Leaving Asia for America
Leaving Asia for America
Yung Wing, Study Abroad, and Translated Subjectivity
This chapter takes up the transpacific endeavor of Yung Wing—the first Chinese ever to obtain a college degree in the United States—as a point of departure to explain how study abroad reflects a structure of feeling called “leaving Asia for America,” which is created in the history of Western imperialism in Asia. The act of studying abroad is here examined as a deep-seated psychic dynamic overdetermined by a colonial modernity that was hinged specifically on the imagination of transpacific movement, in which each departure and arrival was charged with complex feelings and thoughts. Tracking his transpacific career and translated life, this chapter argues that Yung Wing represents a distinctive model of Asian American intellectual whose existence and activities have a clear orientation toward Asia.
Keywords: transpacific movement, study abroad, studying abroad, Asian American, colonial modernity, Western imperialism, Yung Wing
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