Labor and Capital
The Nineteenth Century and Beyond
Guest Editor: Professor Gordon H. Chang (Stanford University)
Publication Date: Issue planned for Spring 2019 publication
Due Date: Paper submissions (5,000-6,000 words, excluding endnotes) due June 30, 2018.
Nineteenth-century Asian labor experiences in North America once formed a foundation of Asian American Studies, but rapidly changing communities and intellectual interests have encouraged new fields of study and focus. Might it be time to revisit the questions of labor, race, and capitalism in the early experiences of Asians in the Americas?
Workers comprised the vast majority of Chinese, Japanese, South Asians, and other Asians who came to North and South America in the nineteenth century. They labored in mines, railroads, plantations, and urban manufacturing, and formed communities in the American West (California, Oregon, Washington, and the Rocky Mountain states), Canada, Hawai‘i and the Pacific, Cuba, Peru, and elsewhere. They were indispensable to the political economy of these regions and accumulated rich social experience. Various forms of the cultural production of the times in these areas often included representations of Asians. Much attention has been given to the white supremacist reaction, politically and racially, to Asians in the West, but only initial consideration has been given to the lived experience and subjectivity of Asians themselves.
This issue of Amerasia Journal seeks research-based essays that address the challenge of recovering the history and lived experiences of nineteenth-century Asian workers, their families in home regions, and partners, in North America and elsewhere. Welcomed are submissions from different disciplinary approaches, including, but not limited to, history, historical sociology, anthropology/archaeology, and cultural and gender studies. Essays might rely on quantitative materials, including census records; traditional historical sources, such as contemporaneous papers and published materials; nineteenth-century cultural production, such as literature, music, and art; material culture gathered and studied by archaeologists; and forms of memory, representation, and imagination found in creative expression in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. We also encourage comparative analyses that draw out connections between nineteenth-century Asian labor experiences and contemporary labor issues facing Asian Americans and immigrants. Essays drawing from non-English sources are welcomed.
This issue will honor Chinese involvement in the completion of the first transcontinental railroad symbolically completed at Promontory Point, Utah, on May 10, 1869. 2019 will see the 150th anniversary commemorative events.
Submission Guidelines and Review Process:
The guest editor, in consultation with the Amerasia Journal editorial staff and peer reviewers, make decisions on the final essays:
- Initial review of submitted papers by guest editor and Amerasia Journal editorial staff
- Papers approved by editors will undergo blind peer review
- Revision of accepted peer-reviewed papers and final submission
All correspondence should be directed to arnoldpan@ucla.edu and include “Labor and Capital” in the subject line.
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