Winter 2003

Creating an Authentic History

by Joanna Dornfeld

Erika Lee never dreamed while growing up in the San Francisco Bay area that she'd one day be ensconced in a sunny West Bank office at the University of Minnesota surrounded by history books and photographs of her nine-month-old son--much less that she'd be researching and teaching Asian American history.

"I hated history in high school and even opted out of the standard American history course by taking summer school," she says.

But while attending Tufts University in Boston, Lee, today an assistant professor of history, created her own undergraduate major in cultural studies, combining literature, sociology, and political science. And she discovered her passion for history.

"My college courses inspired me to view history differently, as creative intellectual problems and patterns," she says. "I wanted to teach, research, and write a different type of American history that not only spoke to a diversity of experiences but also connected lesser known and often marginalized histories to the big picture of American history."

A third-generation Chinese American on her father's side and fifth-generation Chinese American on her mother's, Lee grew up reading biographies of immigrants who came to America. Asian American history and culture were not, however, part of her school's curriculum. Minority and immigrant populations generally showed up in American history textbooks only as footnotes or sub-narratives, says Lee--in accounts of the Japanese American detention camps during World War II, for example, or of Chinese immigrant railroad workers.

One day, that would all begin to change, with the help of scholars such as Lee.

In 1998, the history department hired Lee to teach 20th century U.S. history. Coincidentally, several other CLA departments at the time were also hiring faculty who focused on Asian American scholarship. Their conversations and collaborations laid the groundwork for a new minor in Asian American studies, which is expected to be approved soon.

The minor "provides students and faculty with a scholarly and critical context for understanding the individual and collective lives of Asian Americans," says associate psychology professor Richard Lee, who credits Erika Lee with mobilizing faculty, staff, and students to get the program proposal off the ground.

[Erika] Lee's research provides historical grounding for the curriculum in Asian American immigration and legal history. "As a historian, Erika enables the much needed connections between (students') experiences of the present and the events of the past," says Josephine Lee, associate professor of English and another of the minor's founding faculty. More specifically, she connects the histories of Asian Americans and other non-Western immigrant groups, as well as those of African Americans and American Indians, to what she calls the "general narrative" of U.S. history. Only in this way can historians present a broader and more authentic sense of what America is.

This is especially critical as the Asian American population grows. According to 2000 census data, more than 12 percent of St. Paul's population is Asian or Asian American. Minnesota's Asian population increased 108 percent during the 1990s, and St. Paul has the largest Hmong population in the United States.

Lee notes that little research has been done on these immigrant populations. And as aging first-generation immigrants die, they take their histories with them. Lee hopes to expand her research to document Asian American history in Minnesota. She also would like to explore Hmong and Somali refugee resettlement. Meanwhile, the faculty group that created the minor is launching an Asian American Studies Institute to support research and outreach on issues of value to the community.

Some issues of particular interest to Lee--such as transnational immigration in the United States and across the Americas, and the consequences of restrictions on immigration--have become especially compelling since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, which led to tightened security at U.S. borders and also triggered increased scrutiny, and distrust, of Arab and Muslim Americans.

"In a time of war there are always going to be lines of inclusion and exclusion," says Lee. "Because my research interests are grounded in immigration law, I am particularly interested in how Arab and Muslim Americans are being treated as a threat."

Lee has published several articles in the last year about restrictions on immigration of Arabs and Muslims. She also has brought her research into the classroom, asking her students to compare the treatment of German and Japanese Americans during World War II and the treatment of Muslim and Arab Americans since September 11.

"The classroom is another laboratory of ideas," says Lee. "Students expect and deserve courses that motivate them to think about things in new ways and that inspire them in the production of knowledge. Teaching gives me the opportunity to connect specific threads of American history.

"We have a responsibility not only to unearth the past, but to explain it in a way that has relevance to the present."

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