William Gow
Assistant Professor CSU Sacramento/ Co-Director Five Chinatowns Project, CHSSC
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William Gow is a Sacramento-based community historian, educator, and documentary filmmaker. A fourth-generation Chinese American and a proud graduate of the San Francisco Unified School District, he holds an M.A. in Asian American Studies from UCLA and a Ph.D. in Ethnic Studies from UC Berkeley. He is currently an Assistant Professor of Asian American Studies in the Ethnic Studies Department at CSU Sacramento. A longtime volunteer for the Chinese Historical Society of Southern California (CHSSC), Professor Gow serves as co-director of their Five Chinatowns Project.
Testimony, Memory, and Social Justice: Asian American Oral History in the 2020s
How can public history offer methodologies for social justice in the present political moment? What lessons can we take from how oral history has been utilized since the very beginnings of Asian American Studies, and use it to enact the change we want to see in the 2020s? Addressing the role of oral history and community-based archives, this panel directly speaks to the goal of the 2023 conference regarding the importance of public scholarship in the service of social change and political justice.
The Five Chinatowns of Los Angeles: An Intergenerational Community History
This community-based oral history project focuses on five communities in Los Angeles that were central to the lives of Chinese Angelenos during the mid-twentieth century. David Chan dubbed these communities, the “five Chinatowns” of Los Angeles, which emerged as part of the multi-ethnic core of the city. The project addresses the specific ways that Los Angeles’s Chinese American population made home and created community in a frequently conflicted multiracial city. The construction of Union Station in the 1930s forced many Chinese Americans away from the original Chinatown near the Plaza. Displaced from Old Chinatown by these efforts to “revitalize” the Plaza, Chinese Americans turned elsewhere to re-establish their businesses, find better homes, and imagine new futures in City Market, East Adams, China City, and New Chinatown.
This roundtable brings together youth interns, faculty, and community members who have worked with the Chinese Historical Society of Southern California on the Five Chinatowns Project. Together we will discuss the critical role oral histories play in the narration of community histories, histories of places, and the importance of intergenerational work in advocating for our collective futures. This project demonstrates the possibilities of university-community partnerships that go beyond archival collecting to centralize community building and storytelling as a means of self empowerment. Moreover, this project highlights the importance of community-based internships in fostering the next generation of community historians.
William Gow
Assistant Professor CSU Sacramento/ Co-Director Five Chinatowns Project, CHSSC
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