Fall 2020 – Spring 2021

Incorporating Aspects of Asian American Studies as Tools for Teaching about Race and Discrimination

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Prof. Catherine Ma will present on how the struggles and triumphs of Asian Americans can provide undergraduate students with a multicultural perspective to better understand structural racism, and offer examples for professors to engage their classes with difficult concepts related to racism and discrimination. Incorporating aspects of Asian American Studies (AAS) can be a valuable tool in transforming not only how students learn but also how professors teach.

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Korean “Comfort Women”: Military Brothels, Brutality, and the Redress Movement

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Korean “Comfort Women” synthesizes the previous major findings about Japanese military sexual slavery and legal recommendations, and provides new findings about the issues “comfort women” faced for an English-language audience. It also examines the transnational redress movement, revealing that the Japanese government has tried to conceal the crime of sexual slavery and to resolve the women’s human rights issue with diplomacy and economic power.

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A Cultural History of Spanish Speakers in Japan

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Beginning in 1990, thousands of Spanish speakers emigrated to Japan. A Cultural History of Spanish Speakers in Japan focuses on the intellectuals, literature, translations, festivals, cultural associations, music (bolero, tropical music, and pop, including reggaeton), dance (flamenco, tango and salsa), radio, newspapers, magazines, libraries, and blogs produced in Spanish, in Japan, by Latin Americans and Spaniards who have lived in that country over the last three decades.

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A Rising Tide of Hate and Violence against Asian Americans in New York During COVID-19: Impact, Causes, Solutions

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The impact of the pandemic on the Asian-American community in New York City is particularly profound. Beyond the pandemic’s effect on public health, economic growth, education, medical services, food supply, and international relations, the Asian-American community has been blamed for the pandemic and the target of hate and violence. Co-executive editors Chris Kwok and Karen King will present the Asian American Bar Association of New York’s recently released report that discusses the data showing that anti-Asian hate and violence have skyrocketed in 2020, focusing on the New York City region.

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1.5 Generation Working-Class Korean American Community College Students and the Fragile Sense of Social Belonging

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This study by Dr. Sujung Kim interrogates working-class Korean immigrant students’ sense of social belonging and their strategies to advocate their social membership, focusing on working-class 1.5 generation Korean American students at Station Community College (SCC), a public community college in Chicago. This study proposes that these working-class Korean immigrant community college students’ navigation of their belonging is shaped by the dialectical mechanisms between various macro- and micro-level of political-economic, social, cultural and educational components.

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