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Fall 2019 NEWS

Upcoming Events from Asian American Studies Center and HCAP

Spring 2020 Classes Are Here!

Mental Health First-Aid Training Saturday November 9th

A note from HCAP:

Throughout the semester, our club works with NAMI-NYC Metro to provide Mental Health First Aid Trainings (MHFA) to students at Hunter College. Mental Health First Aid is a skills-based training course that teaches participants about mental health and substance-use issues. This semester, we are hosting our first MHFA in Higher Education Course.

This course is specifically designed for faculty and administration to teach assessment of risk for suicide or self harm, encouragement of seeking professional help, recognizing college-specific risk factors, and making mental health aid more accessible. We are writing to you in hopes that you could help us reach out to the faculty members of the program.

We have found it to be highly valuable among students, and to promote mental health awareness on campus, we want to extend this opportunity to staff as well. We have attached a flyer with more information, as well as the RSVP google form link below to allow us to provide an appropriate amount of food and space for the course.

The training will be held on Saturday, November 9th, from 10-6 pm. We host the trainings on weekends to have the least interference with weekday classes. During the day, free lunch will be served. Please feel free to reach out to me, or to the club, through namioncampushunter@gmail.com if you have any questions. Thank you!

RSVP LINK

Hunter Researchers Published Report from Study of Illicit Massage Parlors

This report, from researchers at Hunter College of the City University of New York and University of Southern California, aims to shed light on the experiences of Chinese and Korean immigrant women working in illicit massage parlors in Los Angeles County and New York City. Media accounts have documented raids, mass arrests and undercover stings of illicit massage parlors in US cities and suburbs. Often lost in these accounts are the daily experiences of the women workers from their own perspectives. Why are women working in these establishments and under what conditions do they labor? What is the arrest process like for them? What solutions can be offered that do not further penalize, traumatize, or victimize an already vulnerable population? This report aims to answer some of these questions, and offer recommendations for policy and practice, based on in-depth interviews with 116 women working in illicit massage parlors.

Here's the link to the report: Illicit Massage Parlors in Los Angeles County and New York City: Stories from Women Workers

Spotlight on New Spring 2020 Courses!

We are thrilled to announce three Spring 2020 courses that Asian American Studies hasn't offered in quite some time.

One course "International Migration" is being taught by the esteemed CUNY Thomas Tam Visiting Professor Hung Thai and another "Oral History, Cultural Identity, and Art" will be taught by incoming adjunct the talented Alvin Eng.Last but not least our very own amazing Glenn Magpantay will be teaching "Asian American Queerness."

Blurred Lines: The Pursuit of Superiority in the Vietnamese Diaspora

Hung Cam Thai examines the formation of hierarchies in situations where individuals seek to establish themselves as "social betters".

Date And Time Fri, November 8, 2019 6:00 PM - 8:00 PM EST

Location

Asian American / Asian Research Institute - City University of New York

25 West 43rd Street Suite #1000 New York, NY 10036

Website

Focusing on microlevel social interactions in the homeland, this lecture explores the projection and achievement of superiority within the context of Vietnamese diasporic and transnational repertoires. As a country undergoing dramatic economic transformation for more than two decades, Vietnam is a site of contradictory new hierarchies with the increasing return of overseas migrants who encounter a growing new monied class. Prof. Hung Cam Thai examines the formation of these hierarchies in situations where individuals seek to establish themselves as "social betters" in determining criteria of worthiness.

Prof. Thai is concerned with the cultural repertories and structural resources underlying how and why individuals create or draw lines to define themselves against each other - that is, the symbolic boundaries people draw-and how such lines and definitions lead to contests over the production of superiority and social parity. The homeland is especially apt for studying social parity because of the gap in the literature on symbolic boundaries regarding transnational cultures, where social inequalities are ubiquitous. Prof. Thai argues that the homeland is a site of cross-class interactions in which great confusions exist over meanings of taste, success, and achievements, all of which produce blurry measurements of worth.

The analysis is based on more than 90 in-depth interviews and participant observations over a seven year period with a cross section of the overseas migrant and local populations in Ho Chi Minh City, Can Tho, and Danang. The comparative approach Prof. Thai takes in studying these three cities allows us to see both distinct and universal social processes within urban centers and rural peripheries of contemporary Vietnam.

Films of Remembrance Saturday, Nov. 9th

Sitting A/P/A Studies Friday November 1st

Wednesday October 30th "Overrepresented Minorities?"··

Join us Wednesday October 30th as we co-sponser an event with the Hunter College Jewish Studies Center:

Interactive Budget & Savings Seminar sponsored by HCAP!

"Asian Americans and Affirmative Action Policy" @ The CUNY Grad Center

Join an exciting talk by Dr. Van Tran, 2004 Hunter College Alum, on

"Asian Americans and Affirmative Action Policy"
Wednesday, November 6, 2019
4:00 P.M., Room C198, The Graduate Center, 365 5th Ave, New York, NY 10016

Queer Identities At Work - Monday, October 21st

Friday, October 18th: Where I'm Really From: AAPI Families, Stress, & Wellness

Tuesday, October 22: Democracy in America: Is Everyone In?

Renew Democracy Initiative & Roosevelt House

Present the Conference:

Democracy in America: Is Everyone In?

Tuesday, October 22

1:30 p.m. - 5:30 p.m.

Reception to follow

"Democracy in America: Is Everyone In?" is a conference that seeks to shine a light on the current state of American democracy through lectures and panel discussions focusing on the nation's most enduring principles and most pressing challenges. The conference features some of today's leading thinkers, advocates, and policymakers - including RDI Chairman and former world chess champion Garry Kasparov; former North Dakota Senator Heidi Heitkamp; Washington Post columnist Max Boot; the CEO of Generation Citizen, Scott Warren; Associate Professor of Sociology at Hunter College Margaret Chin; Benjamin Hett, Professor of History at Hunter College and the Graduate Center, City University of New York; and Alan Miller, a Pulitzer prize-winning journalist and the CEO of the News Literacy Project.

The conference aims to tackle the political polarization and extremism that have come to define this moment in American life - in which democratic values are often put aside in favor of partisan interests. While an increasingly entrenched electorate casts ballots only for "its side," the decline in civics education is such that a third of millennials believe democracy is inessential and two-thirds of all Americans can't name the three branches of government, according to a recent study. These trends, RDI contends, present both a risk to the future of our democracy and an urgent need to revitalize the constitutional principles on which this country became the world's leading representative republic.

Join us to discuss where we go from here, how we can achieve a rational, humane immigration policy, and how to educate the citizens of tomorrow to become active participants in strengthening and preserving our democracy.

RSVP Here!

"Indigeneity and Asian America: The Double Displacement of Wartime Incarceration"

The Columbia University Seminar in American Studies presents...

"Indigeneity and Asian America: The Double Displacement of Wartime Incarceration"

a talk by Karen Inouye, Indiana University, Bloomington
October 15, 2019
7:30-9pm
Columbia University Faculty House

(64 Morningside Drive, New York, NY 10027)

Speaker Bio:
Karen M. Inouye is Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of American Studies at Indiana University, Bloomington. She is also currently a visiting scholar in the Center for the Study of Race and Ethnicity in America at Brown University. She is author of The Long Afterlife of Nikkei Wartime Incarceration (Stanford, 2016), and a number of essays in journals including American Quarterly, Journal of Transnational American Studies, Journal of Asian American Studies, and Journal of American Ethnic History.

Please note:
We will convene at 6:30pm for dinner, and 7:30pm for the talk. The University Seminars Office requires the rapporteur to collect the payment for dinner ($30 per a person; checks only). If you would like to attend, please make sure to RSVP to the seminar rapporteur, Rebecca Stout (rjs2233@columbia.edu). It is necessary to RSVP even if you are attending the talk only, since rooms are assigned based on the expected number of attendees.

Below, please find the schedule for the 2019-20 Columbia University Seminar on American Studies, co-chaired by Matt Sandler (Ethnic Studies, Columbia) and James Kim (English, Fordham):

September 17 - Tim August (Stony Brook University)
October 15 - Karen Inouye (Indiana University, Bloomington)
November 19 - Ezra Tawil (University of Rochester)
December 3 - Paul Nadal (Princeton University)
January 28 - Angela Reyes (Hunter College)
February 25 - Stan Thangaraj (City College of New York)
March 24 - Ben Balthaser (Indiana University, South Bend)
April 21 - Sarah Blackwood (Pace University)

New Asian American Studies at Hunter College Facebook Page!

Asian American Studies is moving to a new Facebook page! We'll be shutting down the old page "Hunter College Asian American Studies Program" in about a month and want all of you to join us at our new page "Asian American Studies at Hunter College" for updates, events, and program news.

Click HERE for the new page! Hope to see you all soon!

Upcoming Asian American Centric Events

Here are some upcoming Asian American Centric events that might interest you:

Side By Side: Out of a South Korean Orphanage and Into the World Art Installation

Details here:

http://sidebysideproject.com

Kundiman an Asian American Writer's Workshop