Betty Lee Sung, co-founder of the Asian American / Asian Research Institute (AAARI), Professor Emerita, City College of New York, and recipient of the 2017 Association for Asian American Studies Lifetime Achievement Award, has established an endowment of $100,000 at the City University of New York to create a research fund under the auspices of AAARI, on Asian American topics. The fund is intended to support the research by providing funds for a research assistant, copywriter, research travel, acquisition or access to research material and similar costs so that the researcher can complete the project.
2021 Recipient
Kit Myers (University of California, Merced)
Project: Race and the Violence of Love: The Making of Family and the Nation in U.S. Adoptions
Since their emergence in the 1950s, transracial and transnational adoptions (TRNAs) have been highly controversial. Adoption agencies, social workers, psychologists, and legal scholars have questioned whether TRNAs are beneficial or harmful. My book manuscript, Race and the Violence of Love: The Making of Family and Nation in U.S. Adoptions, introduces the concept of the violence of love to investigate the complexities of TRNA beyond the binary of beneficial or harmful. It comparatively examines the adoption of Asian, Black, and Native American children by white American families to understand how race is constructed relationally in the making of family and nation.
Kit Myers is an assistant professor in the Department of History & Critical Race and Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Merced. He received his doctorate and master’s degrees from the University of California, San Diego in ethnic studies and his bachelor’s degree in ethnic studies and journalism from the University of Oregon. Prior to this current position, he was as a chancellor’s postdoctoral fellow at UC Merced. His research examines adoption, family, and kinship, specifically in the ways that they intersect with race, gender, sexuality, immigration, citizenship, nation, and indigenous sovereignty. He has published articles in Adoption Quarterly, Amerasia Journal, Adoption & Culture, and Critical Discourse Studies as well as co-edited a special issue on adoption and pedagogy. He also serves as an executive committee member of the Alliance for the Study of Adoption & Culture.
2021 Topic: The first research grant will be for a project on the transnational adoption of Chinese children into American families that explores questions related to identity and belonging. As of 2019, there have been over 82,450 Chinese adoptees (according to the U.S. State Department) to the United States, mostly abandoned female infants, under China’s one-child family policy.
Project Goal: To better understand how Chinese American adoptees articulate their identity and attachment to their Chinese heritage (both cultural and identity), while paying attention to whether they inter-married and if their own mixed heritage children maintain attachment to a Chinese identity.
Submissions for this year’s research grant are for projects that are near completion within three to six months (Dec 2021/Jan 2022). The amount awarded will range from $1,500 to $3,000. In addition to the award, recipient agrees to the following:
- Acknowledge the Betty Lee Sung Research Endowment Fund and Asian American / Asian Research Institute – City University New York in all versions of the finished work/research/article/book.
- Present their work at an upcoming lecture/conference/workshop at the Asian American / Asian Research Institute in-person/online.
- Allow or obtain permission for the Asian American / Asian Research Institute to feature an excerpt of recipient’s work/research/research/article/book for the Institute’s academic journal, CUNY FORUM: Asian American / Asian Studies, with all appropriate copyright/acknowledgement to the recipient.
Recipient of the 2021 research award will be announced sometime in late September 2021. Award will be presented at AAARI’s annual gala in Fall 2021 or a separate ceremony in-person/online.
Submission Guidelines
Click here for Submission Form
Proposals should be sent to info@aaari.info, with subject header: 2021 Betty Lee Sung Research Proposal
In your proposal:
- Please complete contact information on submission form.
- Provide 500-word description of your project and detailed budget on what your requested funds will be used for.
- Include relevant backup documentation/materials on work completed to date on the project.
Award Committee: Betty Lee Sung, Carol Huang, Russell Leong, Joyce Moy & Antony Wong
