Family Routes: Transnational Adoption & the Production of Nationhood

November 6, 2014

Family Routes: Transnational Adoption & the Production of Nationhood

11.06.2014| 4:00 – 5:30 PM | 691 Barrows Hall

Global Families: A History of Asian International Adoption in America
Prof. Catherine Ceniza Choy, Ethnic Studies

Prof. Choy will discuss the findings explored in her recent publication, Global Families: A History of Asian International Adoption in America (NYU Press, 2013). In the last fifty years, transnational adoption—specifically, the adoption of Asian children—has exploded in popularity as an alternative path to family making. Despite the cultural acceptance of this practice, surprisingly little attention has been paid to the factors that allowed Asian international adoption to flourish. In Global Families, Prof. Choy unearths the little-known historical origins of Asian international adoption in the United States. Beginning with the post-World War II presence of the U.S. military in Asia, she reveals how mixed-race children born of Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese women and U.S. servicemen comprised one of the earliest groups of adoptive children. Based on extensive archival research, Global Families moves beyond one-dimensional portrayals of Asian international adoption as either a progressive form of U.S. multiculturalism or as an exploitative form of cultural and economic imperialism. Rather, Choy acknowledges the complexity of the phenomenon, illuminating both its radical possibilities of a world united across national, cultural, and racial divides through family formation and its strong potential for reinforcing the very racial and cultural hierarchies it sought to challenge.

Claiming Others: Transracial Adoption and National Belonging
Prof. Mark Jerng, UC Davis, English

Transracial adoption has recently become a hotly contested subject of contemporary and critical concern, with scholars across the disciplines working to unravel its complex implications. In his book, Claiming Others: Transracial Adoption and National Belonging, Prof. Jerng traces the practice of adoption to the early nineteenth century, revealing its surprising centrality to American literature, law, and social thought. Jerng considers how adoption makes us rethink the parent-child bond as central to issues of race and nationality, showing the ways adoption also speaks to broader questions about our history and identity. Imaginative and social practices of transracial adoption have shaped major controversies, Jerng argues, from Native American removal to slavery to cold war expansionism in the twentieth century and the contemporary global market in children. As Claiming Others makes clear, understanding adoption is crucial not just to understanding the history between races in the United States, but also the meaning of emancipation and the role of family in nationhood.

Event co-sponsored by East Asian Studies and Asian American & Asian Diaspora Studies.

Family Routes: Transnational Adoption & the Production of Nationhood

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