Asian American / Asian Research Institute
The City University of New York
This presentation is on Prof. Ying Zhu’s documentary about the pioneering Chinese educational filmmaker Sun Mingjing. Sun’s documentaries marked a pinnacle of China’s non-fiction film production in the 1930-40s yet, up until the early 2000s, his name was scarcely mentioned in film history books in China and his films were mostly unknown to the generation … Read more
China’s Unnatural Disaster: The Tears of Sichuan Province looks at the devastating aftermath of the 2008 earthquake that killed nearly 70,000 people, including many children who were crushed by school buildings. The film follows parents coming to terms with their loss and challenging government officials to explain the inadequate construction. Prof. Peter Kwong (Hunter College, … Read more
Behind the contentious politics of immigration lies the question of how well new immigrants are becoming part of American society. To address this question, Inheriting the City draws on the results of a ground-breaking study of young adults of immigrant parents in metropolitan New York to provide a comprehensive look at their social, economic, cultural, … Read more
This presentation discusses the outcome of a pilot study of suicide attempters in the Chinese immigrant community of New York City. Based on the narratives of 31 adult participants who were of low socio-economic background but varied in age, gender and immigrant status, the study delineated a common pathway of their suicide attempts as a … Read more
The financial and cultural prominence of Chinese populations outside of the mainland of China has heightened because of the recent phenomenal economic growth of the People’s Republic of China. With settlements in disparate regions of the world, overseas Chinese have been linked to those in the mainland both culturally as well as financially. The underpinning … Read more
I argued in my dissertation that the ‘hard’ metaphysical problem of free will may be explained in simple, metaphysically ‘easy’ causal/functional terms as a product of the mechanics of metacognitive mental causation: There seems to be a causal connection between the extent to which the mind can “go meta-“, or loop back in reflectively on … Read more