Asia in North Carolina: Steps towards Asian-American Studies in the South (2004)

Undergraduates: Jeff Kim, Sendra Yang, Katherine Melville, Pauline Wong & Dan Duffy

Faculty Advisor: Glenn Hinson
Department: Political Science

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North Carolina is home to growing and diverse Asian populations, a largely unknown subject in university scholarship. Our research project asks: What is the interest in Asian American Studies at UNC? Who are the Asians in NC? How can the University develop library collections to aid study? How can the University share publicly their resources and expertise? To answer, we did focus research with representative student groups ? black, white, Asian, Indian ? to discover on-campus interest in Asian American Studies. On the Census 2000 data of Asians in North Carolina, we did a demographic analysis and ethnographic interviews with Asian community leaders. We assembled a pilot collection of documentary materials and planned with librarians how to build UNC Library resources. We are constructing a web site to communicate our findings and make UNC system research easily accessible. This project is ongoing and hopes to allow us to gain, analyze, and publish increments of knowledge about our state?s Asian populations.