AAARI Events

More than a century after her birth, Yunte Huang narrates Anna May Wong’s tragic life story, retracing her journey from Chinatown to silent-era Hollywood, and from Weimar Berlin to decadent, prewar Shanghai, and capturing American television in its infancy.

The entry of Cambodians in the United States was not simply a migration, but a crash-landing as refugees after an incredible loss of population, humanity, cultural & arts, religion, and thinkers. How, then, do the diasporic inheritors of this history respond via cultural production? And how does artist-scholar Sokunthary Svay’s own work including her newly ... Read more

The Asian American Mentorship Providing Opportunities to Women for Empowerment and Resilience (AAMPOWER) at CUNY group aims to build a community of practice that offers a safe and inclusive space for discussing and sharing issues concerning the Asian and Asian American experience in higher education. The group also aims to foster support, understanding, and growth ... Read more

The American suburb conjures an image of picturesque privilege: manicured lawns, quiet streets, and—most important to parents—high-quality schools. These elite enclaves are also historically white, allowing many white Americans to safeguard their privileges by using public schools to help their children enter top colleges. That’s changing, however, as Asian American professionals increasingly move into wealthy ... Read more

This co-sponsored screening of the documentary CHOSEN is part of the 17th Annual Korean American Film Festival New York (KAFFNY), running from November 8 to 13, 2023 in-person and online. Preceding CHOSEN will be a screening of the short documentary THE TEMPLE OF NON-DUALITY.

Abandoned Women and Boudoir Resentment studies the formation of the male-constructed conventional voice of women in Chinese literature from the 3rd to 6th century.

Greg Robinson is professor of history at l’Université du Québec À Montréal. A specialist in U.S. political history, he has written several notable books, including By Order of the President (Harvard UP, 2001), which uncovers Franklin Roosevelt’s central involvement in Japanese American confinement, and A Tragedy of Democracy (Columbia UP, 2009), winner of the 2009 ... Read more

C.C. Wang: Lines of Abstraction recenters Wang’s extraordinary career in his own artistic practice to reveal an original quest for tradition and innovation in the global twentieth century. Spanning seven decades, the catalog focuses on the artist’s distinctive synthesis of Chinese ink painting and American postwar abstraction.

Hyunhee Park offers the first global historical study of soju, the distinctive distilled drink of Korea. Searching for soju’s origins, Park leads us into the vast, complex world of premodern Eurasia.

Jackelyn Mariano will discuss her research and community activism among diasporic Filipino social movements, particularly the Malaya Movement’s broad anti-fascist coalition building during the Philippine elections, and the Justice for Jollibee Workers campaign that has challenged the fast-food corporation’s systemic abuse of workers’ rights.

Visit the former Asian/American Center (now under the Asian American / Asian Research Institute) at Queens College for a rare opportunity to view the Center's Library Collection of books about Asian Americans, Asia, and the diaspora, including one-of-a-kind research about pan-Asian communities in Queens. The A/AC Collection was moved offsite before the campus closed during ... Read more

Asian Americans are the fastest growing group in the United States and include approximately 50 distinct ethnic groups, but their stories and experiences have often been sidelined or stereotyped. Smithsonian Asian Pacific American History, Art, and Culture in 101 Objects offers a vital window into the triumphs and tragedies, strength and ingenuity, and traditions and ... Read more

In recent years, New York City’s food delivery workers, a largely Asian and Latina/o immigrant workforce, have struggled against being characterized and policed as public safety “problems” even as these same workers became essential but unprotected during the Covid-19 pandemic. To better unpack the temporality of desire paths of delivery workers, Prof. Do Jun Lee ... Read more

Funded by the Luce Foundation, Prof. Nerve Macaspac will discuss his four-year project to establish a Southeast Asian Studies network in the State University of New York (SUNY) and City University of New York (CUNY) systems. The SUNY/CUNY Southeast Asia Consortium (SEAC) is an interdisciplinary initiative to promote research, teaching, and related efforts around Southeast ... Read more

In The Children of this Madness, Gemini Wahhaj pens a complex tale of modern Bengalis, one that illuminates the recent histories not only of Bangladesh, but America and Iraq. Told in multiple voices over successive eras, this is the story of Nasir Uddin and his daughter Beena, and the intersection of their distant, vastly different ... Read more

In Disciplinary Futures, edited by Nadia Y. Kim and Pawan Dhingra, a cross-section of scholars comes together to engage sociology and the social sciences by way of these paradigms, particularly from the influence of disciplines of American, Ethnic, and Indigenous Studies.

Based on Zai Liang's new book, this presentation explores the recent history of Chinese immigration within the United States and the fundamental changes in spatial settlement that have relocated many low-skilled Chinese immigrants from New York City’s Chinatown to new immigrant destinations.

Drawing on extensive archival and ethnographic data, paired with unprecedented access to rural Chinese courtrooms, Ke Li presents not only a stirring portrayal of how these women navigate divorce litigation, but also a uniquely in-depth account of the modern Chinese legal system.

Through untapped archival materials, contemporary sources, and numerous interviews with filmmakers, magazine editors, and student activists, Po-Shek Fu explores how global conflicts were localized and intertwined with myriad local historical experiences and cultural formation.

Bangladeshi migration to Spain is resurging due to declining economic opportunities and political instabilities in Bangladesh. While a long standing community began to form in the 1980s, due to Spain’s liberal immigration laws, the community size ebbed and flowed as migrants moved to other parts of Europe. But as immigration laws have become restrictive in ... Read more

Join the CUNY Graduate Center's American Studies Certificate Program and the Advanced Research Collaborative for this special lunch with Ava Chin—author, performer, and professor—as she performs and talks about her new in paperback book Mott Street (Penguin Books), about the impact of the country’s first immigration restrictions on four generations of her family in New ... Read more

Join the CUNY School of Law for a screening and discussion of the documentary “Bay of Blood” (2023), about Bangladesh’s Liberation War: the bloody birth of a nation, a forgotten genocide and how the United States supported the Pakistani regime responsible for mass killings in 1971.

Screening of the documentary, Happily Ever After (形婚之后) , followed by a conversation between He Xiaopei (the director of the documentary)  and Duan Jiling (Assistant Professor of Practice in Women and Gender Studies at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln) on same sex desires in China.

In honor of Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month and during a pivotal moment for Asian American representation in the arts, The WNET Group’s ALL ARTS and Exploring Hate initiatives team up with The Serica Initiative to proudly present “Voices Rising: What’s Next for Asian Americans in the Arts?” A panel of celebrated Asian American ... Read more

Calling all NYC runners! Kick off Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month with the AAPI 5K Run, on Saturday, May 12, 2024, 9AM, to support the Asian American / Asian Research Institute and other non-profit organizations! Sign up to run or walk 5K (Manhattan venue to be determined) to raise funds for AAARI towards ... Read more

For this symposium, AAARI has invited students, scholars, community organizers, and/or practitioners to share their innovative research and creative works, pedagogical projects, programmatic efforts, and other activities that address the broad scope of “AAPI Identities.”

As an organization that was founded on promoting an inclusive and equitable community and workforce, the National Diversity Council is using its platform to host the 5th Annual 2024 Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander (AANHPI) Leadership Summit. This year’s theme is “Advancing AANHPI Leadership: Value, Virtue, and Visibility.” This event offers an opportunity ... Read more

Since 2004, the CUNY Asian American Film Festival (AAFF) has recognized and awarded cash prizes to student filmmakers enrolled at the City University of New York, including City College, Brooklyn College, Hunter College, Lehman College, College of Staten Island, and Queens College. On the evening of the Film Festival, all winners and runner-ups will remain ... Read more

Sons of Chinatown poignantly weaves the stories of father and son together with admiration and righteous anger. Through the mirrored lens of his father, Wong reflects on the hardships Asian Americans endured—and continue to face—with American exceptionalism. Wong’s inspiring memoir provides a personal history that also raises the question of whether America welcomes or repels ... Read more