At the time of its founding in 1987, the Asian American Studies Program at Cornell University was the first such program in the Ivy League. Today it has four core faculty members in the humanities and social sciences in a variety of departments and colleges. This cross-college, university-wide position accommodates the extensive teaching and research interests of the Program's faculty and reflects the breadth of the vibrant field of Asian American Studies in general. In the classroom, in scholarship, and through campus and community advocacy, the Program is committed to examining the histories and experiences; identities, social and community formations; politics; and contemporary concerns of people of Asian ancestry in the United States and other parts of the Americas.
The centerpiece of the Asian American Studies Program's curriculum is its undergraduate minor. Open to all undergraduates throughout Cornell University, the minor affords students an opportunity to develop an interdisciplinary approach to the study of Asians in the hemispheric Americas. The course of study stresses developments within the United States, but also underscores the transnational and comparative contexts of Asian America and the field's connections with African American, American Indian, U.S. Latino, and Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies.

