cuny graduate center – Page 2 – Asian American / Asian Research Institute

The Border Within: Vietnamese Migrants Transforming Ethnic Nationalism in Berlin

November 15, 2023November 4, 2022 By Phi Hong Su

“The Border Within” paints a vivid portrait of these disparate Vietnamese migrants’ encounters with each other in the post-socialist city of Berlin. This book uncovers how 20th-century state formation and international migration—together, border crossings—generate enduring migrant classifications. In doing so, border crossings fracture shared ethnic, national, and religious identities in enduring ways.

The Chinese Question: The Gold Rushes and Global Politics

April 1, 2022March 28, 2022 By Mae Ngai

Drawing on ten years of research across five continents, prize-winning historian Mae Ngai narrates the story of the thousands of Chinese who left their homeland in pursuit of gold, and how they formed communities and organizations to help navigate their perilous new world. Out of their encounters with whites, and the emigrants’ assertion of autonomy and humanity, arose the pernicious western myth of the “coolie” laborer, a racist stereotype used to drive anti-Chinese sentiment.

Immigrant Crossroads: Globalization, Incorporation, and Placemaking in Queens, New York

April 1, 2022December 10, 2021 By Tarry Hum

The editors and contributors to Immigrant Crossroads examine the social, spatial, economic, and political dynamics that stem from this fast-growing urbanization. The interdisciplinary chapters examine residential patterns and neighborhood identities, immigrant incorporation and mobilizations, and community building and activism.

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

May 5, 2021April 23, 2021 By Pyong Gap Min

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.

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

April 3, 2021March 26, 2021 By Sujung Kim

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.

Anandibai Joshee and the Insurgence of International Students

April 3, 2021March 12, 2021 By Param Ajmera

This presentation focuses on the writings and performances of Dr. Anandibai Joshee, who graduated from the Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania in 1886 and became the first Indian woman to gain a degree in medicine. Param Ajmera investigates how Anandibai used the influence provided by her university to develop relationships with the American feminist movement to gain support for the social and economic upliftment of women in India.