Asian American Studies is an academic field originating in the 1960s, which critically examines the history, issues, sociology, religion, experiences, culture, and policies relevant to Asian Americans. It is closely related to other Ethnic Studies fields, such as African American Studies, Latino Studies, and Native American Studies.

Since the 2020s, Asian American Studies has begun to be taught as part of the K-12 curriculum of a number of American states.

Asian American Studies appeared as a field of intellectual inquiry in the late 1960s as a result of strikes by the Third World Liberation Front, a group of ethnic minority students at San Francisco State University and at the University of California, Berkeley. The students demanded that college classroom instruction include the histories of people of color in the United States as told from their perspectives, create an Ethnic Studies program, expand the Black Studies department, admitting more students of color, and hiring more faculty of color in tenure-track positions. The demand for Ethnic Studies was originally a reaction against the Eurocentric bias in university curricula.

As a result of the 1968 strike, a College of Ethnic Studies (the only U.S. university academic department of its kind at the time) was established at San Francisco State University with American Indian Studies, Asian American Studies, Africana Studies, and Latino/a Studies as its four units, and a new Department of Ethnic Studies was established at the University of California, Berkeley, consisting of comparative ethnic studies, Asian American and Asian diaspora studies, Chicana/o and Latina/o studies, and Native American studies.

The demand for Asian American Studies resulted in the creation of new departments throughout in colleges and universities across the country since the 1970s. By 1979, the Association for Asian American Studies, a professional organization designed to promote teaching and academic research in the field, was established in 1979. Then in 1991, twenty-three college and universities formed an “East of California” caucus of the Association for Asian American Studies, to move away from a California-centered understanding of the field, to speak of the many origins and points of departure in the history of Asian American Studies, and to include research on less-studied communities like Filipino Americans and South Asian Americans into the field.

As of today, according to The Asian American Foundation, only 1.6% of colleges and universities in the United States offer an Asian American Studies program. Organizations such as Asian American Studies Collaborative are working with students and professors to add more programs to institutions of higher education across the country.

Drawing from numerous disciplines such as sociology, history, literature, political science, and gender studies, Asian American Studies scholars consider a variety of perspectives and employ diverse analytical tools in their work. Unlike Asian Studies which focuses on the history, culture, religion, etc. of Asian people living in Asia, Asian American Studies is interested in the history, culture, experiences, of Asians living in the United States.

Academic programs in Asian American Studies examines the history of Asian-Americans, which includes topics such as immigration and race-based exclusion policies. The discourse also includes studies on how first- and second-generation Asian Americans deal with adjustment and assimilation, especially on their Americanization and aggressive pursuit of higher education and prestigious occupations in a society that still discriminates against them.