The Infrastructures of Asian/Pacific/American Studies

Hosted by the Department of Social and Cultural Analysis at NYU. Sponsored by the Asian/Pacific/American Institute at NYU.

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In recent years, the concept of “infrastructure” has been picked up by scholars working at the intersections of Asian/Pacific/American Studies, critical ethnic studies, American studies, and other cognate disciplines. These conversations have emphasized the urgent intellectual and political need for a more capacious understanding of infrastructure that, to paraphrase the geographer Deborah Cowen, “exceeds its most obvious forms.” This panel—featuring Wesley Attwell (University of Hong Kong), Adrian de Leon (Simon Fraser), Linda Luu (NYU), Christine Peralta (Amherst), and Sunny Xiang (Yale)—therefore asks: What are the infrastructures that build and sustain Pacific Islander and Asian American life under the ongoing conditions of crisis and emergency? How do we build infrastructures and how do infrastructures build us? How do these infrastructures force us to think relationally across the multiple spaces and scales of empire and its unmaking? And what role can infrastructural thinking play in the everyday struggles to build freedom as a place?

Wesley Attwell is currently an assistant professor of political geography at the University of Hong Kong. He works at the intersection of human geography, American studies, and Asian diaspora studies to map the transnational geographies of US empire building from the Cold War into the present. He is the author of The Quiet Violence of Empire: How USAID Waged Counterinsurgency in Afghanistan (University of Minnesota Press, 2023).

Adrian de Leon is the Jack and Nancy Farley Distinguished Visiting Scholar in History at Simon Fraser University.

Linda Luu is is a PhD candidate in the Department of Social & Cultural Analysis at NYU.

Christine Peralta is an assistant professor of history and sexuality, women’s and gender studies at Amherst College.

Sunny Xiang is an associate professor of English at Yale University.

COVID-19 & NYU campus access guidelines: This is an in-person event, open to the public. Registration is required. Non-NYU guests may be asked to present a government-issued photo ID. NYU guests must present their NYU ID.

Accessibility note: This venue has an elevator, all-gender restrooms, and is accessible for wheelchair users. If you have any access needs, please email mwb9975@nyu.edu.

Image citation: Photograph No. 286-CF-1-12: “A view of the water in-take for the Kajakai Dam — which will eventually provide hydro electric power for the Helmand Valley,” undated; Afghanistan, Photographs from the Country Files; Records of the Agency for International Development, Record Group 286; National Archives at College Park, College Park, MD.