Atomic Hospitality: Asian Migrant Scientists Meet the U.S. South A Dissertation SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA BY Jasmine Kar Tang IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Erika Lee, Advisor December 2013 © Jasmine Kar Tang 2013 i Acknowledgments Way back when I was a tween, my brother Jason, newly politicized by a high school friend, handed me some books by Asian Americans and thus instigated this journey I am still on. Thank you, Jason, for challenging my ways of knowing even back then in my sheltered world. This research is an extension of a story that was cultivated in my childhood through such “small” acts. Getting to stay with old friends and family in Knoxville during my research trips was loads better than any hotel. Thank you to Sarah Nalle, Mina and Ashok Engineer, Sandra Kreceman, Brian Newman, the Wongs (Noella, Kwai-Lam, Fionnie, and Clarence) for letting me stay at your homes for days, weeks at a time. Your hospitality and your company eliminated any sense of loneliness I might have otherwise felt as a researcher. I am so thankful for the many people who agreed to participate in my research (if only I could name all of you here!). Thank you for welcoming me into your offices, homes, your lives. Thank you, Shigeko Uppuluri, for sharing your stories and also your personal collection of newspaper articles that was the driving force behind one of my chapters. My thanks also to the numerous librarians who have helped me, especially Anna Galyon, Tim Gawne, and Bill Yee of Oak Ridge National Laboratory; Lynne Beck at the University of Minnesota; Alan Wallace of the University of Tennessee; the staff of the Oak Ridge public library; and Paul Lai. ii I built the best dissertation committee. Ever. Thank you to the sole reason I applied to the U of M in the first place so many years ago: Erika Lee. The eternal cheerleader (“Go, Jasmine, go!” one email literally says), a brilliant scholar who is likely the fastest idea-generator I will ever know (“You should call this ‘national security migration,’” you blurted out one day). Thank you, Erika. And also, thank you, Jo Lee, for crucially important encouragement early on, for reading multiple drafts, for knowing when and how to give productive feedback. Thank you, Yuich Onishi, for your constant attention to praxis, your dedication to student learning, and ridiculous insightfulness into my project. Thank you, Hui Wilcox, for understanding how I wanted embodiment to surface in this work, and for your own groundbreaking ethnographic methodologies that have inspired me to think more about the politics of my knowledge production. And beyond the committee, so many other faculty members have (knowingly or not) ushered me through. Thank you: Jigna Desai, for helping me refine and polish and strengthen my research on comedy performance; Kale Fajardo, for early insight and suggestions that helped me think through the politics of ethnography; and Riv Ellen Prell, for asking the right questions at a critical moment that led me back to this project. Still other professors have deeply influenced my intellectual development through their graduate seminars: Roderick Ferguson, Karen Ho, Elaine Tyler May, Jeani O’Brien, Jennifer Pierce. From earlier times, too, thank you to my professors at the University of Washington – particularly Connie So, Johnnella Butler, John Walter – for getting me started in ethnic studies during those crucial formative years. And at Brown, thank you, iii Bob Lee. And yes, even further back, to my English teachers at Farragut High School who cultivated an environment of nurture and critical thinking during those tender years, thank you, Anna Arapakos, Gloria Lacy, and Gail Duncan. I want to thank, too, my sources of funding over the years: the Nelson fellowship from the Immigration History Research Center; the Graduate Research Partnership Program of the Comparative Race and Ethnic Studies Emphasis; and summer funding from the Department of American Studies. A number of organizations have funded conference travel that enabled me to present, develop, and improve my research, writing, and teaching. I am especially grateful for a tuition scholarship for the IWCA Summer Institute. Thank you to the leaders that year, especially Michele Eodice and Lori Salem: that week in beautiful Oklahoma changed the course of my career. I could not have made it without my artist community. First, to the fierce women of color of Ananya Dance Theatre during the environmental justice trilogy seasons: you kept me going during what became a long winter. Thank you for teaching me, for living the possibilities of woman of color community. There is also something special about the sense of community that only performing onstage together can create. Thank you for helping me (re)claim my feminism, my femininity, my body: Ananya Chatterjea, Gina Kundan, Lela Pierce, Stefania Strowder, Omi Tinsley, Hui Wilcox, Chitra Vairavan, Pramila Vasudevan, Alessandra Williams, Romina Takimoto, Shana Davis, Yan Huss, Cecilia Martinez, Shalini Gupta, and in memory of Deborah Torraine. And, of course, my “3P” (Sherie Apungu and Takawi Peters) and Kayva Yang for lasting friendships cultivated in rehearsals. Second, in my current work, my appreciation goes out to the iv brilliant folks of Aniccha Arts, particularly the thrill ride of In Habit. PV, Piotr Szyhalski, Sarah Beck-Esmay, Dustin Maxwell, Chit: I can’t wait for the future. Working at the writing center restored my faith in higher education. Thank you, Katie Levin: my first contact with the WC world, you helped me with my own writer’s block (WLMF!) and also have generously ushered me onto this career path. Thank you, Kirsten Jamsen, for your transformative, visionary leadership. And thank you, Terri Wallace, Mitch Ogden, Lauren Curtright, Kristen Nichols-Besel, and the whole SWS crew for creating a functional workplace that not only allowed me to finish the diss, but also showed me that teaching, writing, and research are synergistic. I am a better writer, a better scholar, for it all. A network of extraordinary individuals has collectively kept me going: In the beginning, there was my core group/ cohort, with potlucks and karaoke: Emily Smith Beitiks, Cathryn Merla-Watson, Karissa White, Samara Winbush, Lisa Arrastia, Jessica Giusti. Do you remember when I forced y’all to come over so I could do a practice talk for my first conference? For that and so much more, thank you. People wonder how I have come to love living here, amidst the winters and whiteness of Minnesota. For having my back all these years, special thanks to the first person of color I knew in this town, artist extraordinaire Bao Phi, and one of the most brilliant scholars I know, Juliana Hu Pegues. Motivation also came from various conversations with an eclectic group of artists, academics, and activists of color, including Dipankar Mukherjee, Katie Hae Leo, Sajin Kwok, Lisa Ellingson, Karin v “Kaymitch” Aguilar-San Juan, Heather Wang, Charlotte Albrecht, Tom Sarmiento, Tammy Owens, Noro Andriamanalina. Thank you, Beth Godbee and Moira Ozias, for your warmth and for introducing me to the joys of co-writing during the loneliness of dissertating. Excited to continue the pursuit of critical praxis with you all, alongside a blend of unparalleled intellectualism- friendship-embodiment. And in the rest of my self-care realm, too, thank you, Sandra Reinhold of St. Paul Jazzercise. Thank you, Sifu Ray Hayward and Sifu Paul Abdella, for teaching me to “roll back,” a skill/ philosophy I will carry with me always. Thanks, too, to the folks of Twin Cities Tai Chi, particularly Karin Aguilar-San Juan and Sharon Haire. And thank you, Stephanie Untiedt, for everything you have done to get me here: you are truly a master of your craft and have my deepest gratitude. The wonderful thing about studying your home state is that a research trip can be filled with dinner with friends, Jazzercise, and Waffle House. Thank you, Anna Galyon, for our conversations over Boston scrod at Aubrey’s; Anne Dow Schubert, for your love, kindness, and prayers through the years; and Sandra Kreceman, for a friendship that can pick up across space and time. The warm fuzzies I get when thinking of Tennessee come from memories of enduring band camp in the sweltering heat and of dancing in the stands at football games with you all. All that silliness set me on course to find joy in the small moments, to this day. Thank you to my extended family – the Mahs/ Toys/ Tses/ Lees (Jean, Daniel, Devin, Jay) – for laughter over dinner at Omega and Chinatown restaurant, and for the vi best meal in Chicago (at Guey Lon – where else?). As I came into a family that has lived a chapter of a Toisanese and Cantonese American history that precedes me, this is in memory of Nen, too, the fiercest of us all, telling me with her life, her spirit, about the (un)realized power of Chinese American women. This family-in-law of mine teaches me lightness, humor, and resolve. Thank you to Mariah Galagate, the grandmaster of perseverance, and the one I have thought of when this dissertation has threatened to push me off the Cliffs of Insanity. From the days of UW Frosh House, we promised we’d go to each other’s doctoral graduation ceremonies. It’s my turn now! My BFF ever since we met at the bus stop on Broadwood Drive (was that in sixth grade?), Gopi Engineer, you have shown me through and through the meaning of I-will- drop-everything-I'm-doing-right-now-for-you friendship. How did I get so lucky? Is it silly to thank your doggie in an acknowledgments section? I don’t care: I am thankful for Zoë.