thomas tam – Page 3 – Asian American / Asian Research Institute

CUNY Thomas Tam Scholarship 2019 Recipient

July 6, 2020August 29, 2019 By AAARI

Ms. Biling Chen, a Chemistry major, plans to conduct a weekly volunteer workshop to assist newly-arrived Asian international students at Queensborough Community College with guidance on how to navigate American and college life, and offer tutoring for science, math and English courses. The workshop will be conducted in English to help students practice their speaking skills, and to foster more social connections on and off-campus. Participants will also visit local retirement homes to provide company to Asian immigrant seniors who may feel isolated.

Trying to Find “Chinatown” (Play Reading & Town Hall Discussion)

December 8, 2025April 17, 2019 By AAARI

In honor of Asian Heritage Month, the BMCC Theatre Program presents a 15-minute reading of David Henry Hwang’s play Trying to Find Chinatown, and a Town Hall discussion on “How does Theatre create Community and Identity for Asian Americans and all under-represented voices?”

AAARI 17th Annual Gala (2018)

December 8, 2025December 6, 2018 By AAARI

AAARI celebrated its 17th anniversary as part of CUNY, and honored leaders and CUNY alumni, John C. Liu (NYS Senate-elect) and Ava Chin (author/professor, College of Staten Island), as well as students award recipients for the CUNY Thomas Tam Scholarship and Chynn-CUNY Essay and Morality Essay Contest.

“We’re the New Citizenship”: LA’s Asian and Latin@ Immigrant Activists on Politics as Embodied and Emotional

November 24, 2025October 19, 2018 By Nadia Y. Kim

In recent decades under runaway neoliberalism, “foreignized” and unauthorized immigrants have increasingly made political inroads by way of grassroots community activism and by sidestepping the need for formal political channels and, at times, even dismissing them. By way of nearly four years of ethnographic observation, 49 in-depth interviews, and extensive document analysis, Prof. Nadia Kim … Read more

2018-2019 CUNY Thomas Tam Visiting Professor

April 12, 2019August 29, 2018 By Nadia Y. Kim

Nadia Y. Kim is Professor of Sociology at Loyola Marymount University and the 2018 Thomas Tam Professor at City University of New York Graduate Center. Her research focuses on transnational experiences of US race and citizenship inequalities among Korean/Asian Americans and South Koreans in (neo)imperial context and among Asian and Latinx activists for Environmental (Health) Justice as well as immigration and education reform in Los Angeles; she also specializes in race/gender/class intersectionality, cultural globalization, and race theorizing.

Kim is author of Imperial Citizens: Koreans and Race from Seoul to LA (Stanford, 2008), an exploration of how Koreans and Korean immigrants have navigated American (neo)imperial race inequality and ideology since World War II and by transnationally connecting both societies. In addition to garnering two American Sociological Association book awards for Imperial Citizens, Kim has won multiple best article awards, early career awards, and teaching honors. She is nearly done completing her current book, We the Polluted People: Immigrants Remap Race, Class, Gender & the Body to Remake Citizenship (Stanford University Press), which examines how legal Asian and unauthorized Latinx immigrants fight nativist racism by way of a new politics of citizenship, one that prioritizes transnational, communal, embodied, and emotive politics.

AAARI 16th Annual Gala (2017)

December 8, 2025November 30, 2017 By AAARI

AAARI’s Annual Gala is attended by 450+ Asian and non-Asian academic, business, civic and community leaders, faculty, staff and students. At the gala we will honor distinguished alumni from The City University of New York, leaders from the community, and student scholarship recipients. Proceeds from the gala go towards our academic publications and public programs such as lectures, annual conference, and student film festival.