Journal of Asian American Studies

JAAS solicits manuscripts that advance the journal's mission to showcase critical work furthering knowledge of Asian/Pacific America in its diversity. The journal welcomes submissions from all fields, including cultural studies, history, literary criticism, social science, and, of course, interdisciplinary studies of social policy, pedagogical/praxis and comparative race issues. JAAS also publishes book, media, and exhibition reviews.

Manuscripts should follow the documentary-note style, as specified in the latest edition of the CHICAGO MANUAL OF STYLE. All text must be double-spaced and with Times New Roman font size 12 on 8.5 x 11 inch white paper. Text should be left justified with all margins at least 1 inch, and endnotes entered with the word-processing programs. You may cite your work, but do not use wording that identifies you as the manuscript's author. You do not need to include a title page. You should include a 100-word abstract to help the journal locate external reviewers. Articles should be between 8,000 to 10,000 words, excluding endnotes and other printed matter. They should be word-processed and double-spaced. JAAS will acknowledge the receipt of your manuscript.

Submit articles online at mc.manuscriptcentral.com/asianam.    
Queries can be directed to Dr. Rick Bonus at jaasinformation@gmail.com.

The journal does not allow multiple submissions. Decisions are generally made in fifteen (15) weeks of receipt. Manuscripts are subjected to blind reviews. If your manuscript is accepted for publication, you will be asked to submit one (1) electronic copy, in Microsoft Word (.doc) format. You also will be expected to obtain permission to reproduce any copyrighted materials (e.g., photographs) used in your article.

Correspondence regarding book and media reviews should be sent to either:  
Lili M. Kim 
Hampshire College, School of Critical Social Inquiry 
893 West Street 
Amherst, MA 01002 
lkim@hampshire.edu  
or  
Caroline Yang 
150 Hicks Way 
Amherst, MA 01003 
chyang@umass.edu

• Critical Caste Studies
• Critical Pedagogy and Activist Scholarship

Critical Caste Studies

M. Bilal Nasir, Pomona College & Shalini Shankar, Northwestern University

Call for Submissions

Over the past decade, a renewed interest in the question of caste has emerged among political activists and academics alike. The issue of caste-based discrimination and violence has increasingly become a part of radical university organizing spaces, particularly because of the campaigning and community-based work of the South Asian American political organization Equality Labs. After years of organizing by Dalit students, in early 2022 the California State University system became the first academic institution to add caste to its anti-discrimination policy, leading to several others following in kind.

Meanwhile, Dalit and Muslim scholars in the academy have called for a new field of “critical caste studies.” Anthropologist and historian Gajendran Ayyuthurai argues that this emerging field must approach “caste as an entrenched social crisis.” In doing so, critical caste studies interrogates the formation of caste-power past and present, as well as probes the possibilities and limits of counter-caste movements.

As a field, Asian American studies has overwhelmingly focused on the experiences and perspectives of East Asian America. Although the rise of South Asian American studies in the 1990s sought to decenter such hegemonic approaches, this ‘sub-field’ has remained marginal to the core methods and theories of Asian American studies. This is particularly curious considering the impact of Edward Said’s Orientalism (1978) on the development of Asian American studies, which probed questions of imperialism, power, and knowledge production through colonial representations of West and South Asia. Returning to these foundations, this special issue queries caste as a concept and discourse entangled with modern power, and therefore indispensable to debates about class, gender, sexuality, religion, and specifically, race, in Asian American studies. Emerging out of, informed by, and intersecting with systems of colonialism, militarism, warmaking, as well as providing an entryway for solidarity politics, caste offers an important site to interrogate the foundational concerns of Asian American studies.

This special issue emerges from the increasing relevance of caste to public and scholarly debates about the grammar of race, the master category of modernity. While the overlaps and divergences between race and caste have been explored by Dalit and Black thinkers since the 19th century – most notably by Mahatma Gandhi, BR Ambedkar, W.E.B. DuBois, and Martin Luther King Jr, among others – we believe it is important to re-engage and reinvigorate such debates in light of the resurgence of caste politics in the United States. We are particularly attuned to how anti-caste politics has emerged in the context of the war on terror in North America and South Asia, sometimes intersecting with, and other times conflicting with, movements to confront anti-Muslim racism.

The special issue and its papers will address these guiding questions, among others:

1. What is the utility of caste as a category of inequality in Asian American Studies, Critical Ethnic Studies and American Studies?
2. How might analyses of caste shift our analyses of racial formation and racial governance?
3. How do global white supremacy and systems of coloniality inform the grammar of caste in the United States and global South Asia?

In bringing the underexplored domain of caste to bear on Asian American social theory, history, and public culture, this special issue will introduce readers to emerging debates on the issue of inequality from the perspective of South Asian America. It will rst speak to the epistemological concerns noted above, considering how caste as a “protected category” intersects with others like race, religion, gender, sexuality, and class. By exploring the relevance of critical caste studies to existing conversations in Asian American studies, the theme of “solidarity” and its attendant parts “justice” and “public life” will be addressed. The second is to illustrate caste solidarity activism in a range of ethnographic, historical, and media based contexts. As such, each of the articles in the special will explore a wide range of topics across disciplines relevant to Asian American studies, including, but not limited to, anthropology, critical ethnic studies, performance studies, sociology, religious studies, communication, history, and cultural studies, among others.

Suggested submission topics

• Investigating the relationship between caste and race
• Non-Hindu caste systems (Muslim, Sikh, Christian, etc) in diasporas
• Analyses of representations of caste in South Asian/American literature, lm, and art
• Analyses of representations of caste in politics and public culture
• Analyses of Dalit social, religious, and/or political life forged in critique of caste
• Relationship between caste abolition, settler-colonialism, and/or decolonization
• Relationship between caste abolition, war on terror, and anti-Muslim racism
• Role and presence of digital culture and social media in caste-related movements
• Social movements to ban caste discrimination
• Social movements against caste education and equality

Please submit a 250 word abstract and brief bio or CV (as word doc, pdf, or email text) by Friday July 12, 2024 to: criticalcastestudies24@gmail.com.

About the editors

Dr. Bilal Nasir is Assistant Professor of Asian American Studies and American Studies at Pomona College. 

Dr. Shalini Shankar is Professor of Anthropology and Asian American Studies at Northwestern University.

Please address questions and inquiries to criticalcastestudies24@gmail.com.

Critical Pedagogy and Activist Scholarship

JAAS is pleased to announce a new section devoted to two pressing areas within Asian American Studies: 1) critical pedagogy and 2) activist-scholarship. In creating a special category in each issue dedicated to these issues, we hope to highlight and share the important work of scholars/teachers/activists that remains a core part of our discipline. We welcome unique essays from those engaged in Asian American Studies and/or Asian American communities – as scholars, teachers, and/or activists – to share their innovative approaches, raise tough questions, and push the field to think in ever more critical and creative ways.

These papers should clearly articulate a central argument or address a specific question central to the field of Asian American Studies.

Critical Pedagogy

We are seeking original essays that critically engage pedagogical concerns and/or provide innovative solutions relevant to the field of Asian American Studies. More than a compilation of teaching strategies, critical pedagogy is an active tool of knowledge production that unsettles commonsense assumptions through its attentiveness to practices and experiences that have historically been denied. We encourage original analytical essays that incorporate and/or extend Asian American critique in the classroom and beyond.

Activist Scholarship

We welcome new analytical interventions on the political, ethical, and/or practical issues in producing scholarship for social justice in Asian American Studies. Just as there are myriad modes of forming activist scholarship, there are just as many dilemmas and challenges in engaging the seemingly impossible divide between theory and practice and researcher and the researched. Rather than a description of a particular organization or project, we seek analytical considerations that incorporate critical self-reflection that delve into complex questions of praxis, engage fundamental contradictions endemic to these efforts, and/or promote new innovations in activist scholarship within Asian American Studies.

Given the unique nature of these papers, they will undergo review distinct from other submissions. Each paper will be reviewed by the Journal Editor and one external reader; and will not be anonymous. Expected length is 3,000 words (excluding endnotes or other printed matter) and no abstract is required. Submissions cannot be previously published in print or online.

Submit articles online at mc.manuscriptcentral.com/asianam. Please identify “critical pedagogy” or “activist scholarship” in the title of your submission (e.g. Critical pedagogy: SUBMISSION TITLE). Submissions are accepted on a rolling-basis. Queries can be directed to Dr. Rick Bonus at jaasinformation@gmail.com

The Hopkins Press Journals Ethics and Malpractice Statement can be found at the ethics-and-malpractice page.

Peer Review Policy

The Journal of Asian American Studies (JAAS) publishes original works to showcase critical scholarship that furthers knowledge regarding Asian/Pacific/America in all of its diversity.  All manuscripts are required to be non-simultaneous submissions and to not exceed 30 (thirty) word-processed, double-spaced pages, or 8,000 words, excluding endnotes and other printed matter.  Submissions undergo a preliminary review by the Editor-in-Chief, the Assistant Editor, and, occasionally, one or several members of the Editorial Board.  Such submissions should demonstrate engagement with the field of Asian American studies, express an appropriate and thorough methodology, and provide new or original argumentation.  Submissions that pass the preliminary review undergo a double-blind peer review process with two or more reviewers.  Overall, the manuscripts are evaluated by interest, quality, and originality.  More specific criteria include whether or not the submission provides new or significant information, a clear abstract, a comprehensive description of methodology, sound interpretations and conclusions, and adequate references to related work in the field.  Reviewers evaluate the submissions according to these criteria and choose one decision among the following: accept, minor revision, major revision, or reject.  Authors are generally notified of reviewers’ decisions within 15 weeks.  Most of the journal’s accepted publications were initially advised to revise and resubmit; the second or revised submission is often re-reviewed by its original reviewers.  The Editor-in-Chief evaluates the final revised submission and makes the ultimate decision on whether or not to accept the manuscript for publication, including the manuscript’s date of publication.  The average time of the review process for successful manuscripts, from submission to publication, is 13 months.

Editors

Rick Bonus, University of Washington, Seattle

Reviews Editor

Lili M. Kim, Hampshire College    
Caroline Yang, University of Massachusetts, Amherst

Assistant Editor

Edward Nadurata, University of California, Irvine

Editorial Board

Wendy Cheng, Scripps College       
Tamara Bhalla, University of Maryland, Baltimore County       
Candace Fujikane, University of Hawai'i, Manoa       
Grace S. Kim, Boston University       
Sunaina Maira, University of California, Davis       
Kent Ono, University of Utah       
Mark Padoongpatt, University of Nevada, Las Vegas       
Chia Youyee Vang, University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee

The EDITORS AND PUBLISHER wish to acknowledge with gratitude the University of Washington, Seattle in providing support for Journal of Asian American Studies.

Send books for review to:

Correspondence regarding book and media reviews should be sent to either: 
Lili M. Kim
Hampshire College, School of Critical Social Inquiry
893 West Street
Amherst, MA 01002
lkim@hampshire.edu 
or 
Caroline Yang
150 Hicks Way
Amherst, MA 01003
chyang@umass.edu

Please send book review copies to the contact above. Review copies received by the Johns Hopkins University Press office will be discarded.

Abstracting & Indexing Databases

• Association for Asian Studies
  • Bibliography of Asian Studies (Online), 1998-1999
• De Gruyter Saur
  • Dietrich's Index Philosophicus
  • IBZ - Internationale Bibliographie der Geistes- und Sozialwissenschaftlichen Zeitschriftenliteratur
  • Internationale Bibliographie der Rezensionen Geistes- und Sozialwissenschaftlicher Literatur
• EBSCOhost
  • America: History and Life, 2/1/1998-
  • Current Abstracts, 1/1/2007-
  • Historical Abstracts (Online), 10/1/1998-
  • MLA International Bibliography (Modern Language Association)
  • RILM Abstracts of Music Literature (Repertoire International de Litterature Musicale)
  • SocINDEX, 6/1/2002-
  • SocINDEX with Full Text, 6/1/2002-
  • TOC Premier (Table of Contents), 1/1/2007-
• Gale
  • MLA International Bibliography (Modern Language Association)
• OCLC
  • ArticleFirst, vol.1, no.1, 1998-vol.14, no.2, 2011
  • Electronic Collections Online, vol.1, no.1, 1998-vol.14, no.2, 2011
  • Periodical Abstracts, v.6, n.1, 2003-v.10, n.2, 2007
  • Sociological Abstracts (Online), Selective
• ProQuest
  • Ethnic NewsWatch, 06/01/2002-
  • MLA International Bibliography (Modern Language Association)
  • Professional ProQuest Central, 06/01/2002-
  • ProQuest 5000, 06/01/2002-
  • ProQuest 5000 International, 06/01/2002-
  • ProQuest Central, 06/01/2002-
  • Research Library, 06/01/2002-
  • RILM Abstracts of Music Literature (Repertoire International de Litterature Musicale)
  • Social Science Database, 6/1/2002-
  • Social Science Premium Collection, 06/01/2002-
  • Sociological Abstracts (Online), Selective
  • Sociology Collection, 6/1/2002-
  • Sociology Database, 06/01/2002-

Source: Ulrichsweb Global Serials Directory.

Published three times a year

Readers include: Members of the Association for Asian American Studies; teachers and students of Asian American studies; academics in Ethnic studies, American studies, history, sociology, anthropology, psychology, political science, education, gender studies, queer studies, and critical theory. Students in higher education; concerned professionals (including public policy and community service groups); and the interested public

Print circulation: 467

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February Issue – December 15

June Issue – April 15

October Issue – August 15

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"JAAS is a testament to the maturity and dynamism of Asian American Studies. It behooves all serious students and scholars of the field to read and monitor what is published in this new journal, in order to better inform ourselves as well as influence its course."

-Evelyn Hu-DeHart
Professor and Chair
Department of Ethnic Studies, University of Colorado at Boulder

"The field has grown tremendously both in terms of the quantity of scholarly works and in terms of breadth. I recommend this journal in the strongest voice possible."

-Lucie Cheng
University of California, Los Angeles

"JAAS provides a rare perspective on issues from Asian American Scholars. Libraries need the Journal of Asian American Studies."

-Linna Yu
President, Chinese American Librarians Association

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