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.
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 Papers: Between Asia and Latin America: New Transpacific Perspectives
Edited by Andrea Bachner (Cornell University) and Pedro Erber (Cornell University)
This special issue will gather different emerging approaches to the intercultural study of Asia and Latin America with the aim of rethinking the Transpacific as a method, a lens for comparison, rather than simply an area or a region. The emergence of new Transpacific perspectives signals the myriad possibilities of new transregional frameworks that challenge conventional geopolitical models of comparative studies. Consequently, we invite essays that approach the real and imagined spaces of the Transpacific between Asia and Latin America from a wide variety of perspectives and disciplines. We especially welcome work that reflects critically and creatively on the multiple possible meanings, methodologies, and mappings of the Transpacific and that pays attention to alternative links between Asia and Latin America: from diaspora, textual circulation, and cultural exchanges to uneven dialogues, compelling analogies, or conceptual affinities.
Submission deadline: August 1, 2016
Please submit queries to verge@psu.edu. For more information about the journal, see https://www.upress.umn.edu/journal-division/journals/verge-studies-in-global-asias.
Call for Papers: Creative Works by Women of Color Academics
Deadline for abstracts: Sept. 30, 2016
Description:
In this book, we will feature narratives of women of color academics who embody what we call academic bravery. These are women who have demonstrated courage in their scholarship, teaching, mentoring, service, activism, and leadership, despite the potential professional risks. As with any academic, these scholars work in contexts wherein academic cowardice is the norm; despite rewards for productivity, creativity, and innovation, scholars are implicitly rewarded to a far greater extent for “playing it safe,†remaining “objective,†detached and apolitical in their work, and refusing to challenge the status quo in academia and beyond. These conservative norms pose constraints on marginalized scholars, namely women of color, who pursue academic careers to liberate themselves and their communities. Despite the stereotype that college campuses are liberal, social justice utopias, the academy has increasingly become a risk-averse and conservative profession.
“But some of us are brave…â€
Submissions:
In this forthcoming edited volume, we aim to celebrate the bravery of women of color academics in the 21st century. We invite women of color scholars to reflect on their courageous acts as researchers, teachers, mentors, administrators, advocates, activists, and entrepreneurs, no matter the professional risks. All contributions should explicitly reflect upon risk-taking, speaking up and out, challenging oppressive norms, surviving and thriving, overcoming professional and personal obstacles, innovation, and/or entrepreneurship. We strongly encourage potential contributors to 1) inspire women of color (academic or not) and other marginalized people and/or 2) to offer specific strategies for women of color academics to harness their bravery. We welcome submissions of personal narratives in the form of:
Essays
Poems
Visual art
Short screenplays
Other creative works
While these narratives may cite empirical work, and we welcome empirically-based essays, the focus of the book is not to advance scientific inquiry on a particular topic but to validate the common struggles women of color experience in the academy. The book is intended to give voice to a frequently silenced segment of the academy by making visible and honoring courageous work that often goes unnoticed or is even penalized. The hope is that many contributors will find this book a place to publish work that may be otherwise “homeless.â€
Potential Contributors:
We invite the full diversity of women of color academics, including Black/African American, Latina/Hispanic, Asian/Asian American, Pacific Islander, Native American/American Indian, Arab/Arab American, Muslim, and immigrant women. We use a broad and inclusive definition of “woman of color,†thus welcoming trans and cisgender women of color; queer, pansexual, bisexual, lesbian, asexual, and heterosexual women of color; women of color with and without disabilities; religious and nonreligious women of color; women of color of diverse body sizes; and, first-gen, working-class, and middle-class women of color. In addition, we welcome women of color scholars from all academic disciplines, all career stages, and all post-PhD/terminal degree careers (e.g., alt-ac, post-ac, contingent faculty, non-tenure track, and tenure-track faculty).
Submission Guidelines:
The deadline for abstracts is September 30th, 2016. Submit your abstract (400 words or less) and a short biography electronically to academicbravery@gmail.com. Accepted abstracts will be invited as full-length submissions, which are due by February 17th, 2017. Full papers should be submitted as Microsoft Word documents that are double-spaced and use 12-point Times New Roman font; they should range from 15-25 pages, plus references in APA style.
About the Editors:
Dr. Manya Whitaker is an Assistant Professor of Education at Colorado College where she teaches courses focused on social and political issues in education. Her areas of expertise include urban education, culturally relevant pedagogy, and developmentally appropriate teaching. In her Connecting Learning Across Social Settings (CLASS) lab, Dr. Whitaker conducts research concerned with how to best prepare teachers to teach culturally and linguistically diverse students. She is the founder of Blueprint Educational Strategies, an educational consulting business that provides workshops for teachers and administrators, as well as guidance and advocacy for families. She is also a blogger and regular contributor for Conditionally Accepted.com – an online career advice column and community for marginalized scholars. She can be reached by email at manya.whitaker@coloradocollege.edu.
Dr. Eric Anthony Grollman is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Richmond in Virginia. Their research focuses on the impact of prejudice and discrimination on the health, well-being, and worldviews of marginalized groups – namely trans and queer people, people of color, and women, especially individuals who are members of multiple oppressed groups. Dr. Grollman is also an intellectual activist who focuses on making the academy a more just, humane, equitable, and accessible place. They are the founder and editor of the blog, ConditionallyAccepted.com, which is now a weekly career advice column for marginalized scholars on Inside Higher Ed. They can be reached by email at egrollma@richmond.edu.
Many scholars and students of ethnic studies know firsthand that when it comes to studying the history and experiences of different groups of color in American society, much of the work involves filling in the gaps perpetrated over time by focusing our attention almost exclusively on our own racial/ethnic group, such as Asian American Studies.
While this “parochial” focus on our own community certainly has its benefits, the main drawback is that it ignores the interconnections that exist between communities of color, both historically and in today’s contemporary society as it continues to become ever more globalized and transnational.
The notion of Asians living and thriving among U.S. Hispanics as well as the Asian diaspora in the Caribbean, Mexico and South America is by no means unfathomable. Nor is it new. Take world politics, for example. Peru elected Alberto Fujimori its president in 1990, an office he held for 10 years. Fujimori’s parents had emigrated from Japan before World War II.
Only about 20 years ago did U.S. scholars begin taking a closer look at the stories of how and why people left the Far East for countries such as Brazil, Cuba and Peru, says Dr. Evelyn Hu-De- Hart, a Brown University professor of history and ethnic studies who is considered a pioneer in the study of Asian-Hispanic intersections. She is also director of Brown’s Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in America. . . .
Yet scholars examining such transnational communities and relationships often fend off skepticism from peers in longer-established, clearly defined academic disciplines who wonder about the relevancy of their pursuits, novelty aside. . . .
López, for example, has traveled to Cuba almost annually since 1999 to document the revitalization of Havana’s Chinatown district. Nowadays, Cuba’s regime encourages the Chinese, whose ancestors worked alongside African slaves on 19th-century plantations, to get in better touch with their heritage. The opening of schools teaching traditional Chinese dance, language and art is viewed as an investment in boosting tourism, López says.
As these scholars explore and describe in much more detail in their work, thousands of Asian immigrants came to and eventually settled in countries in Latin and South America, in many cases before the first large-scale immigration to the U.S. started in the mid-1800s. Unfortunately, the vast majority of Asian Americans aren’t aware of these historic patterns because we’re focused on the U.S. and its history.
But as these scholars again describe for us, there is a very rich and vibrant history of the interconnections between Asians and Latinos here in the western hemisphere. Not only that, but as American society, this hemisphere, and the world in general continue to become more globalized and transnational, these connections are likely to become even more significant for years to come — culturally, economically, and politically.
