Tracing the Roots of Asian Community at Bowdoin

An Ongoing Discourse

REPRESENTASIAN

This exhibit uses archival holdings in the Library’s Special Collections & Archives to explore some of Bowdoin’s earliest Asian students, Asian affinity groups, and the development of the Asian Studies program. Our goal is not to present a definitive history, but to introduce a more holistic history of Bowdoin College and bring to light the Asian students and alumni who are an integral, yet under-acknowledged presence at the College.

Asian Studies Program

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“Asian Studies at Bowdoin,” program brochure, 1989.

As faculty minutes, department newsletters, and committee reports reveal, the Asian Studies Program at Bowdoin was established to promote multiculturalism and to prepare students to become global leaders. Today, the Program offers an interdisciplinary approach to the study of Asia that spans the regions of East Asia, South Asia, and the Asian diaspora. Students may major in Asian studies, or minor in Asian studies, Chinese, and Japanese. The department also encourages students to study abroad during their junior year and to develop individual research projects.

Read more about the founding of Asian Studies program at Bowdoin, researched and written by Bowdoin students in Professor Charles Dorns’ course Higher Education in American History.

The Tracing the Roots of Asian Community at Bowdoin: An Ongoing Discourse exhibition was conceived by members of RepresentAsian: Bowdoin’s Asian Alumni Association, the first formal entity established to represent the generations of Asian graduates. The group’s principal mission to build the foundations for and diligently maintain the bridges that will give our community the ability to create and sustain meaningful relationships with each other. Benjamin Wu, Class of 2018/2020 and Andrew Park, Class of 2015 reached out and connected with Special Collections & Archives; Amy Cai, Class of 2025 researched and curated the exhibition during the final weeks of her senior year. The exhibit was on view on the first floor of the Hawthorne-Longfellow Library for Commencement and Reunion (May-June) 2025. Special Collections Education and Engagement Librarian, Marieke Van Der Steenhoven and director of Multicultural Alumni Engagement, Joycelyn Blizzard also supported this project and related Reunion events.