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Race, Space, and Gender: Re-mapping Chinese America from the Margins, 1875-1943

Winans, Adrienne Ann
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1437702859

Abstract Details

2015, Doctor of Philosophy, Ohio State University, History.
This dissertation interrogates the experiences of Chinese immigrant and Chinese American women and families during the era of Chinese exclusion. The enforcement of anti-Chinese immigration laws, starting in the late 19th century, initiated the creation of the U.S. as a “gatekeeping nation-state.” Scholars have examined the boundaries formed by exclusion of Asians and Asian Americans from the social and physical spaces of U.S. society. In this work, an intersectional analysis of Chinese immigrant and Chinese American women and families complicates existing narratives of U.S. immigration, race, and gender. By focusing on women’s experiences as boundary-crossers who challenged community prescriptions and anti-Chinese policies, this work shifts the historiography away from male, working-class immigrants. In its broadest arguments, this dissertation 1) constructs a social history of Chinese America using the experiences of transnational students, interracial families, and Chinese American women who were expatriated via marriage and then re-claimed their U.S. citizenship; 2) argues that these women’s gendered negotiation of state power changed the ways in which white immigration officials perceived them, a ground-level foreshadowing of post-World War II raced and gendered immigration dynamics; 3) challenges the normative idea of Chinese America as coastal, urban Chinatown space and co-ethnic community; and 4) re-maps Chinese America through regional mobility and networks, focusing on understudied areas of the Midwest and Mid-Atlantic. A focus on the histories of everyday people resulted in exceptional stories of women. They not only crossed the physical borders of the U.S., but also engaged in interracial marriage, used their student status to challenge Orientalist perceptions of Chinese women, and claimed legitimacy as U.S. citizens. Employing historical, feminist, and anthropological methodologies, this analysis draws on archival case files from the Chinese Exclusion Act files of the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service regional centers (Seattle, Chicago, and Philadelphia) and from Chicago School of Sociology researchers. In reading these materials “against the grain,” rich stories of women’s negotiation emerged. Each chapter addresses different permutations of race, gender, class, citizenship status, and family. These analyses in conjunction with community archival materials and public sphere publications support a re-mapping of Chinese America. Utilizing the federal census and archival material from the border-crossings of the Pacific Northwest, the Midwest, and the Mid-Atlantic to trace lived experiences revealed patterns of local and regional mobility in addition to transnational movements. Their histories from the margins of the Midwest and Mid-Atlantic re-map exclusion-era Chinese America as socially and geographically heterogeneous, beyond ethnic enclaves, i.e. Chinatowns. The results challenge coastal, urban spatializations of a pre-World War II history dominated by the West Coast.
Judy Tzu-Chun Wu (Advisor)
Kevin Boyle (Committee Member)
Lilia Fernández (Committee Member)
Katherine Marino (Committee Member)
265 p.
American Studies; Asian American Studies; History; Womens Studies
20th century US history; Asian American; Women and gender history; Chinese American; immigration; transnational students; mixed-race studies; citizenship; Chicago; Baltimore; Midwest

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Winans, A. A. (2015). Race, Space, and Gender: Re-mapping Chinese America from the Margins, 1875-1943 [Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1437702859

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Winans, Adrienne. Race, Space, and Gender: Re-mapping Chinese America from the Margins, 1875-1943. 2015. Ohio State University, Doctoral dissertation. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1437702859.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Winans, Adrienne. "Race, Space, and Gender: Re-mapping Chinese America from the Margins, 1875-1943." Doctoral dissertation, Ohio State University, 2015. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1437702859

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

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This open access ETD is published by The Ohio State University and OhioLINK.