Forthcoming in the
Journal of Ethnic Studies

The Journal of Ethnic Studies will resume publication Summer 2010. Our issue theme will be “Diasporas.” We want to make you aware of some of the essays that will be appearing in the next issue, Vol. 1 No. 4.

Kern Michael Jackson, Dir. African American Studies– University of Southern Alabama
“Borders and Boundaries”

This project accessed and documented the role of the fieldworker as participant in pursuing an understanding of the depth and texture of community identity of African Americans in the understudied Gulf Coastal Community of Mobile, Alabama.  Specific events, which on the surface appeared “commonplace,” were interpreted.  The method used was to become a “wise one” apprenticing and listening as researcher and meshing community articulated needs with a research agenda. 

Monica Chiu – Associate Professor of English - University of New Hampshire
“China Export Paintings: Material Culture, Ethnographic Gazes, and Intertextual Meanings”

Using material culture, American literature, history, photographs, and references to traditional Chinese painting (including the collection of Chinese art in America), Monica Chiu interprets paintings produced, en masse, by Chinese craftsmen for American merchants abroad that depict typical places of business in Canton at the height of its trade with America and Europe : shops selling watches, fish, tea, silk, porcelain, furniture, etc.  The essay is accompanied by numerous rich and colorful images, many from a 2006 exhibit at the Peabody Essex Museum in Peabody-Salem, Massachusetts, a museum which possesses the nation’s largest store of China Trade items. 

Ghaitree Aubeeluck – Professor of English – Oklahoma State University

Dr. Aubeeluck has written a critical essay on the literature of Kirin Narayan, author of My Family & Other Saints, a highly praised memoir of the author’s childhood experiences growing up in the suburbs of Mumbai.

Yukiko Ide – Ethnic Studies student, California State University Easy Bay
“Racialized Myths”

Yukiko Ide, a former Ethnic Studies student, explores perceptions and misperceptions of African American male sexuality held by Japanese and Japanese-American women engaged in long-term loving relationships with African American men. Yukiko deals critically with the fact and fiction of African American male penis size and how racialized Japanese pornographic images of African American men in particular mediate perceptions and expectations.