Asian American Studies at Wellesley College

Asian American Studies emerged as a result of the 1968 Third World student protest movement in California that also gave birth to the fields of Ethnic Studies, African American Studies, Chicano/Latino Studies and Native American Studies. It is an interdisciplinary academic discipline which studies the experiences of people of Asian and Pacific Island ancestry in America and U.S. territories and critically examines their history, culture, politics, and contemporary issues.

Since the early 1990s, Asian American Studies has had a growing presence at Wellesley. Asian American Studies is offered as a formal concentration within the American Studies Program and currently includes courses from across the fields of American Studies, Anthropology, English, and Women’s Studies.