As a new article at the Huffington Post shows, researchers and statisticians have long undervalued Asian American history and have overlooked them in research studies. Over at Religion in American History, a wonderful three-part series recently addressed different ways Asian American history can build upon, complicate, and add new layers to American religious history. It is, in my estimation, some of the best scholarly blogging out there and I hope HNN is paying attention for their annual awards:
- Joshua Paddison of Indiana University and author of the fantastic book American Heathens went first and included some bits from his research in the late 19th-century US West and how discussions there over race, religion, nationalism, and internationalism compelled truly multicultural debates on these topics.
- Next up was Derek Chang of Cornell University. His book, Citizens of a Christian Nation, is like Paddison’s – simply a must read in US religious history. In this blog post, Chang examines the role of race in athletic messianic figures like Larry Bird and Jeremy Lin.
- The third installment was from Beth Hessell, a graduate student at Texas Christian University. Her piece, based upon her dissertation research, examined the role of religion in Japanese American internment/incarceration camps during WWII.
Overall, these essays range widely from art and athletics to politics and pop culture. Highly recommended not only for American religious history classes, but also for material in U.S. history courses.
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