by Natalie Mueller and Andrew Flachs
This summer several Anthropology graduate and undergraduate students were able to participate in American Culture Studies’ On Location traveling seminar. Through this signature course, held each summer, students explore American identity and experiences as they visit sites and spaces. This particular month-long course examined the Asian and Hawaiian experiences of Americanization. Our daily seminars were based on readings and the firsthand experience of being on location at these important sites. Taught by Professors Linda Lindsey and Benjamin Cooper, the class featured a heavy emphasis on history and sociology, but it was also driven by the diverse interests of the mixed graduate and undergraduate students who came from a variety of disciplines. Over the span of three weeks, we visited sites in St. Louis, California, and Hawaii, speaking with Asian American and Native Hawaiian activists, educators, and historians.
After starting in St. Louis with the Missouri Botanical Garden and presentations by Chinese and Japanese cultural organizations, our group then traveled to California. Based in San Francisco, we took tours of Chinatown and Japantown, traveled through the Sierra mountains to see the Manzanar Japanese internment camp (now a National Historic Site), and toured Angel Island (the Ellis Island of the West). In Hawaii, we explored a unique history of colonization through the eyes of Native Hawaiians attempting to maintain land rights and political power in their homeland and through the eyes of Asian immigrants who arrived as workers on plantations where pay and amenities were determined by race. We also visited America’s only royal palace, the Iolani Palace; saw numerous Buddhist and Shinto temples; met the Hawaiian student organization of UH Hilo on the big island; and experienced the anthropologically perplexing Polynesian Cultural Center.
The course brought together graduate and undergraduate students from Anthropology, Comparative Literature, Education, English, History, and Art History — all with diverse perspectives. The two of us represented the Anthropology graduate students. We are also Lynne Cooper Harvey Fellows in American Culture Studies, which allows us a full additional year of teaching assistantship funding and the possibility to teach a multidisciplinary course in American Culture Studies.
Incidentally, we also enjoyed the chance to see Hawaii and California!
Andrew Flachs is a graduate student in cultural anthropology currently doing field research on the production of environmental knowledge on organic and conventional farms in India. Natalie Mueller is a graduate student in archaeology researching agriculture in prehistoric North America.