Filipino Studies

After years of occupying a vexed position in the American academy, Philippine studies has come into its own, emerging as a trenchant and dynamic space of inquiry. Filipino Studies is a field-defining collection of vibrant voices, critical perspectives, and provocative ideas about the cultural, political, and economic state of the Philippines and its diaspora. Traversing issues of colonialism, neoliberalism, globalization, and nationalism, this volume examines not only the past and present position of the Philippines and its people, but also advances new frameworks for re-conceptualizing this growing field. Written by a prestigious lineup of international scholars grappling with the legacies of colonialism and imperial power, the essays examine both the genealogy of the Philippines’ hyphenated identity as well as the future trajectory of the field. Hailing from multiple disciplines in the humanities and social sciences, the contributors revisit and contest traditional renditions of Philippine colonial histories, from racial formations and the Japanese occupation to the Cold War and “independence” from the United States. Whether addressing the contested memories of World War II, the “voyage” of Filipino men and women into the U.S. metropole, or migrant labor and the notion of home, the assembled essays tease out the links between the past and present, with a hopeful longing for various futures. Filipino Studies makes bold declarations about the productive frameworks that open up new archives and innovative landscapes of knowledge for Filipino and Filipino American Studies.

The book will primarily interest scholars and students but may also appeal to general readers with connections to the Philippines., Edited byMartin Manalansan IV and Augusto F. Espiritu, pioneers of FilipinoX studies, it is an unapologetic introduction to the interdisciplinary, intersectional, transnational,palimpsestic nature of the work many FilipinoX scholars in the Diaspora have engaged over the last two decades., This exciting and crucial anthology marks a major historiographical intervention into the fields of Asian American and Filipino/American studies. Bringing together a distinguished group of scholars,Filipino Studiesrepresents not only a moment of stock-taking, but also a clarion call to future scholars to take up the fields politically committed aspirations.

Martin F. Manalansan IV is Associate Professor of anthropology and Asian American studies and Conrad Professorial Humanities Scholar at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. He is the author of Global Divas: Filipino Gay Men in the Diaspora (2003) and co-editor of Eating Asian America: A Food Studies Reader (NYU, 2013). Augusto F. Espiritu is Associate Professor of history and Asian American studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is the author of Five Faces of Exile: The Nation and Filipino American Intellectuals (2005).