Here are some more announcements, links, and job postings about academic-related jobs, fellowships, and other opportunities for those interested in racial/ethnic/diversity issues, with a particular focus on Asian Americans. As always, the announcements and links are provided for informational purposes and do not necessarily imply an endorsement of the organization or college involved.

Position: Asian American Studies, CUNY

The Asian American Studies Program at CUNY unexpectedly needs to find an instructor to teach our introductory survey course, Asians in the U.S. (ASIAN 210) for this fall. The course is already scheduled for Tuesdays and Thursdays from 7:00 – 8:15pm; students have registered, so there is unfortunately no leeway in terms of rescheduling.

The ideal candidate is someone from an interdisciplinary (preferably social science) background who can present a knowledgeable and enthusiastic introduction to the field – key texts, concepts, etc. – while also illustrating the relevance of AAS in a contemporary context (e.g. post-9/11 detention and deportation, DACA, Fisher v. UT Austin, etc.).

Very briefly, ASIAN 210 examines historical and contemporary Asian American experience in the context of American historical racial, labor and foreign policy developments and the impact of the current rapid expansion of Asian American communities on America’s social and political order. Here is an example of one instructor’s course description:

In Asian 210, we will read about and discuss the historical and contemporary experiences of Asian Americans living in the United States, looking at the historical origins of what it means to be ‘Asian American,’ as well as the social, political, cultural, and economic implications of this term. Students will learn about concepts having to do with the social construction of race, ideology, class-consciousness, gender, sexuality, pan-Asian solidarity, media representations, political activism, as well as the history and future of the field of Asian American Studies.

In our readings and conversations, we will focus our attention on three different areas: Asian American history (as seen in Ronald Takaki’s Strangers from a Different Shore), theoretical foundations within Asian American Studies (in Wu and Song’s Asian American Studies: A Reader), as well as a wide range of literary works (presented in Hagedorn’s anthology Charlie Chan is Dead 2). In addition, we will screen a number of film- and video-based pieces (documentary, experimental, and feature-length) that expand on issues in the class.

Interested candidates should contact me via email and include their CVs and a cover letter that includes a brief pedagogical statement.

Many thanks,

Jennifer Hayashida, Director
Asian American Studies Program
Hunter College, CUNY
695 Park Avenue, Rm 1338 West
New York, NY 10065
212.772.5660
jennifer.hayashida@hunter.cuny.edu
www.hunter.cuny.edu/aasp

Position: Director of APIA Affairs, Univ. of Florida

My name is Kayla Tran and I serve as the University of Florida’s Asian American Student Union President. UF has been on the search for our next APIA Director since March, and would greatly appreciate assistance in spreading the word about this job opening.

As you may already know, the southeastern U.S. is a region that has yet to fully access AA resources and expertise, so you can imagine the growing amount of diversity opportunities at our flagship university. The individual to fill this position will have full autonomy of programming and communication with students, faculty and staff to shape the UF APIA community and environment.

The application deadline is Monday June 23, 2013 and a full job description can be found at https://jobs.ufl.edu/postings/41708. A brief summary of the position is below:

The Director of Asian Pacific Islander American (APIA) Affairs is a vital member of Multicultural and Diversity Affairs in the Division of Student Affairs. This position provides leadership, education, and services for the students regarding multicultural awareness and by creating an inclusive campus community. The Director of APIA Affairs coordinates and plans multicultural and intercultural education activities, trainings and programs for the campus community that educate and promote awareness, understanding and appreciation of diversity and multiculturalism on campus. The Director is also responsible for the support of the Asia

Please help my fellow Gators in whatever means you feel comfortable with: by passing this along to anybody who may be interested, inclusion a communications newsletter, etc.

Thank you in advance for your earnest attention and assistance to this process,
Kayla Tran

Call for Papers: New Journal in Asian & Asian American Studies

Verge: Studies in Global Asias
Senior Editors, Tina Chen and Eric Hayot

Verge: Studies in Global Asias is a new journal that includes scholarship from scholars in both Asian and Asian American Studies. These two fields have traditionally defined themselves in opposition to one another, with the former focused on an area-studies, nationally and politically oriented approach, and the latter emphasizing epistemological categories, including ethnicity and citizenship, that drew mainly on the history of the United States.

The past decade however has seen a series of rapprochements in which, for instance, categories “belonging”to Asian American Studies (ethnicity, race, diaspora) have been applied with increasing success to studies of Asia. For example Asian Studies has responded to the postnational turn in the humanities and social sciences by becoming increasingly open to rethinking its national and regional insularities, and to work that pushes, often literally, on the boundaries of Asia as both a place and a concept.

At the same time, Asian American Studies has become increasingly aware of the ongoing importance of Asia to the Asian American experience, and thus more open to work that is transnational or multilingual, as well as to forms of scholarship that challenge the US-centrism of concepts governing the Asian diaspora.

Verge showcases scholarship on “Asian” topics from across the humanities and humanistic social sciences, while recognizing that the changing scope of “Asia” as a concept and method is today an object of vital critical concern. Deeply transnational and transhistorical in scope, Verge emphasizes thematic and conceptual links among the disciplines and regional/area studies formations that address Asia in a variety of particularist (national, subnational, individual) and generalist (national, regional, global) modes.

Responding to the ways in which large-scale social, cultural, and economic concepts like the world, the globe, or the universal (not to mention East Asian cousins like tianxia or datong) are reshaping the ways we think about the present, the past and the future, the journal publishes scholarship that occupies and enlarges the proximities among disciplinary and historical fields, from the ancient to the modern periods. The journal emphasizes multidisciplinary engagement—a crossing and dialogue of the disciplines that does not erase disciplinary differences, but uses them to make possible new conversations and new models of critical thought.

Queries and Submissions should be sent to: verge@psu.edu

Issue 1: Open Issue

The history of scholarship on Asian America, when juxtaposed with the fields of Asian Studies, reminds us how much nations, national movements, and other forms of national development continue to exert powerful effects on the world in which we live. Such movements also remind us of the importance of inter-nationalism, of the kinds of networks that can spring up between states and which can work to disrupt the smooth passage of the planet into a utopian post-national future. The growing interest in the global and the transnational across disciplines thus brings the various Asia-oriented fields and disciplines—history and literature, Asia and Asian America, East and South, modern and premodern—closer together.

This inaugural issue seeks to feature work that illustrates the diverse engagements across disciplines (literature, history, sociology, art history, political science, geography) and fields (Asian Studies and Asian American Studies) that are possible once we begin thinking about the possible convergences and divergences such divisions have traditionally represented. We welcome a range of perspectives; featured contributors include Ien Ang, Dean Chan, Alexandra Chang, Catherine Ceniza Choy, Magnus Fiskejo, Pika Ghosh, Evelyn Hu-Dehart, Yunte Huang, Suk-young Kim, Joachim Kurtz, Meera Lee, Wei Li, Colleen Lye, Sucheta Mazumdar, Tak-wing Ngo, Haun Saussy, David Palumbo-Liu, Sheldon Pollack, Shuh-mei Shih, Eleanor Ty, and Jeffrey Wasserstrom.

Submission deadline: December 1, 2013

Issue 2: Asian Empires & Imperialism (edited by On-cho Ng and Erica Brindley)

The nature of Asian empires in the past, as well as the definition of imperialism in contemporary times, is a topic of ongoing discussion among scholars from a wide range of fields. In this special issue of Verge, we will explore a cluster of issues concerning the mechanics and influence of empires, imperial authority, and imperial types of influence over indigenous cultures and frontiers in Asia, as well as their diasporas abroad and in the USA.

We invite submissions that address one or some of the following questions: How did various imperial efforts interact with local concerns to shape the history of cross-cultural interactions in this region? How did imperial regimes propose to solve the issue of a multi-ethnic empire? What were the roles of specific geographic and economic spheres in Asia (such as those of nomadic, agricultural, maritime, high altitude or lowland, and far-flung/diasporic cultures) in contributing to the distinctive quality of certain empires? How do certain characteristics of imperial administration and control in Asia compare to those of imperial states in other regions of the world?

In addition to questions concerning the long history of Asian imperialism and comparisons with other empires, we also solicit submissions that speak to questions concerning contemporary Asian diasporas and their reactions to various forms of imperialism in the modern age. Questions might address such topics as “Yellow Peril” fears about Asian cultural imperialism; Japanese internment camps as a US response to Japanese imperial expansion in the Pacific; the Tibetan diaspora in South Asia and the Americas as a reaction to contemporary Chinese imperialism; Vietnamese responses to French, Chinese, or American imperialisms, and the treatment of Japanese-Americans in Hawaii in the aftermath of Pearl Harbor.

Submission deadline: April 1, 2014

Issue 3: Collections (edited by Jonathan Abel and Charlotte Eubanks)

As a construct and product of powerful institutions from empires, to nation-states, museums, to universities, Asia has long been formulated at the level of the collection. Whether through royal court poetry compilations, colonial treasure hunters, art historians, bric a brac shop keepers, or librarians of rare archives, the role of collecting and classification has been deeply connected not only to definitions of what counts as Asia and who can be considered Asian, but also to how Asia continues to be configured and re-configured today.

With this in mind, this special issue of Verge seeks to collect papers on the history, finance, psychology, politics and aesthetics of collecting Asia in Asia and beyond. This collection hopes not only to bring into relief how “Asia” has been created but also to promote new definitions of Asia. What, for instance, are the historical implications of government-sponsored poetry anthologies in Mughal India, Heian-era Japan, or 20th century North Korea? What do the contents of treasure-houses — at Angkor Wat, Yasukuni Shrine, or Vishwanath — tell us about evolving concepts of art and of the elasticity of cultural and national contours?

When did Japan become a geographical base for the collection of Asia? Who collects Chinese books? How has Indian art been defined by curatorial practices? Why did South Korea begin to collect oral histories in the 1990s? What politics lie behind the exhibition of mainland Chinese posters in Taiwan? How much money do cultural foundations spend on maintaining collections? Where are the limits of Asian collections in geographical and diasporic terms? How do constructions of these collections impact our views of the collective, whether of Tibetan exiles in Dharamsala, Japanese internment camps in Indonesia, global Chinatowns, or adherents of new Asian religions in the Americas and former Soviet Republics?

This issue is interested in the various cultures of collecting Asia and collecting Asians, in the many politics of collecting, in the odd financial restrictions on collectors, in the psychology of collecting, in the anthropology of how communities form around collected objects, and in the sociology around collective histories.

Submission deadline: November 15, 2014

Issue 4: Asian Urbanisms and Urbanizations (edited by Madhuri Desai and Shuang Shen)

In the contemporary age of globalization, the city has gained new importance and attention as a center of information industry, a node of transnational and translocal networks, and a significant site of capital, labor migration and culture (Saskia Sassen, Manuel Castells and David Harvey). While this renewed interest in the city both perpetuates and revises theories of the city as a metaphor of modernity (Walter Benjamin, Georg Simmel), it also opens up questions regarding the uniqueness and relevance of earlier cities and their experience of urbanization. When we move us away from Eurocentric understandings of modernity and time, it becomes increasingly possible to study non-European urbanisms in the past and at present with theoretical rigor and historical specificity.

For this special issue, we invite submissions (around 8000 words) that explore urbanism as a site of comparison and connection among various Asian locales and beyond. We are interested in not just studies of Asian cities and their urban experience but also how “Asia” has been imagined both historically and contemporaneously, through urbanism and urbanization, and how “Asia” as a term of travel is registered in the urban space. This special issue will draw attention to the following questions: As cities become increasingly connected and similar to each other, how do they express their distinct identities as well as articulate their unique histories?

Besides circulation, movement, and networks that have been much emphasized in contemporary studies of the city, how do borders, checkpoints, and passwords function in urban contexts? How does the city articulate connections between the local, the national, and the transnational? How does the Asian experience of urbanization and ideas surrounding Asian urbanism revise, rethink, and in some cases revive Asia’s colonial past? What does the Western perspective on some Asian cities as unprecedented and futuristic tells us about the imagination of Asia in the global context? How do migrant and ethnic communities negotiate with and redefine the public space of the city? How is the urban public shared or fragmented by co-existing ethnic and religious communities? How is the rising cosmopolitanism of these cities challenged through migration and sharply defined ethnic and religious identities? We invite submissions that address these questions within the context of Early modern, colonial and contemporary urbanisms and urbanizations.

Deadline: June 1, 2015

New Film: “Fading Away”

There are more than 3.9 million Korean War veterans and over 6.8 million American veterans who served in the Korean War. Now in their 80s, they are beginning to fade away, like their memories. As the weight of age falls heavier upon them, their voices grow quieter as they retreat into silence. With no one asking about their stories, they have no one to tell – until now.

“Fading Away” showcases a series of never before told stories from a group of unique Korean War veterans and refugees through a series of insightful interviews and the use of rare historical film footage, photos and other archival material. These veterans and survivors share their stories in their own words with their sons, daughters and grandchildren with memories of catastrophe, fear, and the pains they vividly remember.

For my readers who like (or are brave enough) to keep on top of the latest sociological research on immigration, assimilation, and the adaptation of second generation Asian Americans and Latino Americans, the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies (2009, Volume 35 Issue 7) has just released a special issue that they’ve titled, “Local Contexts and the Prospects for the US Second Generation.”

Unfortunately, if you’re not in academics, you’re unlikely to find this journal in your local public library, only in college libraries. Below are the citations and abstracts for each of the articles contained in the issue:

Local Contexts of Immigrant and Second-Generation Integration in the United States

• Authors: Mark Ellis and Gunnar Almgren
• Pages 1059 – 1076
• Abstract: Our paper introduces this special issue of JEMS on the role of the local context in immigrant and second-generation integration in the United States. Recent literature has argued that national contexts are important for understanding the integration of immigrants and their descendents. The articles in this issue make the case that local contexts, broadly defined at any sub-national scale, are also important for understanding integration within the US; they suggest that it is incorrect to think of a singular and spatially undifferentiated integration process for US immigrants. In addition to previewing the contents of the articles in this issue, our paper includes a review of the meaning of generations and integration and a general discussion of the roles of local contexts in mediating processes of integration. This discussion raises questions about the appropriate spatial scale for the analysis of integration and for comparisons of the integration experience across contexts. The paper concludes with suggestions for future research on local contexts of integration within the US.

The Adaptation of the Immigrant Second Generation in America: A Theoretical Overview and Recent Evidence

• Authors: Alejandro Portes, Patricia Fernandez-Kelly, and William Haller
• Pages 1077 – 1104
• Abstract: This paper summarizes a research programme on the new immigrant second generation initiated in the early 1990s and completed in 2006. The four field waves of the Children of Immigrants Longitudinal Study (CILS) are described and the main theoretical models emerging from it are presented and graphically summarized. After considering critical views of this theory, we present the most recent results from this longitudinal research programme in the form of quantitative models predicting downward assimilation in early adulthood and qualitative interviews identifying ways for the disadvantaged children of immigrants to escape it. Quantitative results strongly support the predicted effects of exogenous variables identified by segmented assimilation theory and identify the intervening factors during adolescence that mediate their influence on adult outcomes. Qualitative evidence gathered during the last stage of the study points to three factors that can lead to exceptional educational achievement among disadvantaged youths, and which indicate the positive influence of selective acculturation. Finally, the implications of these findings for theory and policy are discussed.

Emerging Contexts of Second-Generation Labor Markets in the United States

• Author: Jamie Goodwin-White
• Pages 1105 – 1128
• Abstract: In this paper I examine how local labor market contexts matter for the Hispanic adult children of immigrants in the United States. Specifically, I consider how these workers fit into ethnic divisions of labour in five metropolitan areas: the traditional immigrant cities of Los Angeles, New York and Chicago, and the newer immigrant gateways of Atlanta and Phoenix. I focus on the changing economies of these cities in the 1990s, and how industrial changes affect the jobs and relative wages available to immigrants and their adult children. I also examine the extent to which the adult children of immigrants are occupationally clustered in ‘immigrant jobs’. Intergenerational occupational shifts vary by metropolitan area, but are heavily gendered across all of them. I also discuss the interactions of other scales of context, since state and national-level legislation, local organizing efforts and internal migration all shape the settings within which the children of immigrants come of age.

Immigrants and Neighborhoods of Concentrated Poverty: Assimilation or Stagnation?

• Author: Paul A. Jargowsky
• Pages 1129 – 1151
• Abstract: Immigrants in the United States often live, at least for a time, in neighborhoods that have high concentrations of fellow immigrants. Typically, these neighborhoods also have high poverty levels and are located near concentrations of the native-born poor. Conventional wisdom is that living in extremely poor neighborhoods leads to ‘concentration effects’ that exacerbate the problems of poverty and limit economic opportunity. While immigrants are not immune to the problems of crime, gangs, dilapidated housing and failing schools associated with high-poverty neighborhoods, it has been argued that immigrant neighborhoods provide advantages as well. These include the creation of parallel institutions, vernacular information networks and familiar cultural practices. The analyses presented here provide some support for this notion, by showing immigrants’ progress from higher- to lower-poverty neighborhoods over time. Yet Mexican immigrants do not transition nearly as rapidly, providing support for the segmented assimilation hypothesis

How Neighborhoods Matter for Immigrant Children: The Formation of Educational Resources in Chinatown, Koreatown and Pico Union, Los Angeles

• Author: Min Zhou
• Pages 1153 – 1179
• Abstract: This study examines the specific ways in which local institutions in inner-city neighborhoods affect the formation of educational resources for immigrant children. Local institutions here refer to observable neighborhood-based formal and informal organizations. Based on an ethnographic study of three Los Angeles immigrant neighborhoods—Chinatown, Koreatown and Pico Union (Mexican/Central American neighborhood)—I address two main questions. What types of institution exist at the local level, and how does ethnicity shape them? How do local institutions interact with one another to create tangible and intangible resources conducive to education, and how does ethnicity affect access to these resources? My findings suggest that the social structures of immigrant neighborhoods vary due to group-specific modes of incorporation, immigration histories and the host society’s reception; that community organising at the local level centers around certain common parameters in which co-ethnicity is a crucial component; and that neighborhood-based educational resources are available but the access is unequal and ethnically exclusive.

The Neighbourhood Context for Second-Generation Education and Labour Market Outcomes in New York

• Authors: John Mollenkopf and Ana Champeny
• Pages 1181 – 1199
• Abstract: While using a transnational optic to study first-generation immigrants is now widely accepted, most scholars assume that the same approach is not necessary when studying migrants’ children. They claim that, while immigrants might be involved in the economic, political and religious life of their homelands, their children are unlikely to follow suit. In this paper I argue against summarily dismissing the power of being raised in a transnational social field. When children are brought up in households that are regularly influenced by people, objects, practices and know-how from their ancestral homes, they are socialized into its norms and values and they learn how to negotiate its institutions. They also form part of strong social networks. While not all members of the second generation will access these resources, they have the social skills and competencies to do so, if and when they choose. Capturing these dynamics, and tracking how they change over time, requires long-term ethnographic research in the source and destination countries.

The Political Impact of the New Hispanic Second Generation

• Authors: John R. Logan, Sookhee Oh, and Jennifer Darrah
• Pages 1201 – 1223
• Abstract: The rapid growth of the Hispanic population in the United States, particularly those of the second generation, who have automatic rights of citizenship, could be expected to result in increased influence and representation in politics for this group. We show that the effect of a sheer growth in numbers at the national level is diminished by several factors: low probabilities of naturalization by Hispanic immigrants; non-participation in voting, especially by the US-born generations; and concentration of growth in Congressional Districts that already have Hispanic Representatives. It is a challenge for public policy to reduce the lag between population growth and political representation.

Roots and Routes: Understanding the Lives of the Second Generation Transnationally

• Author: Peggy Levitt
• Pages 1225 – 1242
• Abstract: While using a transnational optic to study first-generation immigrants is now widely accepted, most scholars assume that the same approach is not necessary when studying migrants’ children. They claim that, while immigrants might be involved in the economic, political and religious life of their homelands, their children are unlikely to follow suit. In this paper I argue against summarily dismissing the power of being raised in a transnational social field. When children are brought up in households that are regularly influenced by people, objects, practices and know-how from their ancestral homes, they are socialised into its norms and values and they learn how to negotiate its institutions. They also form part of strong social networks. While not all members of the second generation will access these resources, they have the social skills and competencies to do so, if and when they choose. Capturing these dynamics, and tracking how they change over time, requires long-term ethnographic research in the source and destination countries.