The views and opinions expressed on this site and blog posts (excluding comments on blog posts left by others) are entirely my own and do not represent those of any employer or organization with whom I am currently or previously have been associated.
Academic Version: Applying my personal experiences and academic research as a professor of Sociology and Asian American Studies to provide a more complete understanding of political, economic, and cultural issues and current events related to American race relations, and Asia/Asian America in particular.
Plain English: Trying to put my Ph.D. to good use.
As you may have heard, May is Asian Pacific American (APA) Heritage Month and despite the CoViD-19 pandemic, there are many events and programs taking place all around the U.S. to commemorate this occasion, even if almost all of them are being conducted online. As one example, in conjunction with the Center for Asian American Media and WETA Television, PBS will be airing a five-part documentary series titled “Asian Americans” on May 11th (8pm-10pm eastern time) and 12th (8pm-11pm eastern time), so be sure to tune into your local PBS station to watch this extraordinary video series. Angry Asian Man also has a listing of different events and programs through the end of the month.
In the spirit of contributing to these collective efforts to commemorate APA Heritage Month, I was also asked to participate in two “Zoom-inars” (online seminars conducted through Zoom), and below are some video clips of my contributions. The first Zoom-inar was titled “Stand Together: Solidarity During Coronavirus” and organized by the Center for Multicultural Advancement and Student Success at my university, the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. On this panel, I was joined by several of my distinguished colleagues at UMass Amherst including professors Amilcar Shabazz and Stephanie Shonekan (W.E.B. Du Bois Afro-American Studies department), Alice Nash (History department and Native American and Indigenous Studies Certificate Program), and Laura Valdiviezo (Teacher Education and School Improvement department and Center for Latin American, Caribbean and Latinx Studies). The panel discussion focused on issues related to how people of color and communities of color can strengthen our ties and connections during the CoViD-19 pandemic.
In this first clip (about 4 minutes long), I discuss recent incidents of discrimination faced by Africans in China since the start of the CoViD-19 pandemic and how they relate to historical and ongoing examples of anti-Blackness in the Asian American community:
In this second clip (about 3 1/2 minutes long), I discuss how the model minority image hurts the Asian American community and our efforts to form critically-important bonds of solidarity with the Black community:
I was very privileged to share this (virtual) space with my awesome UMass Amherst colleagues, to be able to share our academic expertise and our personal experiences with each other and with the audience, and to reinforce our commitment to collaborating with each other to mutually support our Ethnic Studies programs, during this present moment and throughout each moment in which our programs and our communities are being threatened politically, economically, or culturally.
The second Zoom-inar related to APA Heritage Month was organized by the Massachusetts Asian American Commission, titled “AAPI History: Debunking Stereotypes and Finding our Voice,” and also took place on May 4, 2020 (that’s why I’m wearing the same shirt). In this first clip (14 minutes long), I answer several questions related to (1) the history of activism among Asian Americans and how they first defied the stereotype that they were quiet and passive; (2) the origins and basic summary of the Model Minority image; and (3) why Ethnic Studies programs are important and how they contribute to greater understanding, equity, and justice in U.S. society:
In this second clip (less than 3 minutes long), I briefly discuss the need for young Asian Americans to get involved and to support Asian American Studies programs at their university, including the Asian & Asian American Studies Certificate Program that I direct at UMass Amherst.
A big part of APA Heritage Month is to renew the bonds of connection and solidarity within the Asian American community, and also between our community and other racial, ethnic, and cultural minority groups. This is especially true in times of crisis. As we individually and collectively continue our fight for justice and equality, let’s also remember to celebrate all of the positive and inspiring examples of our heritage, and to draw on the strength, resilience, and power of our families, our communities, and our allies.
As the spring semester gets underway at many colleges and universities around the country, that means that new groups of students get their first introduction to Asian American Studies. With that in mind, these recently-published books provide some more details and sociological context about the history and contemporary dynamics of the Asian American community.
Asian Americans are often stereotyped as the “model minority.” Their sizeable presence at elite universities and high household incomes have helped construct the narrative of Asian American “exceptionalism.” While many scholars and activists characterize this as a myth, pundits claim that Asian Americans’ educational attainment is the result of unique cultural values. In The Asian American Achievement Paradox, sociologists Jennifer Lee and Min Zhou offer a compelling account of the academic achievement of the children of Asian immigrants.
Drawing on in-depth interviews with the adult children of Chinese immigrants and Vietnamese refugees and survey data, Lee and Zhou bridge sociology and social psychology to explain how immigration laws, institutions, and culture interact to foster high achievement among certain Asian American groups. For the Chinese and Vietnamese in Los Angeles, Lee and Zhou find that the educational attainment of the second generation is strikingly similar, despite the vastly different socioeconomic profiles of their immigrant parents. Because immigration policies after 1965 favor individuals with higher levels of education and professional skills, many Asian immigrants are highly educated when they arrive in the United States.
They bring a specific “success frame,” which is strictly defined as earning a degree from an elite university and working in a high-status field. This success frame is reinforced in many local Asian communities, which make resources such as college preparation courses and tutoring available to group members, including their low-income members. While the success frame accounts for part of Asian Americans’ high rates of achievement, Lee and Zhou also find that institutions, such as public schools, are crucial in supporting the cycle of Asian American achievement. Teachers and guidance counselors, for example, who presume that Asian American students are smart, disciplined, and studious, provide them with extra help and steer them toward competitive academic programs.
These institutional advantages, in turn, lead to better academic performance and outcomes among Asian American students. Yet the expectations of high achievement come with a cost: the notion of Asian American success creates an “achievement paradox” in which Asian Americans who do not fit the success frame feel like failures or racial outliers. While pundits ascribe Asian American success to the assumed superior traits intrinsic to Asian culture, Lee and Zhou show how historical, cultural, and institutional elements work together to confer advantages to specific populations. An insightful counter to notions of culture based on stereotypes, The Asian American Achievement Paradox offers a deft and nuanced understanding how and why certain immigrant groups succeed.
A New History of Asian America is a fresh and up-to-date history of Asians in the United States from the late eighteenth century to the present. Drawing on current scholarship, Shelley Lee brings forward the many strands of Asian American history, highlighting the distinctive nature of the Asian American experience while placing the narrative in the context of the major trajectories and turning points of U.S. history. Covering the history of Filipinos, Koreans, Asian Indians, and Southeast Indians as well as Chinese and Japanese, the book gives full attention to the diversity within Asian America.
A robust companion website features additional resources for students, including primary documents, a timeline, links, videos, and an image gallery. From the building of the transcontinental railroad to the celebrity of Jeremy Lin, people of Asian descent have been involved in and affected by the history of America. A New History of Asian America gives twenty-first-century students a clear, comprehensive, and contemporary introduction to this vital history.
Born out of the Civil Rights and Third World Liberation movements of the 1960s and 1970s, Asian American Studies has grown significantly over the past four decades, both as a distinct field of inquiry and as a potent site of critique. Characterized by transnational, trans-Pacific, and trans-hemispheric considerations of race, ethnicity, migration, immigration, gender, sexuality, and class, this multidisciplinary field engages with a set of concepts profoundly shaped by past and present histories of racialization and social formation.
The keywords included in this collection are central to social sciences, humanities, and cultural studies and reflect the ways in which Asian American Studies has transformed scholarly discourses, research agendas, and pedagogical frameworks.Spanning multiple histories, numerous migrations, and diverse populations, Keywords for Asian American Studies reconsiders and recalibrates the ever-shifting borders of Asian American studies as a distinctly interdisciplinary field.
While there are books on racism in universities, few examine the unique position of Asian American undergraduates. This new book captures the voices and experiences of Asian Americans navigating the currents of race, gender, and sexuality as factors in how youth construct relationships and identities. Interviews with 70 Asian Americans on an elite American campus show how students negotiate the sexualized racism of a large institution. The authors emphasize the students’ resilience and their means of resistance for overcoming the impact of structural racism.
In the past fifty years, Asian Americans have helped change the face of America and are now the fastest growing group in the United States. But as award-winning historian Erika Lee reminds us, Asian Americans also have deep roots in the country. The Making of Asian America tells the little-known history of Asian Americans and their role in American life, from the arrival of the first Asians in the Americas to the present-day.
An epic history of global journeys and new beginnings, this book shows how generations of Asian immigrants and their American-born descendants have made and remade Asian American life in the United States: sailors who came on the first trans-Pacific ships in the 1500s; indentured “coolies” who worked alongside African slaves in the Caribbean; and Chinese, Japanese, Filipino, Korean, and South Asian immigrants who were recruited to work in the United States only to face massive racial discrimination, Asian exclusion laws, and for Japanese Americans, incarceration during World War II.
Over the past fifty years, a new Asian America has emerged out of community activism and the arrival of new immigrants and refugees. No longer a “despised minority,” Asian Americans are now held up as America’s “model minorities” in ways that reveal the complicated role that race still plays in the United States. Published to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the passage of the United States’ Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 that has remade our “nation of immigrants,” this is a new and definitive history of Asian Americans. But more than that, it is a new way of understanding America itself, its complicated histories of race and immigration, and its place in the world today.
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.
Call for Submissions: Intersectionality and Public Policy
Call for chapters for an edited volume on Intersectionality and Public Policy
Olena Hankivsky (Simon Fraser University), and Julia Jordan-Zachery (Providence College)
Intersectionality is concerned with simultaneous intersections between aspects of social difference and identity (e.g., race, gender, class) and forms of systematic oppression (e.g., racism, sexism, classism) at macro and micro levels and their varied impacts. Central theoretical tenets of intersectionality are: human lives cannot be reduced to single characteristics; human experiences cannot be accurately understood by prioritizing any one factor or constellation of factors; social categories such as race/ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and ability are socially constructed and dynamic; social locations are inseparable and shaped by interacting and mutually constituting social processes and power structures that are influenced by time and place.
Simultaneously, an ongoing challenge is how to operationalize intersectionality, especially in relation to policy analysis. Until very recently, strong claims were made that effective methodologies do not exist. The situation is, however, rapidly changing. Scholars are advancing conceptual clarity, precision and guidance for intersectionality applications, in both research and policy. Nevertheless, advancements in the context of public policy are in nascent stages (e.g. Lombardo, Meier and Verloo 2009; Manuel 2006; Parken and Young 2010; Hancock 2011; Hankivsky and Cormier 2011; Hankivsky, 2012; Wilson 2013; Jordan-Zachery and Wilson 2014) and there is a pressing need for knowledge development and exchange in relation to empirical work that demonstrates how intersectionality improves public policy.
The goal of our edited collection is bring together international scholars to consider the state of the art of intersectionality in the context of policy research and analysis. Special consideration will be given to submissions from developing and transitional country contexts. We are looking for submissions that reflect on key challenges, possibilities and critiques of intersectionality-informed approaches across a variety of policy sectors, including but not limited to health, education, social policy, the environment, and the economy.
200 word abstracts of your proposed chapter submission are due August 1 2015. Please send your abstracts to BOTH Olena Hankivsky oah@sfu.ca, and Julia Jordan-Zachery jjordanz@providence.edu. All invited authors will be notified by August 31, 2015 and completed chapters will be due by December 1, 2015.
Call for Papers, Graduate Students: Intergenerational Collaborations
Amerasia Journal, Special Issue Call for Papers
Intergenerational Collaborations: Graduate Student Scholarship in Asian American Studies
Guest Editors:
Professor Yến Lê Espiritu (University of California, San Diego) and Professor Cathy J. Schlund-Ââ€Vials (University of Connecticut)
Publication Date:
Summer/Fall 2016
Due Date:
Paper submissions (6,000 – 7,000 words, inclusive of endnotes) due September 1, 2015
Since finding a permanent publishing home at UCLA’s Asian American Studies Center Press in 1971, Amerasia Journal has served as a scholarly hub for Asian American Studies. Slated for publication in Summer/Fall 2016, marking the journal’s forty -†fifth anniversary, this special issue of Amerasia Journal brings together graduate student scholarship and faculty mentorship — two foundational components of the field of Asian American Studies. The issue is innovative in two ways: it is devoted exclusively to graduate student work, and it pairs graduate student authors with senior scholars who will provide guidance during the revision process.
The guest editors will be responsible for selecting the papers to be sent out for review, and for connecting graduate student authors with appropriate senior scholars in the field. Such “intergenerational” collaborations represent an Amerasia “first,” and the editors are guided by the desire to increase both access for and representation of graduate students in the field’s leading interdisciplinary journal.
As a key frame, the editors in part return to the journal’s mission statement, which reflects the founding, revisionary tenets of a field born out of civil rights movements and international liberation struggles. The open nature of this call for submissions — which takes seriously the diversity of Asian American Studies scholarship— echoes the innovative, multidisciplinary work that has been a hallmark of Amerasia Journal. Understanding that Asian American Studies has grown considerably over the past four decades, the editors ask possible contributors to situate their work within and beyond the context of this originating mission and multifaceted vision.
Submission Guidelines and Review Process:
The guest editors, in consultation with the Amerasia Journal editors, reviewers, and potential mentors, will make the decisions on which submissions will be included in the special issue. The review process is as follows:
Initial review of submitted papers by guest editors and Amerasia Journal editorial staff
Papers approved by editors will undergo blind peer review
Accepted projects will be assigned an appropriate mentor, who will work with the writer to develop and revise the submission; this process should begin and go through the last few months of 2015
Revision of accepted papers and final submission for production
Please send correspondence and papers regarding the special issue to the following addresses. All correspondence should refer to “Amerasia Journal Intergenerational Collaborations” in the subject line.
Contacts:
Professor Yến Lê Espiritu: yespiritu@ucsd.edu
Professor Cathy J. Schlund-Ââ€Vials: cathy.schlund-Âvials@uconn.edu
Arnold Pan, Associate Editor, Amerasia Journal: arnoldpan@ucla.edu
Call for Papers: Cross-Racial and Cross-Ethnic Personal and Group Relationships
A special issue of Societies
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 15 September 2015
Special Issue Editors:
Dr. Silvia Dominguez
Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Northeastern University, Boston, MA 02115, USA
Website: http://www.drsilviadominguez.com/
E-Mail: s.dominguez@neu.edu
Dr. Cid Martinez
Department of Sociology, Sacramento Sate University, Sacramento, CA 95819-6005, USA
Website: http://www.csus.edu/soc/department/faculty1/martinez.html
E-Mail: martinec@saclink.csus.edu
Phone: +916 278 6694
In the face of an increasingly complex society, people seek out and form relations with those whom they feel safe and comfortable and perceive to be similar. As a result, racial and ethnic groups form their own distinct social networks that are separated and isolated from others, limiting information and awareness and the ability to develop consensus to address community problems and promote mobility. Homogenous networks also limit the ability of affluent groups to appreciate and address the social barriers of less fortunate groups. They are thus more likely to reinforce negative views of minorities, and the poor. Frequently, inter-racial/ethnic division is the norm rather than the exception.
In fact, very few people have access and/or opportunity to develop cross-racial, or ethnic relationships due to the long lasting high levels of racial and ethnic segregation. Nevertheless, we know that Asians and Latin Americans have high rates of intermarriage, which signifies the emergence of networks that cross ethnicity and or racial lines. This special issue provides a window into the social mechanisms that foster cross ethnic and cross-racial and ethnic networks. What makes people develop heterogeneous networks across race and ethnicity? What do people gain from these heterogeneous networks?
Submission
Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. Papers will be published continuously (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.
Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are refereed through a peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Societies is an international peer-reviewed Open Access quarterly journal published by MDPI.
Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 300 CHF (Swiss Francs). English correction and/or formatting fees of 250 CHF (Swiss Francs) will be charged in certain cases for those articles accepted for publication that require extensive additional formatting and/or English corrections.
Call for Submissions: Annual Meeting of the Association for Asian American Studies
2016 Calls for Papers: Gateways, Ports and Portals: Re-imagining Points of Departure for Asian American Studies
2016 Association for Asian American Studies Conference
April 27-30, 2016, Miami, Florida
Submissions due by: October 16th, 2015
Co-chairs:
Chris Lee (University of British Columbia) and Crystal Parikh (New York University)
Inspired by the city of Miami’s nickname –- “the Gateway to Latin America’ -– the 2016 conference asks participants to consider how forms of movement, transit, and exchange have shaped Asian America. If Asian American Studies has been frequently conceived as an intellectual, institutional, and political point of arrival, how would identifying alternative points of departure reconfigure our conceptions of the field? How might relocating origins and destinations not only change our notions of what the field is, and what it might become, but also the “gateways, ports, and portals” that enable our research, teaching, and activism?
Florida is an especially apt site to consider overlapping encounters between empires and other forces of modernity. Its intersecting histories of indigeneity, slavery, labor migrations, and refugee resettlements call for comparative approaches that place Asian American Studies in different continental, hemispheric, and, even planetary configurations. The state has been a key site in overlapping circuits of workers, intellectuals, artists, social movements and capitalist systems, reflecting its close connections to the Atlantic and Caribbean worlds.
In turn, the changing environmental conditions along Florida’s coastlines and the Everglades prompt us to look to ecocritical approaches that interrogate “the human” as the primary subject and scale of ethnic studies. As one of the hardest hit housing markets on the U.S. eastern seaboard during the 2008 financial crisis and ensuing recession, the conference location asks us to consider how contemporary forces of finance and speculative capital urgently call for critical, institutional, policy, and activist analyses and responses that question our conceptions of vulnerability, risk, crisis, and recovery.
As a key electoral swing state, Florida further prompts an examination of Asian Americans’ role in political contests, coalitions, and consensus-building. While the proportion of its population that identifies as Asian American is relatively small, Miami is a metropolis with remarkable racial diversity. This might inspire us to consider how comparative perspectives can inform and challenge the research and teaching agendas of Asian American Studies.
These questions call for intellectual conversations across the humanities, social, and physical sciences, as well as professional fields such as public policy, law, public health, and education.
Our 2016 conference theme thus invites participants to reflect on how disciplinary gatekeeping and entryways inform, but also restrict, the ways in which we undertake Asian American Studies. What innovative approaches, such as comparative, multilingual and/or interdisciplinary frameworks, has Asian American Studies remitted not only to traditional academic disciplines, but fields such as American, postcolonial, and diaspora studies among others?
How does the growth of Asian American Studies outside the borders of the United States demand a deeper interrogation of the often unacknowledged (US) nationalist biases of the field? We accordingly invite participants from all disciplines to submit proposals that engage seriously with questions and productive possibilities of collaboration and conflict, as we shuttle across the imagined spaces of Asian America.
We welcome scholarship, cultural work, as well as political activist submissions for the 2016 AAAS conference. Proposals for mentorship or professionalization round tables, panels, or workshops are also welcome. All submissions and proposals are due Friday, October 16, 2015. Please note: Participants may only appear in the program twice and only in different roles.
Program Questions? For specific questions regarding type of sessions, submission guidelines, or other programmatic issues, please contact the Program Committee Co-Chairs: Chris Lee (Chris.Lee@ubc.ca) and Crystal Parikh (Crystal.Parikh@nyu.edu).
My friend and colleague Oliver Wang recently completed a book titled Legions of Boom: Filipino American Mobile DJ Crews in the San Francisco Bay Area Duke University Press) and it’s based on his many years of ethnographic research on the mobile DJ scene in the San Francisco Bay Area in the 1990s and in particular, the leading role played by Filipino Americans in shaping, defining, and leading that cultural and music scene. The book’s description:
Armed with speakers, turntables, light systems, and records, Filipino American mobile DJ crews, such as Ultimate Creations, Spintronix, and Images, Inc., rocked dance floors throughout the San Francisco Bay Area from the late 1970s through the mid-1990s. In Legions of Boom noted music and pop culture writer and scholar Oliver Wang chronicles this remarkable scene that eventually became the cradle for turntablism. These crews, which were instrumental in helping to create and unify the Bay Area’s Filipino American community, gave young men opportunities to assert their masculinity and gain social status.
While crews regularly spun records for school dances, weddings, birthdays, or garage parties, the scene’s centerpieces were showcases — or multi-crew performances — which drew crowds of hundreds, or even thousands. By the mid-1990s the scene was in decline, as single DJs became popular, recruitment to crews fell off, and aspiring scratch DJs branched off into their own scene. As the training ground for a generation of DJs, including DJ Q-Bert, Shortkut and Mix Master Mike, the mobile scene left an indelible mark on its community that eventually grew to have a global impact.
Oliver Wang is Associate Professor of Sociology at California State University, Long Beach and his research interests center on pop music, culture, and politics. He has also written on Asian Americans and hip-hop, retro soul music, and the critical geography of the Kogi BBQ truck, among other essays. He is the editor of Classic Material: The Hip-Hop Album Guide and has written for NPR, Vibe, Wax Poetics, the Los Angeles Times, the Oakland Tribune, and the Village Voice, amongst others.
I asked Oliver the following questions about his work and his new book (I added some links to certain words and terms in his answers to provide readers with more context and information):
How did you first become interested in this particular scene?
I first started reading about the Bay Area’s Filipino American (FA) scratch DJs in local alternative weeklies in the early ’90s. As I was a budding DJ myself, I was intrigued at how all these world class Asian American DJs had emerged out of the Bay. A few years later, as a music journalist, I began interviewing scratch DJs like Q-Bert and Shortkut and discovered that the common link they all had was that their careers all began in the 1980s as a part of mobile DJ crews. I had never heard about that scene and my journalistic and scholarly instincts lit up. At the very least, I felt like there was a good story to be told here.
In what ways are the Filipino American DJs that you focus on unique? How do they assert their own identity onto the DJ scene?
The unique quality of the mobile scene was that it was predominantly Filipino American and it had the right conditions in place for that to be self-sustaining for over a decade. There were other Bay Area mobile scenes, with other ethnic groups, but apparently, none had the same kind of size, longevity, or intensity and as I argue in the book, that’s because the Filipino American community was especially well-organized to help circulate the necessary capital to support a long-term scene of this nature. It’s not because FA DJs were more gifted or somehow more culturally inclined towards DJing; I resist any impulse to culturally pathologize this community. It’s because they have a remarkable social network of family, student/church groups, and community organizations that helped to circulate gigs (and therefore money) amongst the crews.
As for how they asserted their identity, what’s notable is how little my respondents thought their ethnicity had anything to do with the DJ scene. If there were identities being asserted, it had far more to do with what school or neighborhood they were from – as well as their identity as a crew – and on a less self-aware level, their identity as young men. But expressing their “Filipino-ness” wasn’t part of their performance. I think that stands in stark contrast with the generation of hip-hop-influenced DJs that came after them, for whom ethnic identity was far more at the forefront.
The book’s description mentioned that these Filipino Americans used their DJing as opportunities to assert their masculinity. Can you elaborate on this a little bit? How did their idea of being masculine compare to say, conventional notions of White or Black male masculinity?
As I suggested, those assertions of masculinity weren’t necessarily self-aware nor different from what you’d find amongst other young men. The crew structure is very similar to that of other homosocial organizations you find amongst male youth: sports teams, youth gangs, fraternities, etc. Being part of a crew gives them a sense of belonging and purpose and they often spoke of it in gendered language, i.e. “a brotherhood” or the like.
There’s been some debate over the years about whether Filipino Americans consider themselves to be an integral part of the larger Asian American community, or whether they tend to identify more as Hispanic/Latino. Based on this project, how did these Filipino see themselves in relation to the larger Asian American community?
This wasn’t a topic I landed upon with them but I will say that there was no uniform kind of ethnic self-awareness that my respondents expressed. Some of them were confused about their identity growing up but others had a much better sense of themselves as Filipino Americans. It really varied and depended on their family/life experiences. As to the pan-ethnic question, we never got into that but I do think to the extent that there were other scenes, like a Chinese American mobile scene, they did see their scene as being distinct from that as opposed to them all being in some greater “Asian American mobile scene.” The important thing to remember is that while their scene wasn’t exclusively Filipino, all the key parts of the social infrastructure that supported it linked back to Filipino family, religious and community networks. Being Filipino certainly wasn’t incidental even if it wasn’t being actively expressed/performed.
Lately, there’s been more attention paid to Asian Americans using alternative means to express themselves artistically, such as through YouTube and other forms of social media. Do you think Asian Americans on YouTube are content with asserting an alternative, independent cultural identity, or do you think they’re looking to use it as a springboard to get into mainstream media?
I don’t think it’s an either/or, especially as these days, YouTube practically IS mainstream media (though differences still abound, see below).
To me, what I find fascinating about the mobile DJ scene story is that they were inspired to form these crews — as teenagers — because they saw DJs in clubs and thought, “Why can’t we do this back at home?” It’s a simple but profoundly powerful idea to realize one’s own creative/expressive potential using the tools you have around you. In the 1980s, that meant cobbling together a sound system from family stereo systems, before you could invest in professional equipment.
In the 1990s, in the import car scene, you saw middle class youth taking their personal transportation and transforming that into mobile canvases for self and collective expression. In our current age, it’s about using the tools built into digital devices, be they computers or smartphones. I think the vast majority of youth seek to make their voices heard, not necessarily in a self-conscious way to be either alternative or mainstream. It’s only later that people like us (scholars, journalists) try to parse their activities into these kinds of subcultural dichotomies but I don’t think, for example, mobile DJ crews were a subculture. I don’t think they saw themselves as one nor did they function as one (in the strict, Hebdigean definition of subculture).
Based on your academic work and personal observations, are there any emerging artistic or cultural trends within the Asian American community that we should keep an eye out for?
There are at least two areas that I hope scholars will spend time exploring:
1) Social media “stars” who’ve used non-traditional media platforms to produce and distribute their own content. While I do think the distance between mainstream vs. social media is fast collapsing, there is still a traditional media industry in place (i.e. record companies, television networks, movie studios, et. al.) and they still command much power and influence. But what we’ve seen is that Asian Americans have bypassed those institutions to find other ways of getting themselves “out there.” That, to me, is really profound especially compared to how limited things were for the mobile DJs who largely were invisible to anyone outside of their scene or region.
2) Asian Americans involved in the contemporary food scene, whether as chefs, restaurateurs, food writers, etc. This is something I’ve begun to write more about myself and I think we’re only going to see more and more Asian Americans pursuing careers around food and more to the point: food culture.
If I had to pick a third, I think K-pop is going to be a fascinating topic to study. Its popularity, of course, is transnational and transracial but to the extent that most Asian pop musics have never found solid footing in the American pop scene, I think K-pop might be the one to crossover and if so, I imagine that Asian American k-pop fans will be somewhere in that mix. Maybe.
Broadly speaking, I just think Asian American cultural formations, performances and participation is STILL woefully marginal in Asian American Studies. For a variety of reasons, “we” produce a disproportionate amount of scholars who study literature and that’s all fine and good but I feel that Asian American Studies really lags behind other, similar disciplines in our exploration of popular culture as a site for critical examination and discussion. This was certainly the case when I started grad school nearly 20 years ago and it’s not like we’ve seen a sea change since then. I hold out hope that some future generation of scholars will be the ones to turn that particular tide.
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.
Visiting Position: Asian American Studies, CUNY
Job Title: Dr. Thomas Tam Visiting Professorship, Asian-American Studies (Visiting Job ID: Associate or Full Professor)
Faculty Vacancy Announcement
The City University of New York is hiring a Visiting Professor at the senior faculty level of full or associate professor for the Dr. Thomas Tam Visiting Professorship in Asian-American Studies. Performs teaching, research, and guidance duties in area(s) of expertise as noted below. Shares responsibility for committee and department assignments, performing administrative, supervisory, and other functions as assigned.
The Dr. Thomas Tam Visiting Professor will be based at one of the four CUNY campuses participating in the search, Brooklyn College, Hunter College, Queens College or the Graduate Center. He or she will teach one class a semester at that campus and will engage with students and faculty members during the appointment. The Dr. Thomas Tam Visiting Professor will participate in public events designed to raise the visibility of scholarship in Asian American studies. This will include working closely with CUNY’s Asian American/Asian Research Institute (AAARI), a University-wide institute that promotes undergraduate and graduate education in Asian-American studies and educates civic, business, academic leaders, and the general public, on issues of concern to the Asian American community.
This distinctive position presents an opportunity for a leading scholar to work in New York City¿s diverse and dynamic environment while also working with AAARI and CUNY faculty to develop and enrich the CUNY research agenda in Asian American studies. The search committee contains representatives of the four CUNY colleges involved in the search, with appointment to a particular college dependent on the candidate’s fit with that college’s goals and academic priorities. Visiting faculty are individuals with a primary commitment to another accredited college or university who possess advanced scholarship or professional achievement.
Qualifications For Associate or Full Professor
Ph.D. degree in area(s) of experience or equivalent. Also required are the ability to teach successfully, demonstrated scholarship or achievement, and ability to cooperate with others for the good of the institution. Substantial research experience, expertise and publications on the Asian American experience are required. Areas of focus may include: trends and evolution of Asian American communities, civic and political engagement, entrepreneurship and economic development, religious and ethnic identity, gender and sexuality, intergenerational relations, critical race theory, diaspora and transnational experiences and communities and others.
Compensation
CUNY offers faculty a competitive compensation and benefits package covering health insurance, pension and retirement benefits, paid parental leave, and savings programs. We also provide mentoring and support for research, scholarship, and publication as part of our commitment to ongoing faculty professional development.
How to Apply
For full consideration, please submit a CV, letter of intent, and contact information for at least three professional references by the closing date. The direct link to the job opening from external sources is:
https://home.cunyfirst.cuny.edu/psp/cnyepprd/GUEST/HRMS/c/HRS_HRAM.HRS_CE.GBL?Page=HRS_CE_JOB_DTL&Action=A&JobOpeningId=10168&SiteId=1&PostingSeq=1
Closing Date February 28, 2014
Position: Sociology, Bryan Mawr College
The Department of Sociology at Bryn Mawr College invites applications for a full-time, one-year Lecturer position to begin August 1, 2014. We seek a sociologist who specializes in immigration and/or gender, with additional areas in medical/health, social psychology, law, organizations, qualitative methods, Asian-American, Latino, or global sociology. A candidate whose work focuses on the Global South would be especially attractive. The teaching load is 3/3.
A Ph.D. in hand by the start of the position is required. To apply, please send a detailed cover letter that addresses your teaching and research interests, curriculum vitae, a list of courses you would be interested in teaching, sample syllabi (at least two), and names and contact information of three references (including email contacts). Send materials in a single PDF file (electronic submissions only, subject line should read “Sociology Search”) to: Karen Sulpizio, ksulpizi@brynmawr.edu. Review of applications will begin on March 3, 2014.
Located in suburban Philadelphia, Bryn Mawr College is a highly selective liberal arts college for women who share an intense commitment to intellectual inquiry, an independent and purposeful vision of their lives, and a desire to make meaningful contributions to the world. Bryn Mawr comprises an undergraduate college with 1,300 students, as well as coeducational graduate programs in social work, and in some humanities and sciences. The College promotes faculty excellence in both research and teaching, and participates in consortial programs with Haverford College, Swarthmore College, and the University of Pennsylvania.
Summer Workshop: Asian America Leadership, NYC
Are you in New York City this summer and looking for something fun and meaningful to do? Apply to be a Summer Leadership Institute facilitator!
Chinatown Youth Initiative’s Summer Leadership Institute (SLI) consists of a series of weekly workshops engaging high school youth in exploratory activities and discussions. These workshops aim to facilitate identity and leadership development, as well as to enhance awareness of social issues affecting underrepresented communities.
Responsibilities include:
Facilitating youth workshops around sociopolitical issues
Serving as a positive role model and mentor to youth participants
Maintaining consistent communication with participants in assigned small group
Working with facilitation team to develop curricula and workshop materials
Maintaining active and consistent communication with the team to ensure that participants have a safe and enriching experience
Attending all staff meetings and trainings, in addition to workshops and special events
If interested, please complete the application form, which can be found here: http://bit.ly/1bbK7Nq and e-mail your resume to apply@cyinyc.org. Applications are due Monday, March 3rd, 2014 at 11:59PM! For more information, please feel free to e-mail matthew.lim@cyinyc.org.
Leadership in Action (LIA) is an eight-week paid summer internship program designed to develop emerging young leaders by providing college students with practical leadership skills and the opportunity to work hands-on in the Asian and Pacific Islander (API) community in Southern California.
Approaching its 17th year, the program takes learning beyond the classroom, and places them in selected community-based organizations in Southern California, where they are expected to work 4 full days per week under an assigned staff supervisor. The fifth day will be devoted to leadership development training or issue discussions and group project work. Nationally recognized trainers will deliver workshops in critical skill areas. Issue discussions are on local or timely topics of interest and are facilitated by local community leaders/activists and LEAP trainers.
Program Length and Stipend
The eight-week program runs from June 16 through August 8, 2014. Interns will receive compensation in the amount of $2,500 for successful completion of the program and are responsible for their own housing, transportation, and insurance.
Who Should Apply?
College students or recent graduates with…
Prior experience in API communities
A passion for learning and growing leadership skills
An interest in gaining work experience in an API community-based nonprofit organization
Deadline
Applications available online at: http://bit.ly/1dbWXYA. All application materials must be received by Monday, March 10, 2014.
About LEAP
Leadership Education for Asian Pacifics (LEAP) is a national, non-profit, community-based organization with a mission to achieve full participation and equality for Asian and Pacific Islanders through leadership, empowerment and policy.
Workshop: Race in Multiracial America
Call for Student Participants for Upcoming Workshop: Measuring the Diverging Components of Race in Multiracial America
We are seeking applications from sociology graduate students seeking a PhD who are interested in attending a workshop focused on cutting-edge research on the measurement of race and ethnicity. A description of the workshop is below. Students who are interested in doing research on the topic are invited to submit a 1-2 page description of their interests and the benefit they would receive from attending the workshop, as well as a CV (which should include a brief description of the student’s progress in their graduate program).
We would like to include students from a range of experience levels, so it is not required that the application include work that the student has already done. Student participants will not be expected to present a paper, but will participate in all discussions. Applications should be submitted to Wendy Roth at wendy.roth@ubc.ca by March 8, 2014.
The workshop will be held June 26-27 at Texas A&M University, in College Station, Texas. This workshop is funded by the ASA Fund for the Advancement of the Discipline, the Texas A&M University Sociology Department, the Race and Ethnic Studies Institute (RESI) at Texas A&M, the Kinder Institute for Urban Research at Rice University, and the Program for the Study of Ethnicity, Race and Culture at Rice University. We will be able to pay travel expenses within North America, and accommodation and meals during the workshop for the students selected to participate. Students of any citizenship are welcome to apply.
This workshop will be organized around the central questions of how “race” and “ethnicity” are measured, lived, and experienced in today’s evolving racial landscape. In the last few decades, research on how racial categories are experienced has become much more sophisticated, as researchers acknowledge the importance of self-identification for the creation of identity, meaning and community, identification by others for the effects of discrimination and differences in treatment, and the importance of both individual- and group-level shifts in the construction of these categories. Immigration, interracial families, and changing ideas about racial categorization have all combined to create an evolving landscape for the lived experiences of “race,” both in the United States and around the world.
Central Questions:
Given the growth of groups that complicate racial boundaries such as multiracial populations, interracial families and immigrants, how are the various components of race lived, experienced, and measured today?
How should we think theoretically about the multiple aspects that contribute to how a person experiences race, such as how they are seen racially by others (observed race), how they subjectively identify (internal race), how they identify themselves to others and on questionnaires (expressed race), how they believe they are seen by others (reflected race), their biology and both known and unknown ancestry, and the various aspects of their appearance or phenotype?
What are the highest-quality measures available for each of these aspects of “race”? Do we need new measures of race and ethnicity, or can the old measures be employed in new ways?
What is the quality of the measures available for these aspects of race in public data holdings available to survey researchers? For example, the U.S. Census is considering revamping their approach to collecting racial/ethnic data in order to increase quality, and has tested revisions to the census questions covering race and ethnicity. For researchers, what are the considerations in identifying and using an ever evolving array of race measures?
The workshop will involve presentations of cutting-edge research on the measurement of race and ethnicity, discussion of key existing resources on measuring diverse components of race, and discussion of what measurements and survey question formats are needed in future data collection and research.
Reimagining Indonesia: Ideals, Actions, and Challenges
April 11-12 2014, Yale University
Hosted by the Yale Indonesia Forum with the Cornell Indonesian Association
Call for Papers
http://www.yale.edu/seas/YIFConf2014.htm
2014 will witness the emergence of a new national leader from the upcoming Presidential election in Indonesia. Once again, the question of development has been bought to the fore, upon which hope of national progress rests. Recognizing the imporÂtance of a visionary and systematic transformation, the Indonesian people look forward to seeing better management of national resources, which should be liberated from the grip of elite interests and dedicated instead toward the greater good of public sovereignty.
Rising above the excitement of the national elections, the 2014 Yale Indonesian Forum Spring Dialogue seeks to revitalize discussions on how local and regional cultures could invigorate considerations on the development policies of the new regime. What are the viable alternatives for future development in Indonesia? What has been missing from the discussions of the new leadership in Indonesia and the future of the nation and how the nation is re-imagined?
What might be other modes of thinking, inquiry, knowledge, practices, and spaces of explorations, development, and potentials available in local and regional areas in Indonesia that will enable us to reimagine Indonesia? How can the new visions of Indonesia be realized? How can the new visions mobilize and unite the diverse cultures and interests across the archipelago? What are the challenges lying in the broad spectrum of cultural, social, political and ecological variability?
Endowed with rich resources and cultural diversity, Indonesia does not face a paucity of ideas to tackle the challenges arising from resource mismanagement. The effort to re-imagine a vibrant and sustainable Indonesia will depend on a deep grasp of existing problems, the quality of the vision and the commitment of substantive implementation.
In alignment with this aim and theme, the Yale Indonesian Forum (YIF) and CorÂnell Indonesian Association (CIA) invite paper submissions for their 11th Northeastern ConÂference on Indonesia. We welcome submissions from graduate and undergraduate stuÂdents from any discipline at any stage engaged in original research on Indonesia related to the themes highlighted above. While these themes will certainly be highlighted in the program, proposals not directly related to the themes above are also explicitly encouraged.
The program will begin on Friday, April 11th, 2014 at Yale University, New Haven, CT with an interactive 2014 yif spring dialogue featuring 3 invited scholars with various areas of expertise, who have researched and written extensively about Indonesia. Attendees are encouraged to join the dialogue. There will be a moderator assisting the dialogue.
On Saturday, April 12th, 2014, the discussion continues through the 11th northeastern yif-cia conference on indonesia with a keynote adÂdress by Professor R. William Liddle, Ohio State University, and paper presentations by students.
Proposal Submission
Please contact organizers at yifconference2014@gmail.com if you have any question(s) regarding the dialogue and the conference. The parÂticipants are encouraged to seek fundÂing from their home institutions. The conference committee will provide acÂcommodation for selected contributors.
Please submit your proposal in .doc or .docx file only. The proposal is limÂited to 350 words. Please include in your proposal the description of your project, the research questions, perÂspective(s) or theoretical framework, methods, substantiated conclusions/tentative key findings, and the signifiÂcance of the work. In addition to your proposal, please provide a short referÂence (at the end of your proposal), situÂating your work.
Please send your proposal to yifconference2014@gmail.com and provide the following with nth body of the e-mail:
-name (and co-preÂsenters (if any))
-institutional affiliaÂtion(s)
-status (undergraduate or gradÂuate)
-title of the paper/presentation
-email address
-phone number
Proposal Submission Deadline: March 14, 2014 at 12 a.m. est
Notification of Acceptance:
by March 22, 2014 (via email)
The National Fellowship Program for Asian American Organizing develops the leadership of a new generation of activists and organizers who are deeply invested in building the power of and improving the lives of working-class Asian immigrant communities. During ten weeks of intensive training, ground work and reflection, Fellows will learn about and support struggles at one of their host sites:
This is an intensive full-time, volunteer program for the summer. Applicants are also encouraged to seek additional and alternative funding sources (include campus work-study programs, scholarships and stipends). All cost (including travel to host site cities and housing) will the responsibility of each Fellow. A limited number of scholarships ranging from $500 – $2000 are available.
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.
In its twelfth season, the successful Armed With a Camera (AWC) Fellowship for Emerging Media Artists nurtures the next generation of Asian Pacific American media artists to capture their world, surroundings and outlook on life. Visual Communications works with the Fellows for seven months and provides special training, mentoring and networking opportunities, access to facilities and equipment, plus a cash and rental stipend to create four to five-minute digital shorts that premiere at the Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival and other venues nationwide.
The 2013-2014 Armed With A Camera Fellowship is accepting submissions May 15 – August 2, 2013. Up to 10 artists will be selected for the Fellowship. We will announce the new class of Fellows in September.
Visual Communications (VC) seeks to cultivate a new generation of Asian Pacific American media artists committed to preserving the legacy and vision of VC. The Armed With A Camera Fellowship will award up to ten fellows $1,000 in cash and $1,000 in equipment rental to complete a four to five-minute digital video. Through the Armed With A Camera Fellowship, emerging media artists will capture their world, surroundings and outlook on life as a part of a new generation of Asian Pacific Americans.
Final projects must be shot in digital video format and completed by March 21, 2014. A special program will showcase all completed projects at various VC exhibitions across the city of Los Angeles, including the 2014 Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival and other venues nationwide. VC will co-own the productions and will also package and distribute completed works. Distribution income will aid in the continuation of the Armed with a Camera Fellowship.
Applicant Eligibility
Eligible applicants must be of Asian Pacific descent and residents of Southern California. If accepted, Fellows must be able to attend mandatory meetings and workshops in Los Angeles. Women, South Asian and Southeast Asian filmmakers are highly encouraged to apply to the AWC Fellowship. If you’re not sure of your eligibility, please contact Visual Communications.
My name is Brianna Werner, and I am a research assistant to Dr. Frances Shen, a faculty member at the University of Illinois Springfield. We are in need of university student participants to complete a survey on the impact of discrimination on Asian American LGB persons.
We are seeking individuals who (1) identify as Asian American, (2) identify as lesbian, gay or bisexual, and (3) are at least 18 years of age to complete a confidential web-based survey that will ask you about the impact of discrimination on Asian American LGB persons.
The entire study should take approximately 30-40 minutes. The answers you provide will be kept completely confidential. You will not be asked to provide your name on the inventory. This research has been reviewed and approved by the UIS Human Subjects Review Officer, Dr. Lynn Pardie. Dr. Pardie can be reached at 217-206-7230 to answer any questions about your rights as a volunteer participant in this study.
As a thank you, participants who complete the survey can enter into a lottery drawing to win one of four $25 gift certificates or one of four $50 gift certificates.
For more information about the study, and to participate, please go to https://illinois.edu/sb/sec/4852751.
You are invited to participate in a study exploring relationships among People of Color. The requirements are as follows: you must be 18 years of age or older; a Person of Color, and be involved in an interracial relationship for a minimum of one year. Participation in this study is voluntary and anonymous and you will not be compensated.
If you would like to participate or have any questions please contact Magie S. Maekawa at magiemaekawa@gmail.com or click on the following hyperlink: https://csulapsychology.qualtrics.com/SE/?SID=SV_ebQFLDRt1n30oHX.
Call for Papers: Submit your manuscript for publication in Race and Social Problems.
We welcome manuscripts that explore, but are not limited to, such topics as criminal justice, economic conditions, education, the elderly, families, health disparities, mental health, race relations, and youth.
To submit a manuscript, please visit www.crsp.pitt.edu/publications/CallForPapers.pdf. Articles in the journal are available for free online at http://link.springer.com/journal/12552. In 2014, there will be a special issue on Asian Americans. You may submit your manuscript to www.crsp.pitt.edu/publications/SpecialIssueCallforPapers2013-2.pdf.
Expected future special issues of Race and Social Problems include the following:
Women of Color, 2015
Race and Religiosity, 2016
Race and Education, 2017
Race and Aging, 2018
As another contributing author to the Asian-Nation team, I would like to introduce Jerry Z. Park.
Jerry Z. Park is an Associate Professor of Sociology at Baylor University. His research interests are in American race relations, religion, social identities, culture and civic engagement, with a focus on Asian Americans. He has published peer-reviewed articles in journals such as Social Forces, The Sociological Quarterly, Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, Sociological Perspectives, and Journal of Asian American Studies.
He has participated in obtaining the Asian American oversample of the Portraits of American Life Survey Wave I (2006) and has been a regular contributor of the Baylor Religion Surveys (2005-2013). In 2012, he served as an advisory panel member of the Pew Asian American Survey and is currently studying the religious influences in workplace outcomes and in entrepreneurial enterprises through a grant from the National Science Foundation.
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.
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
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
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 “belongingâ€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.
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.
I have compiled and organized a course guide about Asians, Asian Americans, and Pacific Islanders for the public sociology blog Sociological Images. The guide contains links to Sociological Images posts, organized by theme. Hopefully it will be useful for instructors teaching courses in sociology, anthropology, ethnic studies, and related fields. I will be updating it periodically as new posts on the topic get published.
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: Ethnic Studies, Univ. of Colorado
The Department of Ethnic Studies at the University of Colorado Boulder invites applications for a full-time instructorship in Comparative Ethnic Studies with an emphasis in critical sports studies. Applicants must be able to teach classes on sports and their social contexts of race, gender, sexuality, and/or globalization, as well as a comparative Foundations of Ethnic Studies course and other courses in their specialties.
A Ph.D. is preferred, though ABD candidates will be considered. The teaching load is 4-3, plus additional service to the department such as working with student groups. This is a non-continuing position with a two-year contract beginning in Fall 2013. To apply, please send a letter of application discussing teaching interests and experience, c.v., and evidence of teaching excellence to: ethnicst@colorado.edu. Review of applications will begin on April 8 and continue until the position is filled.
Post-Doc: Immigration, USC
The Center for the Study of Immigrant Integration (CSII) combines data analysis, academic scholarship, and civic engagement to support improved economic mobility for, enhanced civic participation by, and receiving society openness to immigrants.
Mellon Post-Doctoral Fellowship, 2013-2015
The USC Center for the Study of Immigrant Integration (CSII) and the USC Department of Sociology announce a two-year post-doctoral Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Teaching Fellowship, beginning Fall 2013. The fellowship focuses on immigrant populations and the potential impact and/or need for Comprehensive Immigration reform (CIR) for the 2013-2014 and 2014-2015 academic years.
While we would prefer a post-doctoral teaching fellow looking at the populations likely to benefit from CIR in order to help us build a research project looking at the longitudinal effects, we would also be open to candidates who would study the politics of change. We would prefer an interdisciplinary researcher who could utilize and teach mixed methods approaches (i.e., both quantitative and qualitative) to Sociology graduates and undergraduates in his/her teaching role. The fellow will teach one course each semester at USC and is expected to conduct research with CSII. The fellowship will offer a competitive salary, a yearly $2,000 research allowance, and fringe benefits. The fellow must have completed all requirements for the Ph.D. by mid-August, 2013.
Review of applications will commence on May 03, 2013, with a decision expected approximately May 17, 2013. Please follow the application process and upload the following materials:
C.V.
Detailed description of the nature of the research to be undertaken during the fellowship period
Relevant writing sample of no more than 30 pages
Contact information for three references (they will be asked to directly submit on your behalf)
Center for the Study of Immigrant Integration
950 W. Jefferson Blvd., JEF 102 | Los Angeles, CA 90089-1291
P: 213.740.3643 | F: 213.740.5680 | E: csii@usc.edu
Lecture Series: Mentoring Faculty of Color, CUNY
Mentoring of Future Faculty of Color Project Lecture Series
Developed in conversation with many students in the GC English PhD program, this initiative aims to offer scholarly and professional mentorship to students of color in CUNY PhD Programs by bringing in faculty of color from a variety of U.S. universities to share both their scholarship and their experiences in navigating the academy. We are delighted to announce that four fantastic scholars will be visiting us each consecutive Friday, starting April 19th. Each of these scholars will provide a talk on their current research. Please find the description, dates/times and venues for each of the four talks below. All events taking place at the CUNY Graduate Center (365 Fifth Ave NYC).
“Cosmopolitanism, Nationalism, and Empire: British Literature in the Eighteenth-century”
Suvir Kaul (English at UPenn)
Fri 4/19 @ 2PM – Room 4406, English Lounge
This paper will explore the idea that “Cosmopolitanism,” as a term, an idealized state of being, and a cultural and political idea, comes into vogue in historical circumstances where the putative attributes of cosmopolitanism—tolerance of, even ease with, people of different nationalities, cultures, religions, and races—are disabled in practice. Eighteenth-century English and European commentators on cultural difference derived most of their operative sociological and historical categories from the explosion of information produced by commercial and colonial expansion across the globe.
Out of this welter of knowledge emerged the theories of kinship and social development that underpinned imperialist ideas of human difference as well as more cosmopolitan arguments that insisted on the recuperative powers of cultural knowledge and human sympathy. Such cosmopolitanism was a forceful, though necessarily compromised, response to the cultural coercions of empire. I will show that eighteenth-century literary texts are a fruitful archive for discussions of the forms and vocabularies of cosmopolitanism, and also venture a larger, more speculative claim: cosmopolitanism, that is, the awareness of the mediated relations between provinces and nations, nations and colonies, and between competitive empires in history and in the contemporary moment, enabled “English Literature†to come into institutional being in the eighteenth century.
“‘One of these mornings, you’re gonna rise up singing’: Black Women (Un)Doing Gershwinian Time”
Daphne Brooks (English at Princeton)
Fri 4/26 @ 2PM – Room 4406, English Lounge
This talk considers the ways in which a range of black women musicians–from jazz musicians and opera legends to pop divas and avant-garde experimentalists–have traversed the music of the Gershwins’ folk opera Porgy and Bess, and it explores the ways that these artists have transformed this unlikely musical vehicle into black feminist temporal insurgencies.
“Carceral Aesthetics: Art and Visuality in the Era of Mass Incarceration”
Nicole Fleetwood, (American Studies at Rutgers)
Fri 5/3 @ 2PM – Room 4406, English Lounge
Popular entertainment, journalistic exposes, and documentary sobriety produce countless images of “life behind bars.†These images fascinate, horrify and titillate; and yet prison is a site that the majority of the public will never enter as inmate, guest, worker, or researcher. It is a site that we know almost exclusively through the lens of others; and yet we know it so well. As Angela Davis argues, prison is such a foundational feature of our contemporary environment and polity that it has taken on a quality of familiarity and common sense. The popularity of visual representations of prison life underscores the significance of visuality in establishing and maintaining the modern carceral system—particularly in the United States. And yet, the visual world of prison has received little sustained analysis in scholarship and public discourse.
In this talk I examine carceral aesthetics to refer to how visual lenses operate and artistic practices emerge in relationship to the modern prison industrial complex. The talk examines late twentieth century documentary studies and artistic projects by incarcerated and non-incarcerated subjects. These works are composed and staged in ways that speak to, work through, or incorporate the ever-looming and multiple lenses of carceral optics. The works of Deborah Luster, Dread Scott, Duron Jackson, and others will be considered.
“Wildness” has emerged as a post-ecological motif among critics interested in pushing queer and critical race studies past the impasse of the death-bound subject. But where exactly is this wild to which we imagine a return located? This talk mounts an imaginative itinerary through the haunts and havens of the fabulous beasts and little monsters of today. It speculates that a new entelechy of the queer is increasingly subsuming the epistemology of the closet, with its emphasis of power-knowledge. Queerness is mutating and developing new immunities to disclosure and new vulnerabilities as raw life. Popular music increasingly moves along the grooves of this fugitive queer vitalism.
Please feel free to forward widely and to contact us should you have any further questions: ceng@gc.cuny.edu
Call for Papers: Asians in the Americas, Pepperdine Univ.
Call for Papers: Second Symposium on Asians in the Americas Pepperdine University
Sponsored by Pepperdine University and the International Studies and Languages Division
September 27-28, 2013
This symposium aims to explore the multifaceted representations of Asian lives in the Americas in history, sociology, religion, anthropology, art, education, film, and popular culture. In contemporary diaspora, globalization, and transnational studies we are reminded of the movement of Asians to the Americas as a people and through representations. We emphasize that although Asians have been in the Americas since at least the 16th Century, the movement of Asians outside of Asia is, ostensibly, a footnote in many fields. Similarly, current scholarship of Asians in the Americas focuses on East Asians in the Americas and rarely discusses South Asians, Southeast Asians, Central Asians, and Western Asians.
The symposium seeks to examine the multiple intersections of borders, race, nationality, geopolitical power, homeland, identity, and the transmission of culture as it specifically relates to the Asians in the Americas. We invite papers that focus on any aspect of the symposium themes and especially encourage interdisciplinary approaches. Topics may focus on a specific diaspora, such as the Japanese diaspora, or tied to the specific host country, for example, the South Asians in Canada, but should be able to serve as a general context to this hemisphere as a whole.
Please send an abstract of no more than 200 words to:
Dr. David Simonowitz (Organizer) by May 15, 2013
David.simonowitz@pepperdine.edu
Co-organizers: Dr. Zelideth Rivas, Marshall University
Dr. Alejandro Lee, Central Washington University
Positions: Poll Workers, Boston
The Boston Election Department is recruiting Poll Workers to assist in the important work of staffing the City’s 254 precincts for all the upcoming Elections.
In order to guide voters through the electoral process smoothly and speedily and to ensure that all the poll-ing locations are adequately staffed, the Election Department requires a full complement of Poll Workers. There is also a critical need for bilingual individuals to serve in all the Poll Worker roles: Wardens, Clerks, Inspectors and Interpreters. Bilingual speakers of Spanish, Cape Verdean, Vietnamese, Chinese, Haitian Creole, Russian, Portuguese, and Somali are strongly encouraged to apply.
Job responsibilities include, but are not limited, to the following: assist with preparing the voting location for opening; hang signs in accordance with legal requirements; count ballots; check in voters; maintain a record of the Election Day・s activities; check handicap access; assist in removing signage; pack up election materials; and help check counts at the end of the day.
Please note these are one day positions only.
There are stipends ranging from $135-$175 for Poll Workers. While it is encouraged that all Poll Workers be available from 6AM to the closing of the polls (9PM), those workers serving as Inspectors or Interpreters may opt for a half-day shift: 6AM to 2PM or 1PM to 9PM (prorated pay rate of $9/hour). All prospective Poll Workers will be required to attend a mandatory 2-hour training session prior to the Elections.
Poll Workers must be registered voters in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts; preference will be given to voters with proven and consistent voter history. All Poll Workers must exhibit a professional and helpful demeanor, and must be respectful and mindful of the ethnic and cultural diversity of Boston・s voters.
For more information on becoming a Poll Worker , please contact the Boston Election Department at (617)635 ・3767 or by email at email at Election@cityofboston.gov. Applications can be downloaded directly from our website and can be mailed, faxed or returned as an email attachment.
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: Korean American Studies, U.C. Riverside
The Department of Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Riverside, announces a tenured Associate or Full Professor position in Korean American Studies, beginning July 1, 2013. Advanced degree in field related to theories and principles of Korean American Studies is required. The candidate should be a scholar with demonstrated record of commitment to research, grant writing, fundraising, teaching excellence, and community service.
UCR is a research institution with high expectations for scholarly productivity and excellence in teaching. Position supports the Young Oak Kim Center for Korean American Studies at UC Riverside with research and inquiry to facilitate effective Center planning, decision making and mission fulfillment. Salary will be commensurate with education and experience.
Interested candidates should send electronic applications of their curriculum vitae, a cover letter describing their interest in and fit for the position, research and teaching statements, and 2-3 sample essays; journal articles, book chapters, or other works-in-progress (if available) to yokapp@ucr.edu. Additionally, arrange to have at least three letters of recommendation sent to yokrec@ucr.edu.
All application materials should be sent as email attachments in a PDF format and addressed to: Edward T. Chang, Recruitment Committee Chair, Ethnic Studies Department. Review of applications will commence on February 1, 2013. We will continue to accept applications until this position is filled.
Position: Sociology/Globalization, Christopher Newport Univ.
The Department of Sociology, Social Work, and Anthropology at Christopher Newport University invites applications for a non-tenure appointment as Lecturer or Instructor of Sociology/Social Work to begin August 19, 2013. This is a one-year appointment, with potential for renewal depending upon the incumbent’s performance and University need. The teaching load is 4-4. The position requires a Ph.D. granted, or nearly completed, in Sociology or Social Work, or a closely related field. Candidates with a MSW from a CSWE-accredited program and a minimum of two years post-MSW practice experience are strongly encouraged to apply.
A hired candidate with a Ph.D. in hand by August 19, 2013 can anticipate an initial appointment of Lecturer. A hired candidate with a Ph.D. nearly completed can anticipate an initial appointment of Instructor. We seek creative, effective teachers who are committed to excellence in undergraduate teaching in the context of liberal learning. Expertise and/or willingness to teach in one or more of the following areas is strongly preferred: Globalization; Race, Class and Gender; Macro-Practice or Field Instruction.
To apply, send a letter of interest, statement of teaching philosophy, graduate transcripts (photocopies acceptable for initial screening), and three letters of reference to:
Director of Equal Opportunity and Faculty Recruitment
Sociology/Social Work (Lecturer/Instructor) Faculty Search
Search #8405
Christopher Newport University
1 Avenue of the Arts
Newport News, VA 23606-3072
Or mlmoody@cnu.edu
Review of applications begins February 25, 2013. Applications received after February 25, 2013, will be accepted but considered only if needed. Search finalists are required to complete a CNU sponsored background check.
Position: Immigration & Diaspora, Pratt Institute
The Department of Social Science and Cultural Studies in the School of Liberal Arts and Sciences at Pratt Institute invites applications for the position of Assistant Professor with expertise in the study and teaching of immigration and diaspora. Areas of specialization might include, but are not limited to, Memory, Trauma, Genocide, War Crimes, Stateless Peoples and Human Rights. This is a full-time, tenure-track faculty position available August 2013.
Pratt is an internationally recognized school of architecture, art, design, information science, writing, and critical and visual studies. Its strong programs in architecture, film, video, photography, computer graphics and other areas of art and design draw students from diverse cultural and geographical backgrounds. The Department of Social Science and Cultural Studies contributes to the students’ core education and also has its own major in Critical and Visual Studies. The Institute is located on a 25 acre campus in the historic Clinton Hill section of Brooklyn.
Position Responsibilities:
Teach six courses per year to students from a range of disciplines
Contribute to either the department’s World History program and/or the Minor in Psychology
Develop curriculum in Social Science and Cultural Studies
Advise students
Serve on department, School and Institute committees
Provide outreach to other departments in the Institute
Complete individual research projects
Perform all other related activities as required
Salary is competitive and commensurate with qualifications and experience.
Qualifications:
The successful candidate will have a Ph.D in a core area of the social sciences, history, psychology or philosophy. ABD will be considered only for otherwise exceptionally accomplished applicants. While disciplinary field is open, preference will be given to candidates who can contribute to the Department’s World History program or to building a departmental Minor in Psychology. Candidates must have at least one (preferably two) year’s college level teaching experience in an institution other than the one in which terminal degree was earned. Strong evidence of future scholarly productivity is essential.
To Apply:
Please submit only your cover letter, resume/CV, and the names and contact information for three professional references. Review of application will begin on February 25, 2013 and continue until the position is filled.
Leadership Education for Asian Pacifics (LEAP) 2013 Leadership In Action Program
Developing emerging young leaders
Bridging self and community
Taking learning beyond the classroom
Approaching its 16th year, LEAP’s eight-week Leadership In Action (LIA) Summer Internship Program offers a unique opportunity for personal leadership development with hands-on training and exploration of the Asian and Pacific Islander (API) nonprofit sector. Interns will be placed at a nonprofit organization four days a week and will receive leadership training with LEAP once a week.
The 2013 program will be held in Los Angeles from June 17 – August 9, 2013. (Applicants must be able to commit to the entire program). The intern will be paid $2,500 for the eight-week internship.
Applicants will be evaluated based on demonstration of leadership, community service, interpersonal skills, written and verbal communication skills, maturity and professional demeanor, and grade point average.
Applicants must have completed two years of college by June 18, 2013
Applicants must be either currently enrolled in college or a recent graduate
Interested applicants must submit all application materials by Tuesday, March 12, 2013
Conference: Latino Communities
Latino Communities in Old and New Destinations: Multi-Disciplinary Approaches to Assessing the Impact of Legal Reforms
Conference Organizer:
Elizabeth Aranda
University of South Florida
Co-sponsors:
University of South Florida System Internal Awards Program
Department of Sociology, USF
College of Arts & Sciences, USF
Citizenship Initiative, USF
Institute for the Study of Latin America and the Caribbean (ISLAC), USF
Dates and Location: November 8, 2013, Vinoy Renaissance St. Petersburg Resort & Golf Club, St. Petersburg, FL.
Theme: Latinos/as in the United States are increasingly diverse with regards to their countries of origin, race, social class and immigrant status. Long-standing Latino communities in traditional ‘gateway’ cities are diversifying as they are receiving new Latin American immigrants at the same time that immigrant Latinos/as are establishing thriving communities in new destinations.
As Latinos in these communities incorporate into the United States, they encounter federal, state and local laws that are often in tension with one another. Homeland Security programs continue to result in detentions and deportations of undocumented immigrants and state laws modeled after Arizona’s S.B. 1070 continue to be proposed and passed; at the same time, recent federal initiatives are providing temporary legal status to select populations and new laws are expanding the social safety net for Latino/a citizens through reforms such as the Affordable Care Act of 2010. Moreover, immigration laws are often intertwined with policies that affect other realms of social life, such as education and social welfare. Unclear is how these recently enacted laws and initiatives are currently affecting and will continue to shape the various dimensions of Latino/a lives in both old and new destinations.
This conference seeks to bring together leading scholars who are researching a variety of social, economic and political issues confronting Latino communities in both old and new destinations to answer the question of how these laws, including current efforts at immigration reform, are affecting the lived experiences of Latinos/as—both recent arrivals as well as those who have been in the United States for generations. This will be the common theme uniting the conference panels.
Specific topics of interest include: how recently enacted laws and policies affect the educational prospects of Latinos/as? What are the consequences and implications of legal uncertainties and the contradicting realities dictated by federal, state and local laws for the psychological states of immigrants and their children, including their health and family well-being? How are proposals for immigration reform being received by Latinos/as (both immigrant and U.S. born) in old and new destinations, particularly how they affect civic engagement and political attitudes?
Consideration also will be given to papers that focus on more general issues of critical importance to all Latinos/as regardless of destination (e.g., health, crime, politics, inter-ethnic relations, gender, etc.). Preference will be given to works in which empirically and theoretically meaningful comparisons may be drawn between Latinos/as in old and new destinations, and in which the impact of federal reforms and state and local laws on Latino populations is assessed.
Objectives:
To bring together a group of social scientists from across the country involved in cutting-edge research on issues of importance to Latino/a populations
To learn how recent changes in federal, state and local laws and current legislative attempts are shaping the lived experiences of Latinos/as around the country
To identify areas of future research within Latino Studies and their policy implications by collectively proposing an agenda for future work in this field that would advance our knowledge of Latino communities across the country
Outcomes:
The inter-disciplinary journal, American Behavioral Scientist, has committed to publishing a select group of manuscripts for a special issue on the general themes of the conference. Laura Lawrie, Managing Editor for the journal, will attend the one-day conference as well as the second-day workshop centered on preparing the selected manuscripts for publication.
Deadline:
Please submit an extended abstract (1-2 pages single spaced) of your paper in which you identify a research question, theoretical framework, data source and methodology by March 31, 2013 to earanda@usf.edu. Please put in the subject line of the email: Latino/a Conference Submission. Papers will be due by September 1, 2013. Conference funds will be used to pay for two nights of lodging at the Vinoy and meals for the day of the conference for the author of each manuscript that is accepted for presentation and completed by the due date. A workshop will be held the day after the conference for those authors whose completed papers will be part of the special issue of ABS. Questions should be directed to Elizabeth Aranda (email address above).
Call for Applications: 2013 East of California Junior Faculty Retreat
Location: University of Illinois at Chicago
July 25-27, 2013
Application Deadline: April 1, 2013
This July, East of California and University of Illinois at Chicago will host a junior faculty development workshop for early-career Asian Americanists. The workshop reflects EOC’s historical commitment to mentoring junior faculty and providing support to those working to increase the disciplinary and curricular visibility of Asian American Studies in higher education. Specifically, the workshop will help professionalize junior faculty by focusing on how to:
Create extra-institutional networks of support
Identify meaningful research projects and develop vocabularies for how to talk about such projects with a variety of audiences (department chairs, audiences outside of Asian American Studies, potential editors)
Confront pedagogical challenges
Establish effective collegial relationships
Navigate the tenure process successfully
To accomplish these goals, the workshop will feature panel discussions, breakout sessions, and work-in-progress workshops. The workshop will begin on Thursday (7/25) and conclude on Saturday (7/27). We will provide lodging for two nights (Thurs-Fri) and some meals (depending on funding). Participants will be expected to cover their own travel.
Please note that space will be limited to ensure a high level of interaction among all participants. Interested scholars should submit:
Brief letter of application outlining what the applicant hopes to gain by attending the workshop
Draft or excerpt of approximately 7-15 pages of the article or book chapter being proposed for workshop development (only work that has not yet been published is eligible)
CV
Please send materials (and questions) to Mark Chiang (mchiang@uic.edu) and Sue J. Kim (sue_kim@uml.edu).
This event is funded by the University of Illinois at Chicago, the University of Connecticut Asian American Studies Program, Northwestern University, DePaul University and UMass Lowell.
Food and Immigrant Life: The Role of Food in Forced Migration, Migrant Labor, and Recreating Home
The 29th Conference in the Social Research Series
Presented By The Center For Public Scholarship At The New School
April 18-19, 2013, NYC
The conference will examine the complex relationships between food and migration. Food scarcity is not only at the root of much human displacement and migration-the food industry also offers immigrants an entry point into the U.S. economic system and it, simultaneously, confines migrants to low wages and poor, if not unsafe, work conditions. In addition, food allows immigrants to maintain their cultural identity. The conference places issues of immigration and food service work in the context of a broader social justice agenda and explores the cultural role food plays in expressing cultural heritage.
The keynote address will be given by Dolores Huerta, co-founder and first Vice President Emeritus of United Farm Workers of America, on Thursday, April 18 at 6:00pm.
The New School’s Center for Public Scholarship and the Food Studies Program presents this conference in collaboration with the Writing Program, India China Institute, Vera List Center for Art and Politics, Center for New York City Affairs, Global Studies Program, Gender Studies Program, and International Center for Migration, Ethnicity, and Citizenship (ICMEC).
Tickets:
$45 Full Conference + Proceedings
$15 per Session + Proceedings
Free for all Students, New School Alumni, Staff (Eligible to Buy Proceedings For $9)
We Petition the Obama Administration to:
Work with Congress to Establish a National “Immigrants Day” Holiday
There are currently 11 federal holidays many of which recognize landmark moments and people that quintessentially shaped America. These include Independence Day, Veterans Day, Labor Day, and MLK Day.
America is a nation founded by immigrants and still composed largely of first-generation immigrants and their families, all of whom share a common dedication to the American Dream. Further, the landmark passage of the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act fundamentally changed American demographics and remains a model of immigration legislation worldwide.
This petition proposes that the White House work with Congress to establish October 3, the day the 1965 Immigration Act was signed by Pres. Johnson, as national ‘mmigrants Day to celebrate immigrants and remember our history of immigration. Please consider signing the online petition.
Call for Participants: Vietnamese
Hello,
I am currently engaged on a research project for the University of Edinburgh, Scotland, examining that often-neglected period in the Vietnam War from the moment the last U.S. ground combat unit left country to President Ford’s official declaration that the conflict was at an end. I am particularly interested in the experiences of the Southern Vietnamese people when faced with the increasing encroachments of the NLF and PVA. I wonder if any of those reading this might have memories of this time or heard stories from their parents. I would be most grateful for any help in this quarter. Please contact me at the email below.
Research in the Sociology of Work is accepting manuscripts for Volume 26, focusing on “Immigration and Work” (Expected publication early 2015).
We invite manuscripts that address issues of immigration and work broadly defined, such as entrepreneurship, labor markets, low-wage and high-wage work, technology, globalization, equity and discrimination, and racial/ethnic relations in the workforce. Submissions may be quantitative, qualitative, or mixed methods. We welcome submissions from all fields. The deadline for submission of manuscripts is February 1, 2014.
Submit manuscripts/inquiries/abstracts to Jody Agius Vallejo (Editor, Volume 26), University of Southern California, Los Angeles, Department of Sociology. Electronic submissions to vallejoj@usc.edu preferred.
As another contributing author to the Asian-Nation team, I would like to introduce Justin Lockenwitz.
Justin graduated from UMass Amherst with a degree in Political Science and an Asian/Asian American Studies Certificate. Currently he is enrolled in a Master’s program in Intercultural Relations at Lesley University. He is also an office manager for a business research center at MIT Sloan and plans to pursue a career in International Education.
Welcome aboard, Justin. It’s great to have you be a part of the expanding Asian-Nation team and I and my readers look forward to reading your posts!
