Asian American / Asian Research Institute

Writing for Graphic Novels - Workshop with Wendy Xu & Chris Kindred
2025-08-21 08:00 - 17:00 (America/New_York) | NY
Curious about the professional process of creating a graphic novel? Join Wendy Xu and Chris Kindred for a weekend intensive where they take you step by step through the craft of combining script writing and art direction, with forays into the history of the medium and their own work experiences in comics as well as games for a comprehensive and holistic understanding. No drawing skill or experience required.

QBPO - INDONESIA INDEPENDENCE DAY CELEBRATION
2025-08-21 17:00 - 20:00 | Queens Borough Hall, 120-55 Queens Blvd, Kew Gardens, NY
Join Borough President Donovan Richards in celebrating 80 years of Indonesia’s independence. Enjoy an evening filled with cultural performances, delicious food and more.
In partnership with the Indonesian Gastronomy Association and Indonesia Bersatu New York.

The Butterfly Lovers
2025-08-22 - 2025-08-24 | David H. Koch Theater, 20 Lincoln Center Plaza, New York, NY, 10023
An eternal love that defies all expectations. Reimagined by an international team of creative minds together with Hong Kong Ballet’s Choreographer-in-Residence Hu Song Wei Ricky and Mai Jingwen, The Butterfly Lovers is a legendary Chinese folktale about humble scholar Liang Shanbo and aristocratic heiress Zhu Yingtai, who disguises herself as a boy in order to study at a prestigious academy. From innocently meeting as students and forging a strong, immediate bond to dangerously rebelling against centuries-old forces that threaten to keep them apart, the lovers face unexpected challenges at every turn, as secrets are revealed and a shocking family betrayal ultimately seals their fate.

Screening - Twenty-Four Eyes
2025-08-22 19:00 - 20:00 | Japan Society, 333 East 47th Street, New York, NY, 10017, United States
Imported 35mm Print. Equally known for her longstanding relationship with director Keisuke Kinoshita as with Mikio Naruse, Hideko Takamine remains eternally bound to her role in the immensely popular 1954 epic Twenty-Four Eyes, Kinoshita’s heralded anti-war masterpiece. Posted to teach in a remote fishing hamlet nestled within the sun-drenched isles of the Inland Sea, schoolteacher Hisako Oshi (Takamine) takes special devotion to her class of first graders, a group of 12 schoolchildren—the titular “twenty-four eyes”—who grow and mature alongside their pacifist teacher in the ensuing two decades, facing hardship, joy and tragedy as Showa’s imperialism and the fervor of wartime patriotism begin to take hold. Kinoshita’s humanist drama is elegant and sprawling, a powerful work that reflects on the darkest period of Japanese history.

It’s Time for K-Culture 2025: Seoul Beauty Metro
2025-08-23 - 2025-08-26 | Korean Cultural Center NY, 122 E 32nd St, New York, NY, 10016
Seoul Beauty Metro brings together two powerful forces in Korean cultural promotion — the Korean Cultural Center New York(KCCNY)’s It’s Time for K-Culture initiative and Nurilounge’s K-Beauty Boost NYC project. This three-day experience transforms the KCCNY into a multi-level mini Seoul journey, guiding guests through Seoul’s most iconic beauty and lifestyle scenes.
From Gangnam’s glam to Seongsu’s street style, every corner of the event offers a hands-on, creator-led dive into the rhythm of Seoul life — all in the heart of New York. This collaboration marks a new milestone in aligning Korean public diplomacy with industry innovation, spotlighting the power of K-beauty and content-driven cultural exchange.

Strangers in the Land: A Conversation with Michael Luo
2025-08-24 18:00 - 20:00 | China Institute, 40 Rector Street, 2nd Floor, New York, NY, 10006
Join us for a compelling evening with Michael Luo, executive editor of The New Yorker and acclaimed author of Strangers in the Land: The Struggle for Belonging in America, as he explores the complex and often overlooked history of Chinese exclusion and the Asian American experience in the United States.
In celebration of the release of Michael Luo’s widely praised new book, Strangers in the Land, this timely conversation will delve into the roots of anti-Asian sentiment, the legacy of exclusion, and the ongoing struggle for belonging in America. Luo will shed light on untold histories, challenge enduring stereotypes, and invite us to reexamine what it means to be American in a multiracial democracy today.

Serica Storytellers with SAPAAC: Yiming Ma | These Memories Do Not Belong To Us
2025-08-24 20:00 - 21:00 | NY
In partnership with the Stanford Asian Pacific American Alumni Club, Serica is proud to host a virtual conversation with Yiming Ma, author of the debut, These Memories Do Not Belong To Us, a powerful and provocative novel that explores how governments and media manipulate history to control the collective imagination, set in a future where a renamed China is the sole global superpower.

Level Up Your Civic Holidays Activations: Go beyond tabling, free food, and merch!
2025-08-26 13:00 - 14:00 | NY
Join us for a virtual training collaboration from National Voter Education Week, Vote Early Day, and Campus Takeover designed to help you plan and execute high-impact Civic Holidays activations that will boost voter engagement in your community and build lasting connections with voters. Learn how to go beyond free food and swag to design interactive, eye-catching, and impactful activations that draw people in — and keep them coming back. Whether you’re just starting to brainstorm ideas or already planning an event, this session will leave you with valuable insights on how you can elevate your efforts to draw the maximum number of voters, even with a simple setup.

Vote Early Day 101 August Workshop
2025-08-27 14:00 - 15:00 | NY
This year, Vote Early Day partners will organize in person and online actions to empower their friends or neighbors to vote early nationwide. We hope you will join our monthly workshops to learn best practices and gain access to incredible tools to help your organization build an engaging and impactful celebration this fall.

Theater: GUT (굿) Act 2: Memoirs
2025-08-28 - 2025-08-30 | HERE Theater, 145 6th Avenue, New York, NY, 10013
Memoirs (Act 2) is the second act of GUT (굿), a three-act autobiographical hybrid/dance work and the fifth and final installment of Soomi Kim’s series exploring mortality in Korean and Asian American lives. Act 2: Memoirs examine the complex legacy between a Korean American daughter and her immigrant father, as she pieces together the history of a man she never truly knew. Set between 1950s postwar Korea and present-day America, Memoirs traces a poetic journey through grief, fragmented memory, and complicated love—asking: how can we let go when grief is a knot of longing and regret?

Festival & Screening - 9-Man: 80 Years of Chinatown Legacy
2025-08-31 15:00 - 21:00 | Columbus Park, 67 Mulberry Street, New York, NY, 10013
Celebrate 80 years of 9-Man with an evening of food, music, and local vendors in the heart of Chinatown. This special community event honors the legacy of the game and the people who’ve built it—on and off the court. Whether you’re a longtime player or just discovering 9-Man, come experience the culture and community that make it all possible.

Asian American Authors in Conversation: Tony Tulathimutte - Rejection
2025-09-02 18:30 - 20:00 | Chatham Square Library, 33 East Broadway, New York, NY, 10002
Please join author Tony Tulathimutte as we discuss his collection of short stories Rejection : Fiction. Booksigning to follow Q&A.
Tony is author of the novels Private Citizens and Rejection. His work has been published in The Paris Review, N+1, The New York Times, The New Yorker, The New Republic, Playboy, and elsewhere. He has received a Whiting Award and an O. Henry Award and Rejection was longlisted for the National Book Award.

Recruiting Volunteers and Drawing People to Your Event
2025-09-03 14:00 - 15:00 | NY
Whether you are planning a small celebration or a large activation, getting people involved is essential to your success. Vote Early Day and National Voter Education Week are teaming up to provide a hands-on session that will provide practical strategies for recruiting volunteers and increasing event attendance to make your activation a success. We’ll discuss proven outreach tactics, templates for promotional materials, free resources, and strategies for building excitement and engagement around your event.

Sound and Directing – with Emily Strong
2025-09-03 18:00 - 20:00 | The City College of New York – Shepard Hall, 259 Convent Avenue, New York, NY, 10031
Please join Thirdworld Newsreel and the Documentary Forum at CCNY for talk on sound recording and making films with documentary filmmaker and sound mixer Emily Strong.

NYUL Presents Center for Black Excellence Speaker Series with James Rhee and John King
2025-09-03 18:00 - 20:00 | Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute at Hunter College, 47-49 East 65th Street, New York, NY, 10065
NYUL’s Center for Black Excellence Speaker Series launches at The Roosevelt House at Hunter College. Join us & SUNY Chancellor John King & entrepreneur James Rhee for a timely discussion on safeguarding and strengthening higher education for underserved communities in the current political climate.

Who Is This Music For? Asian Diaspora, Counterculture, and Access
2025-09-03 18:30 - 20:30 | The Clemente Soto Vélez Cultural & Educational Center, 107 Suffolk St, New York, NY, 10002
A4 brings together Asian diasporic artists from experimental/countercultural music scenes and community leaders to discuss the lack of access Asian diasporic communities have to countercultural arts. Artists in the diaspora, especially those who work within experimental and countercultural scenes, often challenge traditional boundaries of genre and aesthetics.

MOCA x NYAFF Film Club: Saving Face
2025-09-03 18:30 - 21:00 | Museum of Chinese in America, 215 Centre Street, New York, NY, 10013
A queer romantic comedy set in vibrant, multicultural New York City, Alice Wu’s irresistible feature debut breathed fresh life into the charming story of a young woman’s complicated life and her pursuit of love amid the chaos. Wilhelmina is a 28-year-old overworked medical resident living in Manhattan with no social life. Her widowed mother, Ma, cannot understand why her desirable daughter spends all her time at work. Ma, meanwhile, appears to be a traditional ChineseAmerican woman still under the thumb of her ultra-strict father. That Wilhelmina and her mother are both products of the very insular, traditional (and, yes…gossipy) Chinese-American community in Flushing, Queens makes the usual family ties even tighter.
A true love letter to New York City, SAVING FACE is told with a great deal of warmth and humor, as everyone tries to sort out their emotions and fulfill their obligations…to themselves and to each other, while all along acknowledging their not-so-secret lives and trying to “save face.”
It was the first Hollywood movie that centered on Chinese Americans since The Joy Luck Club (1993).

Who Tells the War? Community Memory and the Vietnam War’s Enduring Legacies
2025-09-03 21:00 - 22:30 | NY
2025 marks 50 years since the end of the Vietnam War. This Luce Webinar hosted by the Center for Southeast Asian Studies, will examine the enduring consequences — particularly through the lens of how it differently affected communities across Southeast Asia. How the war is remembered, represented, and how do communities remember the war in ways that shape meaning, identity, and local history. Whose narratives are preserved or amplified? Whose voices are overlooked or silenced? From community-led memorials and oral histories to state-sponsored museums and the intentional absence of commemoration, the ways in which the Vietnam War is remembered reflect not only historical trauma, but ongoing struggles over identity, legitimacy, and visibility. In a time when factual accounts alone often fail to capture the complexity of lived experience, we explore how social memory is actively (re)constructed—and how communities reclaim authorship over how their histories are told.

Ed Park: An Oral History of Atlantis with Mira Jacob
2025-09-04 18:30 - 20:00 | The Korea Society, 350 Madison Avenue, 24th Floor, New York, NY, 10017
A deadpan, wildly imaginative collection of stories that slices clean through the mundanity and absurdity of modern life, An Oral History of Atlantis is the newest collection of short stories from Ed Park, the author of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize–winner and Pulitzer Prize finalist Same Bed Different Dreams.

Early AAPI Performance and the Construction of “Asian-ness”
2025-09-04 18:30 - 20:30 | Museum of Chinese in America, 215 Centre Street, New York, NY, 10013
From Exhibition to Expression: AAPI Performing Arts History is a three-part series exploring the rich and complex history of AAPI performance in America. From the early exhibition of Asian bodies to the fight for authentic representation on stage and screen, this series traces the evolution of AAPI artists in entertainment. Through discussions on yellowface, Hollywood’s early depictions, Broadway’s barriers, and the rise of Asian American theater, we’ll examine the struggles and triumphs that have defined AAPI performing arts.
In the first lecture, Professor Suzi Takahashi will delve into the history of early AAPI immigration to the United States and explore the earliest forms of AAPI performance in America, examining how Asian bodies and cultures were exhibited for public spectacle. Other topics to be covered include the Chinese Exclusion Act, the construction of “Asian-ness” in American melodrama, and the creation of Madame Butterfly—a work that continues to influence perceptions of Asian identity on stage and screen today.

New Korean Movie Night: Story Up Shorts in New York (Section 1 + Q&A)
2025-09-04 19:30 - 21:30 | Korean Cultural Center NY, 122 E 32nd St, New York, NY, 10016
The Korean Cultural Center New York (KCCNY) and the CJ Cultural Foundation co-present a ‘Story Up Shorts in New York.’ This program aims to introduce the works of promising young Korean directors to New York, supporting their future advancement into the mainstream.
The event will showcase three outstanding short films that have achieved remarkable results at domestic and international film festivals, followed by a Q&A session with the directors.
-Thursday, September 4th, 2025 at 7:30 PM
* Q&A session with the directors(Park, Yu-jin / Oh Hyundo / Kim Yoon-zy)
-Thursday, September 18th, 2025 at 7:30 PM

Balancing Work & Life, the Asian Way
2025-09-05 12:00 - 13:00 | NY
The Asian American Mentorship Providing Opportunities to Women for Empowerment and Resilience (AAMPOWER) at CUNY invites you to join us at our next workshop on practical strategies to help you manage professional responsibilities while nurturing your personal well-being.

Ai Weiwei + Orville Schell: Ai Weiwei Handbook
2025-09-05 19:00 - 20:30 | Strand Book Store, 828 Broadway 3rd Floor, Rare Book Room, New York, NY, 10003
Join us for a launch event with contemporary artist and activist Ai Weiwei, discussing his new book, Ai Weiwei Handbook, the latest volume in the new series from No More Rulers. Joining Ai in conversation is Arthur Ross Director of the Center on U.S.-China Relations at the Asia Society Orville Schell. This event will be hosted in the Strand Book Store’s 3rd-floor Rare Book Room at 828 Broadway on 12th Street.

Our Journeys: 50 Years After the Fall, a traveling exhibition - Opening Preview & Celebration
2025-09-06 14:30 - 18:00 | Think!Chinatown Studio, 1 Pike Street, New York, NY, 10002
Vietnamese Boat People (VBP) is honored to present Our Journeys: 50 Years After the Fall, a traveling exhibition debuting in New York City in September 2025 at Think!Chinatown’s Studio.
Our Journeys is a curated multimedia experience, inspired by the interviews and content generated by the Vietnamese Boat People podcast and programs. It is developed around the core concept that a story passed down is a gift—something given to another with intention and without obligation. For a community whose stories have often been told by others, this exhibit centers the voices of the Vietnamese diaspora, reclaiming the narrative through personal stories, photographs, multimedia displays, and video essays. Visitors will be immersed in the resilience, legacy, and diversity of our community’s lived experiences.
Exhibition Preview | 2:30–4:00 PM
Think!Chinatown Studios | 1 Pike Street, NYC
Reception | 4:00–6:00 PM
DCTV | 87 Lafayette Street, NYC
Exhibition: September 7 to 28, 2025

MOCA TALKS with Dr. Robin T. W. Yuan – Red Bishop
2025-09-06 15:00 - 17:00 | Museum of Chinese in America, 215 Centre Street, New York, NY, 10013
The Museum of Chinese in America (MOCA) and the United Board for Christian Higher Education in Asia cordially invite you to a conversation with Dr. Robin T.W. Yuan, renowned plastic surgeon and author of his debut novel Red Bishop. Drawing on his family history as the grandson of the last Anglican bishop in China, Dr. Yuan traces a journey across generations and geographies to explore faith, identity, and the forces that shaped modern China.

Theater: Case 84: Adopted in the U.S.A.
2025-09-06 16:00 - 17:30 | Caveat, 21 A Clinton St, New York, NY, 10002, United States
New York City based storyteller, comedian, and AAPI activist Edward Yoo Pokropski has been touring, Case 84: Adopted in the U.S.A. around the U.S. for the past three years. A comedy show meets a TED Talk, Case 84 sheds light on the underrepresented experience of adoptees. Over the course of an hour and aided by visuals ranging from family photos to images of Superman, Edward answers all the questions he gets about being adopted.

Secrets of Publishing: A Conversation with Literary Agents, Editors, and Authors
2025-09-08 08:00 - 17:00 | P&T Knitwear Books & Podcasts, 180 Orchard Street, New York, NY, 10002
P&T Knitwear, in conjunction with PEN America, is pleased to welcome back award-winning author Susan Shapiro for a panel discussion of insider tips and tricks for navigating the publishing world! Shapiro will be joined in conversation by author-editor Miya Lee (New York Times Modern Love), author and literary agent Alia Hannah Habib, editors Paul Whitlach (Penguin Random House) and Rachel Kahan (Harper Collins), vice-president and publisher of Legacy Lit Krishan Trotman, and author-and-teacher Rob Cameron.

Yoichi Ohira: Japan in Murano (Exhibition Opening)
2025-09-08 11:00 - 18:00 | Magazzino Italian Art, 2700 Route 9, Cold Spring, NY, 10516
Yoichi Ohira: Japan in Murano, showcases the work of Yoichi Ohira (1946–2022), the Japanese-born artist who became a leading figure in designing Venetian glassworks on the island of Murano, Italy. His works—often vessels and sculptural forms—feature exquisite craftsmanship, rich colors, and intricate surface treatments inspired by nature, calligraphy, and Japanese lacquerware. By blending Murano’s technical mastery with refined, minimal sensibilities, Ohira created glass art that is both opulent and meditative. The exhibition (Sept 8, 2025 to March 23, 2026) will include approximately 60 works that showcase his masterful ability to blend Japanese influences with Italian traditions and his longstanding interest in abstracting from natural forms.

Smart Strategies for the Civic Holidays: Plan, Partner, Activate with Limited Time & Resources
2025-09-08 13:00 - 14:00 | NY
Mobilizing your community to register, get educated, and turn out to vote can be a lot of work, and we know not all of our partners have extensive time and funding to put on extravagant events. National Voter Education Week and Vote Early Day have teamed up to give you a training session that will help teams with limited capacity and resources plan and execute effective activations for the Civic Holidays!

Conversations – “Recollections, Pioneers and Heroes” Featuring Janet Yang
2025-09-08 18:00 - 19:00 | NY
We are pleased to invite you to attend Committee of 100’s Conversations—”Recollections, Pioneers, and Heroes” featuring Janet Yang, a pioneer in film and entertainment and a Committee of 100 Member.
Janet Yang is an Emmy and Golden Globe-winning Hollywood producer, the former Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, a keynote speaker, and a trailblazer and advocate for the AAPI community. She came to prominence through her collaboration with Steven Spielberg on Empire of the Sun, followed by partnerships with Oliver Stone and Lisa Henson. Her extensive Film and TV credits include The Joy Luck Club, The People vs. Larry Flynt, Shanghai Calling, and High Crimes. She is a member of the Committee of 100.
