Asian Studies

The initial phase of this project interviewed some of the oldest residents in Chinatown, representing a generation in transition. This phase interviewed second and third generation stories that are uniquely Chinese American.

he Chinese American Museum’s mission is to advance the understanding, knowledge, and appreciation of the Chinese American experience, by highlighting the history, culture, spirit, and contributions of Chinese Americans to our nation and beyond.

Located on the first floor of the Thomas Jefferson Building, the Asian Reading Room is where the public and scholars alike may freely access more than 4 million physical items that make up the Asian collections housed at the Library of Congress. These materials encompass approximately 200 languages and dialects from across Asia, including Bengali, Chinese, Hindi, Indonesian, Japanese, Korean, Mongolian, Thai, Tibetan, Urdu, Vietnamese, and many others. In the Asian Reading Room, users can browse an encyclopedic, multilingual reference collection while making use of the vast and diverse collections of printed materials, rare books, and microform kept onsite and stored in remote facilities. Users will be greeted by knowledgeable and friendly reference librarians ready to assist with their research questions and general learning about the countries and peoples of East, South, and Southeast Asia while also directing them to Asian materials in other parts of the Library. The Asian Division serves users who wish to access the Asian American Pacific Islander collection as well.

The National Museum of Asian Art addresses broad questions about culture, identity, and the contemporary world. The museum cares for exceptional collections of Asian art, with more than 45,000 objects dating from the Neolithic period to today and originating from the ancient Near East to China, Japan, Korea, South and Southeast Asia, and the Islamic world. Nearly a century old, the Freer Gallery of Art also holds a significant group of American works of art largely dating to the late nineteenth century. It houses the world’s largest collection of diverse works by James McNeill Whistler, including the famed Peacock Room.

Densho documents the testimonies of Japanese Americans who were unjustly incarcerated during World War II before their memories are extinguished. We offer these irreplaceable firsthand accounts, coupled with historical images and teacher resources, to explore principles of democracy and promote equal justice for all.

A listing of the Library of Congress' digital collections that relate to Asian Studies including elections, art, books, manuscripts, letters, and more.

The Visions collection includes the written and photographed experiences of Europeans and Americans who traveled to Southeast Asia during the period of imperialism. The peoples of Southeast Asia experienced waves of colonization beginning in 1511 when the Portuguese took Melaka, a strategic and thriving port city on the Malay Peninsula. The Spanish established a colony in the Philippines which they ruled from the 1560s until 1899 when the United States ousted the Spanish and governed the colony until Philippine independence in 1946. The Dutch gradually conquered the areas known today as Indonesia beginning in 1596 and ending after WWII. The British Empire, centered in South Asia, moved into the Malay Peninsula and Burma by the early 1800s but did not withdraw from Burma until 1948 and Malaysia and Singapore until 1957. France established a foothold in Cambodia, Vietnam, and Laos, an area grouped under the rubric of French Indochina and ruled by the French from the mid-to-late 1800s until after WWII. The complex histories of colonization in Southeast Asia have enabled the production of a vibrant (and ethnocentric) multiplicity of accounts by missionaries, travelers, officials, military officers, captains, naturalists, scholars, children, and even a dog. The Southeast Asia Visions collection includes a selection of historically rich primary accounts which range chronologically from the 1550s to the 1920s. These travelogues, letters, official accounts, journals, autobiographies, guidebooks, and photo albums cover Southeast Asia in the main but also include East Asia, South Asia, Africa, South America and other locales. All sources are in English or French and with a few exceptions are written by European and American men and women.