Lecture Series – Page 14 – Asian American / Asian Research Institute

Planned Obsolescence, Strategic Resistance: Asian American Studies and the Neoliberal University (Cancelled)

March 16, 2020December 13, 2019 By Cathy V. Schlund-Vials

Set within an all-too-real administrative imaginary of budget cuts, metric-laden assessments, programmatic justifications, and shrinking faculty lines, Ethnic Studies (along with Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies) occupies a decidedly precarious position within the so-termed “corporate university.”If student strikes and Civil Rights movements instantiated the original institutionalization of ethnic studies as a necessary interdisciplinary field of inquiry, the current state of academic affairs reflects a long-standing neoconservative, laissez-faire “planned obsolescence” (to quickly access Kathleen Fitzpatrick’s provocative analytic). It is against this admittedly dystopic backdrop of planned obsolescence, which reflects and refracts the foci of Flashpoints for Asian American Studies (Fordham University Press 2017), that this presentation considers possible sites and administrative practices of strategic resistance.

Taiwan! Let’s Get Married (Screening/Discussion)

July 6, 2020December 6, 2019 By Larry Tung

Prof. Larry Tung will screen and discuss his 2018 documentary, Taiwan! Let’s Get Married, his 2019 follow-up documentary, A Big Fat Taiwanese Same-Sex Wedding Banquet, and the 2019 documentary, Double Dad & One Queer Teen: My Rainbow Family.

Being Gay in the KDP: Politics in a Filipino American Revolutionary Organization (1973 to 1986)

July 6, 2020November 22, 2019 By Karen Buenavista Hanna

Prof. Karen B. Hanna (Connecticut College) will discuss her research, featured in CUNY FORUM Volume 6:1, into the KDP (Katipunan ng mga Demokratikong Pilipino) organization, from 1973 to 1986, and the exploration and views of sexuality during that era by its members.

Blurred Lines: The Pursuit of Superiority in the Vietnamese Diaspora

July 6, 2020November 8, 2019 By Hung Cam Thai

Focusing on microlevel social interactions in the homeland, this lecture explores the projection and achievement of superiority within the context of Vietnamese diasporic and transnational repertoires. As a country undergoing dramatic economic transformation for more than two decades, Vietnam is a site of contradictory new hierarchies with the increasing return of overseas migrants who encounter a growing new monied class. Prof. Hung Cam Thai examines the formation of these hierarchies in situations where individuals seek to establish themselves as “social betters” in determining criteria of worthiness.

Freedom From Fear/Yellow Bowl Project

July 6, 2020October 25, 2019 By Setsuko Winchester

Setsuko Winchester, Japanese American ceramic artist, photographer and journalist will discuss her conceptual art work, Freedom from Fear/Yellow Bowl Project. The FFF/YBP is an attempt to shine a new light onto an old aspect of America’s history with race and ethnicity, prejudice and bias and how they shaped this country’s ideas of freedom, justice and citizenship.

Asian-American Social Workers’ Career, Stress, and Well-Being

October 29, 2019October 18, 2019 By Kenny Kwong

Research on Asian-American career choice, career experience, work-related stress, and well-being has been extremely limited. Based on a comprehensive online survey with a total of 208 Asian-American social work administrators, supervisors, practitioners, and graduate social work students, Prof. Kenny Kwong will present on the career choices, barriers and prospects, work-related stress, and professional quality of life Asian-American social workers.