the rich diversity of experiences and histories of Asian Americans in library and archival collections, services, and programming are not only validated and recognized, but also valued and celebrated as vital components of the shared American experience. The volume recognizes and honors the creative and intentional work librarians do for their constituent Asian American communities in promoting resources, services, and outreach.

Dancing the World Smaller examines international dance performances in New York City in the 1940s as sites in which dance artists and audiences contested what it meant to practice globalism in mid-twentieth-century America. During and after the Second World War, modern dance and ballet thrived in New York City, a fertile cosmopolitan environment in which dance was celebrated as an emblem of American artistic and cultural dominance. In the ensuing Cold War years, American choreographers and companies were among those the U.S. government sent abroad to serve as ambassadors of American cultural values and to extend the nation's geo-political reach. Less-known is that international dance performance, or what was then-called "ethnic" or "ethnologic" dance, enjoyed strong support among audiences in the city and across the nation as well. Produced in non-traditional dance venues, such as the American Museum of Natural History, the Ethnologic Dance Center, and Carnegie Hall, these performances elevated dance as an intercultural bridge across human differences and dance artists as transcultural interlocutors. Dancing the World Smaller draws on extensive archival resources, as well as critical and historical studies of race and ethnicity in the U.S., to uncover a hidden history of globalism in American dance and to see artists such as La Meri, Ruth St. Denis, Asadata Dafora, Pearl Primus, José Limón, Ram Gopal, and Charles Weidman in new light. Debates about how to practice globalism in dance proxied larger cultural struggles over how to reconcile the nation's new role as a global superpower. In dance as in cultural politics, Americans labored over how to realize diversity while honoring difference and manage dueling impulses toward globalism, on the one hand, and isolationism, on the other.

With its dynamic choreographies and booming drumbeats, taiko has gained worldwide popularity since its emergence in 1950s Japan. Harnessed by Japanese Americans in the late 1960s, taiko's sonic largesse and buoyant energy challenged stereotypical images of Asians in America as either model minorities or sinister foreigners. While the majority of North American taiko players are Asian American, over 400 groups now exist across the US and Canada, and players come from a range of backgrounds. Using ethnographic and historical approaches, combined with in-depth performance description and analysis, this book explores the connections between taiko and Asian American cultural politics. Based on original and archival interviews, as well as the author's extensive experience as a taiko player, this book highlights the Midwest as a site for Asian American cultural production and makes embodied experience central to inquiries about identity, including race, gender, and sexuality. The book builds on insights from the fields of dance studies, ethnomusicology, performance studies, queer and feminist theory, and Asian American studies to argue that taiko players from a variety of identity positions perform Asian America on stage, as well as in rehearsals, festivals, schools, and through interactions with audiences. While many taiko players play simply for the love of its dynamism and physicality, this book demonstrates that politics are built into even the most mundane aspects of rehearsing and performing.