Visiting professor to discuss Asian-Americans during Jim Crow

In a time of obvious oppression against blacks in the Jim Crow South, where did Asian-Americans fit during segregation? Or did they at all?

Leslie Bow, an English and Asian-American studies professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, will explore that subject 7-10 p.m. Wednesday in Gambrell Hall, room 431.

Her talk, which is free and open to the public, is based on her book “Partly Colored: Asian Americans and Racial Anomaly in the Segregated South.”

In her book, Bow investigates how racially “in-between” people – such as Asians, Native-Americans and Latinos – identified in a black-or-white American society both before and after segregation. The book uses analysis of American literature, film, autobiographies, government documents, photographs and popular culture to show how Asian-Americans were in a racial limbo during that time.

“Partly Colored” received an honorable mention for the Book Award in Cultural Studies from the Association for Asian American Studies in 2012.

Bow will discuss how the binary racial of the Jim Crow affected how Asian-Americans were treated, including where they sat on public buses.

The Institute for African American Research in the university’s College of Arts and Sciences is sponsoring the talk.

This story was originally published October 13, 2015 at 4:32 PM with the headline "Visiting professor to discuss Asian-Americans during Jim Crow."