National Council on Public History

AAPI PUBLIC HISTORY: Collaborations and outcomes, exploring international OPPORTUNITIES

The Asian American Pacific Islander (AAPI) Working Group welcomes your interest and is exploring ways to collaborate for 2024-2025 and beyond.

This working group extends the work of the 2024 AAPI public history working group and broadens the scope to exploring Asian histories and perspectives through international and transnational lenses. The discussants will briefly share their expertise, projects, and past successes. Top priorities include soliciting input from all attendees during the small group discussion, encouraging collaborations, identifying key issues and advocacy in AAPI public history, and identifying next steps as prioritized by the working group. With honor to our host city of Montréal, this year our working group will expand its considerations to Asian Canada and international themes of public histories of the Asian diaspora.

Please read and respond to the thought-provoking topics and questions in the case statements, responding to individual discussants or to this working group page. Your discussion points will start the dialogue before the annual meeting. As collaborators, we are inspired by our shared energy and the online discussion will “stimulate meaningful reflection and needed conversation about our work in public history” (MC).

Please return to this page after the annual meeting for a brief recap of the March 27, 2025 working group session with information and links to next steps. Supplemental documents prepared after January 2025 are available on AAPI PH 2025 Supplemental Documents.

If you have an AAPI public history resource to share, please share using the discussion post section below. We welcome all contributions.

Chair: Michael Yee, San Diego Miramar College, San Diego Chinese Historical Museum
Facilitators: Marian Carpenter, National Trust for Historic Preservation
Priya Chhaya, National Trust for Historic Preservation
Andre Kobayashi Deckrow, University of Minnesota – Twin Cities
Kristen Hayashi, Japanese American National Museum
Eric Hung, Music of Asian America Research Center
Selena Moon, University of Minnesota – Twin Cities
Lily Anne Tamai, California State University Channel Islands

Discussants: Rob Buscher, University of Pennsylvania
Brian Joe, Toronto Ward Museum
Mia Owens, 1882 Foundation
Jordan Stanger-Ross, University of Victoria

Former Facilitators:
Huy Pham, APIAHiP: Asian and Pacific Islander Americans in Historic Preservation
Renae Campbell, University of Idaho

Discussion