| New Ethnicities on the Edge of Time: Asian American Visual Media , undertakes the study of visual media produced by Asian Americans---photography, film, and video---as a unique and neglected dimension of United States cultural history. These interests grow out of an abiding commitment to vital cultural resources which continue to attract only scant attention from the relevant scholarly fields, where critical cultural analysis remains focused primarily on literary works (Asian American Studies) or on dominant representations of Otherness (Film and Media Studies). The dissertation also critically interrogates the relative absence itself of Asian Americans in mainstream cultural and historical accounts, toward a revision of these narratives from which they have been routinely occluded.;The dissertation is divided into three Parts. Part I, comprised of Chapters One and Two, maps out the theoretical and historical contexts in which the dissertation situates Asian American media. These chapters draw particularly on Black British and Asian American Cultural Studies, and argue for the significance of the diaspora concept for cultural analysis. Part II, comprised of Chapters Three and Four, interrogates the meanings of national history and nationalism from Asian American points of view. Chapter Three examines the turn-of-century photography of Frank Matsura as an ironic "origin story" for Asian American visual media, while Chapter Four analyzes recent Japanese American media in the aftermath of the Redress and Reparations movement. Part III closes the dissertation with Chapter Five, which rejoins and extends the theoretical debates about diaspora in the pressing, transformative context of globalization. It centers its analysis on queer video to interrogate the continuing significance of ethnicity and sexual identity for contemporary cultural politics.;In conclusion, Asian American media offer a repertoire of stories which challenge the narrative logics of westward expansion and globalization. Equally important, they also represent alternative identities, histories, and geographies through which to imagine a richer, more complex and egalitarian, shared culture. Predicated on an ethics of inclusion and the affirmation of difference, this dissertation advances the terms of existing scholarships by participating in the collective critical revisions underway in Asian American and Film Studies. |
