Burke Loftus, Staff Photographer
VCU’s Department of History now offers a new course, Intro to Asian American History, the first of its kind in the university’s history.
Second-year political science student Trina LaFortune is a Filipino American from Annandale, Virginia. Growing up in Northern Virginia, she said most of her knowledge of Asian American culture came from conversations with her family, who immigrated to the United States from the Philippines in the early 2000s, and other Asian immigrant families.
“We only highlighted ‘Asian studies’ in junior and senior year, and that was the extent of it,” LaFortune said. “There [are] a lot of Asian people in NOVA. Even then, my education just had a narrow scope of what Asian American history was.”
In the fall of 2025, LaFortune’s focused inquiry professor, Frank Cha, announced to the class that he would be teaching an Intro to Asian American History course in the spring — asking students to email him if they were interested.
“Part of me was like, ‘Oh my god, this is representation,’ but also part of me was like, ‘No, I think I’m just more curious to see what else I can learn,’” LaFortune said. “I wanted to see how Dr. Cha would teach a class that wasn’t [focused inquiry] as well.”
According to Cha, LaFortune is now taking VCU’s first official Asian American history course.
“We’ve always had those [history] courses, but I think we need to expand our perspectives a little bit more,” Cha said. “When we look at the trajectory of Asian American history, there are very strong parallels to what’s happening in the world right now.”
Before teaching this course, Cha exclusively taught in the Department of Focused Inquiry. According to Cha, the 2025-26 academic year is the first in which focused inquiry professors have been able to teach outside of the unit after its transfer from the University College to the College of Humanities and Sciences in January 2025. Cha was offered the opportunity due to his expertise in the subject.
In 2013, Cha earned his Ph.D. in American studies from William & Mary, his dissertation focusing on Asian Americans in the South. While there, he taught Asian American history and literature courses. His work as a doctoral student helped launch what is now the Asian & Islander Pacific American Studies program at William & Mary.
“I feel like our course catalog should, in some ways, reflect our student population,” Cha said. “The fact that we have such a diverse array of students, I was shocked that we didn’t have something like [this course].”
Statistics from VCU show 14% of first-year students admitted in Fall 2025 — approximately 630 students — ethnically identify as Asian.
Cha believes there is a demand for Asian American studies at VCU, referencing the overall growth of the Asian American population in Richmond and student-run organizations such as Asian American Pacific Islander Affinity.
“[I took the class] because I’m Asian and I want to learn about Asian American history,” fourth-year history student Andrew How said. “Asian Americans have been overlooked as one of those ethnic groups where people just go like, ‘Oh, they’re the smart people.’”
Lessons are balanced between classmate discussions and lectures. In March, Paul Yoon, a colleague of Cha’s in the focused inquiry unit, featured as a guest speaker. Yoon shared his experience and proficiency as an American Taiko drummer, a variant of traditional Japanese Taiko.
“This is such a pivotal part of Asian American history,” fourth-year sociology student Anita Liammaytry said, referring to the 1982 murder of Chinese American Vincent Chin. “Why would you not want to explore that more?”
Fourth-year history student Payten Broderick compares Cha’s style of teaching history to her prior educators.
“He conveys [the content] so well that I don’t have a problem following, which is great,” Broderick said.
The course is categorized into four units: Asian immigration to the United States, origins of anti-Asian sentiment, resistance and activism against that sentiment and pop culture. With only two 50-minute class meetings per week, Cha stresses the difficulty of teaching such a broad subject in one course.
“Now I want to dive into specifics because I’m barely scratching the surface on some of these topics,” Cha said.
Cha is currently in the early steps of developing an “Asians in Virginia” research project.
“My hope is to create an ongoing project that brings together faculty, staff and students to collaborate on collecting experiences and information about Virginia’s rapidly growing Asian American population,” Cha stated in an email. “I would like to create a multimodal archive that incorporates oral histories, photographs, videos and archival material to share with a broader public.”
LaFortune said that, in her experience, the “Asian American” label has mostly highlighted East Asian voices. Cha’s class is a welcome broadening of that panethnic label.
“Being a Filipino woman, having my representation and my history highlighted, my voice highlighted, I feel like that has really helped … I wish there [were] an expansion of this [course],” LaFortune said.
Cha plans to discuss with the department of history about the possibility of offering another Asian American history course sometime in the 2026-27 academic year.