Merchants, Migrants & Missionaries:
A History of U.S.-East Asia Interaction
April 1, 8, 15, 22
History Professor David Nordmann closes out the Thursday Forum academic year by examining the history of United States and East Asia relations.
Topics will include early American commercial interest in Asia, Chinese immigration and the building of the transcontinental railroad, American missionaries in Asia, the anti-Chinese movement of the 1880s, early Japanese and Korean immigration, the U.S. annexation of Hawaii, the relocation of West Coast Japanese in World War II, the 442nd Japanese-American infantry battalion, the Asian civil rights movement, and recent Asian immigrants.
The lectures will focus on how increased contact between Americans and Asians created "exotic" images of the other that exaggerated cultural differences. Depending on the circumstance, this resulted in interracial hostility or in idealization of the other culture. Nordmann will explore how this trend continues in the present.
David Hayes
(Business Administration/Economics)
"The department's Spellman Summer Research Symposium is the main focus of my student-faculty research."
