Transpacific Studies: Framing an Emerging Field - Intersections: Asian and Pacific American Transcultural Studies

The Pacific has long been a space of conquest, exploration, fantasy, and resistance. Pacific Islanders had established civilizations and cultures of travel well before European explorers arrived, initiating centuries of upheaval and transformation. The twentieth century, with its various wars fought in and over the Pacific, is only the most recent era to witness military strife and economic competition. While Asia Pacific and Pacific Rim were late twentieth-century terms that dealt with the importance of the Pacific to the economic, political, and cultural arrangements that span Asia and the Americas, a new term has arisenthe transpacific. In the twenty-first century, U. S. efforts to dominate the ocean are symbolized not only in the Pacific pivot of American policy but also the development of a Transpacific Partnership. This partnership brings together a dozen countriesnot including Chinain a trade pact whose aim is to cement U. S. influence. That pact signals how the transpacific, up to now an academic term, has reached mass consciousness.