Here are some more announcements, links, and job postings about academic-related jobs, fellowships, and other opportunities for those interested in racial/ethnic/diversity issues, with a particular focus on Asian Americans. As always, the announcements and links are provided for informational purposes and do not necessarily imply an endorsement of the organization or college involved.

Call for Submissions: Asian Americans and the Environment

AAPI Nexus Journal: Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders Policy, Practice and Community
Call for Papers: Special Issue on AAPIs and the Environment

AAPI Nexus is pleased to announce a forthcoming special issue that will examine critical theoretical, policy and practical issues related to AAPIs (Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders) and the environment. Despite the tremendous growth in the literature in these two fields, few studies examine their intersection. The goal of the special issue is to fill this gap. For this publication, the environment is broadly defined to include the nexus between people and natural resources (including urban and rural contexts), environmentalism, and environmental justice (e.g., environmental justice movements, policy, organizations, communities, etc). The journal is interested in impacts on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, attitudes and opinions, collective action and agency, and studies at the local, regional or state-wide, national and global scales.

AAPI Nexus seeks submissions that as a collection enable the readers to look at issues through multi-disciplinary and comparative lenses. Our objective is to share information and insights to enhance the ability to take action in the areas of advocacy, strategic planning, policy development and programming.

Professor Paul M. Ong (University of California, Los Angeles), Professor Julie Sze (University of California, Davis) and Charles Lee (Deputy Associate Assistant Administrator for Environmental Justice , U.S. Environmental Protection Agency) are the consulting Guest Editors working with the editorial staff on this volume. The following are examples of possible articles:

• Cultural influences on environmental attitudes and behavior
• Political and civic engagement in the environmental arena broadly defined
• Individual and collective action and agency
• Differential environmental exposures, risk and impacts (or environmental inequalities)
• Differential outcomes from environmental policies and programs
• Smart, sustainable and equitable growth
• Environmental/Green economy

The list is illustrative rather than comprehensive. We are interested in other topics as they are related to AAPIs, as well as new and innovative ways to conceptualize the linkage, relationality and intersectionality between AAPIs and the environment.

We encourage paper submissions that highlight perspectives of practitioners, academic researchers, and applied policy analysts. If you are interested in submitting a manuscript, please send or email a letter of intent with the title and a very short descriptive paragraph or abstract of the proposed paper to the editors for review. If you have a prepared paper, you may also submit the paper at the same time. For submission guidelines, please visit and click on Style Sheets for Article Submissions (PDF Document).

AAPI Nexus is a peer-reviewed, national journal published by UCLA’s Asian American Studies Center focusing on policies, practices and community research to benefit the nation’s burgeoning Asian American and Pacific Islander communities. The journal’s mission is to facilitate an exchange of ideas and research findings that strengthens the efforts through policy and practice to tackle the pressing societal problems facing Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) communities. Since the inception of ethnic studies, the goal of “serving and mobilizing the community” has been at the heart of Asian American Studies and Pacific Islander Studies. Previous issues have focused on Community Development, Education, and Immigration.

Deadline for Letter of Intent: Monday, July 9, 2012.
Deadline for Manuscript Submissions: Monday, September 10, 2012.

Earlier submission of a Letter or Manuscript is encouraged. Internet communication is preferred. Please address to Managing Editor Melany De La Cruz-Viesca and send to AAPI Nexus Journal at:

Melany De La Cruz-Viesca (nexus@aasc.ucla.edu)

and send an electronic copy to:

Senior Editor Professor Marjorie Kagawa-Singer (mkagawa@ucla.edu)
Guest Editor Professor Paul M. Ong (pmong@ucla.edu)
Guest Editor Professor Julie Sze (jsze@ucdavis.edu)
Guest Editor Charles Lee (Lee.Charles@epamail.epa.gov)

For regular mail, send all correspondence to:

Melany De La Cruz-Viesca, Managing Editor
AAPI Nexus Journal
UCLA Asian American Studies Center
3230 Campbell Hall
Los Angeles, CA 90095-1546

Fellowships: Dissertation & Postdoc Research

Dear Colleagues:

We are pleased to share information on the application process for the National Academy of Education/Spencer Foundation Dissertation and Postdoctoral Fellowship Programs. Please help us widely distribute information on the two fellowship programs to qualified candidates, listservs and other electronic sources by using the paragraphs below. Thank you for your assistance.

The National Academy of Education (NAEd) invites applicants for the following fellowship programs:

National Academy of Education/Spencer Dissertation Fellowship Program
The NAEd/Spencer Dissertation Fellowship Program seeks to encourage a new generation of scholars from a wide range of disciplines and professional fields to undertake research relevant to the improvement of education. These $25,000 fellowships support individuals whose dissertations show potential for bringing fresh and constructive perspectives to the history, theory, or practice of formal or informal education anywhere in the world. Fellows will also attend professional development retreats and receive mentorship from NAEd members and other senior scholars in their field. This highly competitive program aims to identify the most talented emerging researchers conducting dissertation research related to education. The Dissertation Fellowship program receives many more applications than it can fund. This year, up to 600 applications are anticipated and about 25 fellowships will be awarded. Additional guidelines and the fellowship application form will be available on our website later this summer.

National Academy of Education /Spencer Postdoctoral Fellowship Program
The NAEd/Spencer Postdoctoral Fellowship Program supports early-career scholars working in critical areas of educational scholarship. Fellows will receive $55,000 for one academic year of research, or $27,500 for each of two contiguous years, working half time. Fellows will also attend professional development retreats and receive mentorship from NAEd members and other senior scholars in their field. Applicants must have had their PhD, EdD, or equivalent research degree conferred between January 1, 2007, and December 31, 2012. This fellowship is non-residential, and applications from all disciplines are encouraged. Up to twenty NAEd/Spencer Fellowships will be awarded. Additional guidelines and the fellowship application form will be available on our website later this summer.

Contact Information:
Philip Perrin, Program Officer – Professional Development Programs
E-mail: info@naeducation.org
Website: www.naeducation.org

The National Academy of Education greatly appreciates support and funding from the Spencer Foundation to provide and administer these fellowship programs.

National Academy of Education
500 5th St, NW #308
Washington, DC 20001

Petition: Save the American Community Survey

As a sociologist, I rely heavily on the Census Bureau’s American Community Survey (ACS). The ACS provides thousands of researchers like me comprehensive annual demographic and socioeconomic data about the U.S. population. In fact, almost all the data and statistics that are presented in this site is derived from the ACS. Unfortunately, Congress is considering eliminating funding for the ACS. Below is an announcement about efforts to help save funding so that the ACS can continue to benefit researchers like me and our society as a whole.

At the beginning of May, there were two attacks on funding for social science research in the House of Representatives.

First, the House voted to prohibit the National Science Foundation (NSF) from funding Political Science research – on important issues such as how countries transition to democracy, or the causes of terrorism. The American Journal of Political Science has published a free virtual issue that showcases articles that use NSF funded data. We urge you to contact your Senators and ask them to continue NSF funding for Political Science research.

Second, the House voted to eliminate funding for the American Community Survey (ACS). The ACS asks questions that the Census has used for centuries, and the data is used to help the government distribute more than $800 million in Federal assistance. People may have different perspectives on the questions, but policy decisions are better if they are informed by data. Please send letters/emails to your Senators asking that the ACS not be eliminated.

Please forward this information to colleagues so they can get involved. Detailed information on both of these issues including letters of support from academic organizations and a selection of articles in the press are available at www.mpsanet.org.

Call for Papers: Asian Americans and Culture

The editors of East Main Street: Asian American Popular Culture are seeking contributions to a new collection on Asian American culture within a transnational context. We welcome proposals for original essays that address Asian American experience or representation in popular culture (both current and historical).

In addition to work on media, literature, music, games and digital culture, fashion, consumption and popular practices in and outside the Americas, we encourage submissions that engage with science and technology, sexuality, racial identity, legal studies, sports, politics, and production/industry studies.

Please send a 900-1200 word abstract to the editors (sdave@brandeis.edu, nishime@uwashington.edu, tgoren@uwm.edu,) by August 1, 2012.

Position: Assistant Professor, New College of Florida

New College of Florida, a small residential, highly selective liberal arts college, invites applications for a tenure-track assistant professorship beginning in August 2013. PhD expected by that time. Candidates should be able to demonstrate excellence, or potential for excellence, in teaching. Preference will be given to candidates whose teaching and research interests complement and enhance our existing strengths. We are especially interested in candidates with substantial expertise on race and ethnicity and whose research and teaching employs a social psychological perspective, broadly defined.

New College is committed to excellence in teaching and research, and encourages collaborative student-faculty scholarship. Students are intellectually independent and research-oriented. Teaching load is two courses per semester, plus individualized tutorials and supervision of
senior thesis projects.

Interested candidates should send a letter of application, Curriculum Vitae, a statement of teaching philosophy and research interests, transcripts, and three letters of recommendation to David Brain, New College of Florida, 5800 Bay Shore Drive, Sarasota, FL 34243-2197. Screening of applicants will begin October 1, 2012, and will continue until the position is filled. Individuals with the ability to contribute in meaningful ways to the college’s continuing commitment to cultural and gender diversity, pluralism and individual difference are encouraged to apply.

Consistent with law and New College’s respect for personal dignity, the college does not discriminate between applicants for employment based on race, nationality, religion, age, disability, gender expression, gender identity, veteran status, marital status, or sexual orientation. According to Florida law, applications and meetings regarding applications are open to the public. Applicants who need a reasonable accommodation in order to participate in the selection process must notify the College five days in advance.

The following is a list of recent academic journal articles and/or doctoral dissertations from scholars in the social/cognitive sciences and humanities that focus on race/ethnicity and/or immigration, with a particular emphasis on Asian Americans. As you can see, the diversity of research topics is a direct reflection of the dynamic and multidimensional nature of people’s lives, experiences, and issues related to race/ethnicity and immigration. Last but not least, congratulations to my new academic colleagues on being “Ph.inally D.one.”

The academic journal articles are generally available in the libraries of most colleges and universities and/or through online research databases. The dissertations records are compiled by Dissertation Abstracts International and copies can be obtained through your college’s library or by contacting ProQuest at 789 E. Eisenhower Parkway, P.O. Box 1346, Ann Arbor, MI 48106-1346, telephone 800-521-3042, or disspub@umi.com.

The research listed below focus on the social sciences and humanities (other research that will be presented separately focus on the cognitive sciences). As always, works included in this list are for informational purposes only and do not imply an endorsement of their contents.

Tao, Yu. The Earnings of Asian Computer Scientists and Engineers in the United States. Dissertation Abstracts International: Social Sciences and Humanities, vol. 70, no. 10, pp. 3919, 2010.

• Abstract: While Asians are overrepresented in science and engineering (S&E), they receive limited scholarly attention in sociology of science. To fill the knowledge gap about this understudied group, this study examines the effects of race, nativity, degree origin, gender, field, employment sector, and national origin on the annualized earnings of Asian computer scientists and engineers working in the U.S. To understand the above effects, this study uses descriptive analyses and quantile regressions. Data are derived from the National Survey of College Graduates (NSCG) conducted by the National Science Foundation. Overall, the findings partly confirm the structural arguments that some groups, notably women, racial/ethnic minorities, and immigrants, are disadvantaged in the U.S. workplace. The degree origin effect in 1993 could be due to the lower quality of degrees obtained from Asian higher education institutions and to the marginalized structural positions of Asian-educated immigrants in the American society. The disappearance of such an effect in 2003 could be due to the interactions between structural forces and human capital. The change of the effect of human capital has to be placed in a context of globalization and the resulting structural changes in various aspects, such as the improvement in higher education in Asia and changes in immigration policies in the U.S.

Hua, Linh Uyen. Reading Love: Race and the Political Economy of Affect. Dissertation Abstracts International: Social Sciences and Humanities, vol. 70, no. 11, pp. 4211, 2010.

• Abstract: Adjoining a history of love to a history of racial violence, Reading Love begins at the height of the transatlantic slave trade when the nature of intimate exchange becomes irreparably sutured to the economic value of racial blackness. Employing the five senses as the analytic structure of its literary analysis, the dissertation investigates the ramifications of this global restructuring of love as accumulation for post-1914 American social and political culture. Focused on African American and Asian American texts from Nella Larsen’s Passing (1929) to Chang-rae Lee’s Native Speaker (1995), Reading Love reformulates the terms of call-and-response from the perspective of the Unlovable, an ideological and material orientation that disrupts compulsory participation in affective speculation by evidencing an ethics of anti-accumulation. Collectively, the chapters examine narrative and narrative interpretation, individual practice, and disciplinary formulation as crucial sights for reading love. The concerns of Reading Love are current to American Studies, which has seen exponential growth in scholarship on affect and intimacy in the last quarter century owing largely to the emergent institutional authority of queer theory, psychoanalysis, and gender and feminist studies. Reading Love contributes to this academic archive by reading love in twentieth-century texts through the transformative cash nexus of the transatlantic slave trade and liberal philosophy. The analytic framework of political economy — which includes the emergence of modern structures of public and private, liberty and love, and capital investments in citizenship — sustains the critical race and feminist interventions that characterize Reading Love’s agenda. The dissertation forces intra-racial (rather than inter-racial) accountability into the lexicon of American Studies and, in doing so, underscores its claim that critical investigations of assimilation and gentrification conventionally relegated to race and ethnic studies are symptomatic of a history of affective reformulation that is personal, national, global, and historic in its ramifications. The theoretical concerns of Reading Love remain faithful to the question of subjugated identities taken up in feminist scholarship and ethnic studies. The chapters telescope intra-community paralyses of ambivalence, sentimental intention, and assimilative distantiation symptomatic of a cultural logic that treats affect as a tacit form of economic and political speculation. The sum of this dissertation develops initial parameters for a theory of the Unlovable, a theory that emphasizes anti-speculative practice and anti-accumulative investment. It reformulates the call-and-response dynamic by turning responses into first order calls and diverges, in this way, from Gayatri Spivak’s caution against hegemonic appropriation of subaltern voices. Argued throughout Reading Love, an anti-speculative, anti-accumulative posture — a posture of Unlove — is possible and serves well as an element of radical reading and practice.

Park Nelson, Kim Ja. Korean Looks, American Eyes: Korean American Adoptees, Race, Culture and Nation. Dissertation Abstracts International: Social Sciences and Humanities, vol. 71, no. 01, pp. 0236, 2010.

• Abstract: This project positions Korean adoptees as transnational citizens at intersections within race relations in the United States, as emblems of international geopolitical relationships between the United States and South Korea, and as empowered actors, organizing to take control of racial and cultural discourses about Korean adoption. I make connections between transnational exchanges, American race relations, and Asian American experiences. I argue that though the contradictory experience of Korean adoptees, at once inside and outside bounded racial and national categories of “Asian,” “White,” “Korean,” and “American,” the limits of these categories may be explored and critiqued. In understanding Korean adoptees as transnational subjects, single-axis racial and national identity are challenged, where individuals have access to membership and/or face exclusion in more than one political or cultural nation. In addition, this work demonstrates the effects of American political and cultural imperialism both abroad and domestically, by elucidating how the acts of empire-building nations are mapped onto individuals though the regulation of immigration and family formation. My methods are interdisciplinary, drawing from traditions that include ethnography, primary historical sources, and literature. My dissertation work uses Korean adoptees’ own life stories that I have collected and recorded in three locations: (1) Minnesota, home to the largest concentration of Korean adoptees in the U.S.; (2) the Pacific Northwest, home to the many of the “first wave” of the oldest living Korean adoptees now in their 40s and 50s; and, (3) Seoul, Korea, home to hundreds of adult Korean adoptees who have traveled back to South Korea to live and work. In addition, I use Korean adoptee published narratives, archive materials documenting the early history of transnational adoption, and secondary sources in sociology, social work, psychology and cultural studies to uncover the many layers of national, racial and cultural belonging and significance for and of Korean adoptees.

Nguyen, Thanh-Nghi Bao. Vietnamese Manicurists: The Making of an Ethnic Niche. Dissertation Abstracts International: Social Sciences and Humanities, vol. 71, no. 03, pp. 0992, 2010.

• Abstract: The study provides a sociological analysis of the overrepresentation of Vietnamese immigrants in the manicuring business, and of the mechanisms through which the ethnic nail niche is sustained. The geographical focus is Boston, and elsewhere in New England. It is the most comprehensive study to date of the manicure sector and the role of Vietnamese in it. Vietnamese immigrants are shown to have been in a favored position to work in the niche, at a time when technological changes in the nail industry made manicuring more affordable and allowed for an expansion of service offerings. Vietnamese fitted the racial profile for low-skill manual service work in America, and were seen as deft in performing nail care. Also, they settled mainly in urban areas, where demand for nail services was greatest. Furthermore, they had extensive ethnic resources on which to draw. Through ethnic networks they acquired the necessary skills to perform the work, they secured employment, they pooled capital to go into business for themselves, and they found reliable workers in turn. Meanwhile, as poor immigrants, they were impressed with the earnings they could make as manicurists. The study makes use of historical and statistical sources, participant observation and key informants, and secondary sources. The data show Vietnamese domination of employment and ownership in an expanding manicure industry, and conflict and competition as well as cooperation among Vietnamese employed in the sector. Yet, Vietnamese prove to get disillusioned with work in the sector over the years, as a recession reduces demand for their services, as the growing supply of Vietnamese manicurists drives down earnings that can be made for their services, and as they are increasingly exposed to unhealthy chemicals in the course of their work. The findings have policy implications. With improved understanding of conditions in the sector government agencies can upgrade labor and health conditions in salons.

Almandrez, Mary Grace A. History in the Making: Narratives of Selected Asian Pacific American Women in Leadership. Dissertation Abstracts International: Social Sciences and Humanities, vol. 71, no. 08, pp. 2943, 2011.

• Abstract: The commitment of Asian Pacific American (APA) women to communities of color is not unique. However, their passions, experiences, and narratives have not been widely shared and are rarely considered in the study of leadership. Conventional notions of leadership as gendered, racialized, hierarchical, and individual-focused experiences do not necessarily reflect Asian Pacific American women’s leadership. This research inquiry calls for a paradigm shift where leadership is grounded in identity and being. This study employed a participatory inquiry protocol with an orientation in critical hermeneutics (Herda 1999) to account for the sociocultural complexity involved with Asian Pacific American women’s experiences. The data was created in a collaborative partnership between the participants and researcher. Data analysis drew upon the works of Ricoeur (1984, 1992), Kearney (1998, 2002), and Herda (1999) with specific focus on narrative identity, mimesis, and imagination. Through the exchange of stories and ideas, self-reflection, and continuous re-interpretation, both the participants and the researcher reached new understandings. The narratives of select Asian Pacific American women revealed four key findings. First, identity and being cannot be separated from leadership. Research participants revealed that founding events, cultural traditions, and relationships with others influenced the ways they led and served their communities. Second, Asian Pacific American women feel an ethical responsibility to carry on their legacies of leadership. They expressed a sense of responsibility to both honor the past and develop future leaders. Third, images of leadership can and do change over time. As Asian Pacific American women continue to share their stories, they provide educators, scholars, and communities with diverse images of leadership. Fourth, Asian Pacific American women place solicitude at the heart of ethical action. Participants considered recognition, reciprocity, and solicitude in their leadership. The appropriation of identity through the medium of leadership is rarely, if ever, considered by scholars. Understanding how identity informs leadership and leadership influences identity may provide insight on the varied ways that Asian Pacific American women lead and inspire their communities.

Yamauchi, Elyse M. Counterstories: Uncovering History within the Stories of Faculty of Color. Dissertation Abstracts International: Social Sciences and Humanities, vol. 71, no. 09, pp. 3169, 2011.

• Abstract: Through counterstorytelling (Solrzano & Yosso, 2002b), the methodological approach that is informed by critical race theory (CRT), an elegant platform and enlightening lens allows for the amplification of the narratives of faculty of color in predominantly White institutions of higher education (PWIs). Eight faculty of color, four women and four men, who identify as Chicano /a, Native American, Asian, and African American, were interviewed. They represented two institutions of higher education in a western state. Five of the counterstorytellers were tenured full professors, and the other three were non-tenured or tenure-track assistant professors. Their counterstories challenge the dominant master narrative that argues that in a post-racial and post-civil rights nation, issues of discrimination, racism, oppression, and White privilege have essentially been neutralized. However, their counterstories revealed painful historical experiences, legal decisions, and laws that have profoundly impacted their lives and scholarly pursuits. Their counterstories spoke to the racism that they have experienced where racism may not have been apparent to their White counterparts. From the powerful counterstories, the faculty of color revealed their perspectives and lived experiences of existing in divergent cultural worlds (Sadao, 2003), the cultures of their ethnic world and of the university. Their counterstories further reveal that faculty of color not only live in the borderlands between cultures, but often they face a separate reality in terms of mentoring, tenure, white privilege, and institutional racism. Finally, master narratives have an extensive and overarching historical and systemic impact upon their experiences at multiple levels.

Domingo, Ligaya Rene. Building a Movement: Filipino American Union and Community Organizing in Seattle in the 1970s. Dissertation Abstracts International: Social Sciences and Humanities, vol. 71, no. 09, pp. 3324, 2011.

• Abstract: The Asian American Movement emerged in the late 1960s and early 1970s inspired by the Civil Rights Movement, Antiwar Movement, Black Liberation Movement, and struggles for liberation in Asia, Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East. Activists, including college students and community members throughout the United States, used amass linea tactics to raise political awareness, build organizations, address community concerns, and ultimately to serve their communities. While the history of the Asian American Movement has been chronicled, the scholarship has been analytically and theoretically insufficient -and in some cases nonexistent- in terms of local struggles, how the movement unfolded, and the role of Filipino Americans. This dissertation focuses on one, untold story of the Asian American Movement: the role of activists in Seattle, Washington who were concerned with regional injustices affecting Filipino Americans. I argue that this local struggle in the Pacific Northwest not only demonstrates the diversity of action and strategy within the Asian American Movement but also deepens our understanding of the broader movement as both local and transnational a unique in its local strategies yet closely aligned with the goals of the eraas social movements. Based on both historical and qualitative data, this dissertation uses a Gramscian framework to explore the possibilities and limitations of using civil society as instruments for social change. Specifically, I examine the efforts by a group of local activists in the 1970s to seek redress for the exclusion, discrimination and social dislocation experienced by Filipino Americans. I explore two local Asian American Movement case studies in which activists worked within two preexisting organizational formations of civil society, the Alaska Cannery Workeras Union and the Filipino Community of Seattle, to achieve their goals. Ultimately, the findings of this study challenge previous claims that the Asian American Movement was either reformist or radical. In this case study of Filipino American activists in Seattle, the data demonstrates that they were agents for social reform and also revolutionaries, not one or the other. The findings of this study point to the need for more nuanced and complex frameworks for understanding social change processes and organizing strategies.

Chunyu, Miao. A Comparative Study of Chinese and Mexican Immigrants’ Economic Incorporation in the United States. Dissertation Abstracts International: Social Sciences and Humanities, vol. 71, no. 10, pp. 3809, 2011.

• Abstract: This dissertation research is a comparative study of the economic incorporation of the unskilled Chinese and Mexican immigrants in the United States. This comparative approach is justified by the fact that these two groups share striking similarities in human capital, social networks, and immigrant flow patterns, whereas they also differ significantly in their migration cost, transnational practice, and reception in the U.S. labor market. This research investigates three specific aspects of their labor market experience: participation in self-employment, job transition, and earnings growth. Essentially I hope to find out whether these immigrants can achieve economic mobility over time and in what forms. To explain the variation in immigrants’ labor market performance, I examine the effects of a series of factors, including assimilation, transnationalism, and other factors pertaining to the contexts of exit and reception. One particular point of inquiry is immigrants’ job placement in nontraditional destination areas and the economic consequences associated with that movement. This is mainly a quantitative study, using data from the Mexican Migration Project (MMP) and the China International Migration Project (CIMP). Besides descriptive statistics I employ a series of multivariate methods in my analyses, including logistic regression, discrete-time logit model, event history proportional hazard model, and fixed-effects and random-effects models. In addition, I utilize the qualitative information collected from the in-depth interviews with select Chinese immigrants in New York City in order to corroborate and complement the quantitative results. This study finds many similarities between the two groups’ labor market experience. These include their occupational status, patterns of job transitions within the U.S., and the influence of pre-migration endowment on their entrepreneurial attainment in the host society. Furthermore, both groups show an increasing trend of working in their nontraditional destination areas, very likely due to the reduced job competition and higher wages there. But they differ vastly in their labor market niches, including participation in self-employment and employment by coethnics, which lead to important differences in their economic well-being. In addition, intensive transnational practice and exorbitant migration cost constitute unique forces in affecting the incorporation experiences of Mexican and Chinese immigrants respectively.

Fino, Michelle. Fruit and Vegetable Intake and Exercise Practices of College Students of Color. Dissertation Abstracts International: Social Sciences and Humanities, vol. 71, no. 11, pp. 3916, 2011.

• Abstract: Chronic diseases like heart disease, diabetes, and cancer are the leading causes of death in the United States, with people of color experiencing higher rates than the general population. Like most adults, college students typically do not adhere to nutrition and exercise recommendations that are in place to reduce the risks of chronic illnesses and promote good health. With increasing numbers of students of color attending college today, colleges must address their health and wellness needs. The purpose of this dissertation was to study the exercise behaviors and fruit and vegetable intake of college students of color by determining if relationships exist between various characteristics of students of color and their health habits. This study used a subsample of 5,587 African American, Asian American, Latina/o and Native American college students of color from the American College Health Association’s National College Health Assessment fall 2008 nationwide college health survey. The results of this study indicate African American, Asian American, Latina/o and Native American college students do not meet current exercise or fruit and vegetable intake recommendations, with female students in all groups exercising less than their male counterparts. The results also indicated that distinct factors predicted fruit and vegetable intake and exercise practices for African American, Asian American, Latina/o and Native American college students. This study proposes a research-based Healthy Campus Committee model designed to improve the nutrition practices and increase exercise activity among African American, Asian American, Latina/o and Native American college students.

Kamimura, Mark Allen. Multiracial College Students: Understanding Interpersonal Self-Concept in the First Year. Dissertation Abstracts International: Social Sciences and Humanities, vol. 71, no. 11, pp. 3923, 2011.

• Abstract: This purpose of this study was to explore the differences between mixed and single race students in the factors that contribute to an interpersonal self-concept. The data in this study are drawn from a national longitudinal survey, Your First College Year (YFCY), from 2004-2005 and includes mixed race Black and Asian students in comparison to their single race Black and Asian single race peers to explore interpersonal self-concept. The results suggest that mixed and single race Asian and Black students have different pre-college and first year experiences. Only mixed race Black students were found to develop a significantly higher interpersonal self-concept after their first-year than their single race peers. However, most importantly for mixed and single race students are their interactions with diverse peers. For all groups, both negative and positive interactions based on race within the college environment directly impact interpersonal self-concept. First-year college experiences (Positive Ethnic/Racial Relations, Racial Interactions of a Negative Quality, Leadership Orientation, Sense of Belonging, Campus Racial Climate, Self-Assessed Cognitive Development) were the most significant contributors to the development of an interpersonal self-concept in comparison to pre-college experiences. The slight differences between Black and Asian interpersonal self-concept are discussed. The findings in this study expand the literature on multiracial college students and provide empirical evidence to support institutional practices that aim to promote a positive interpersonal self-concept in the first college year.

Samura, Michelle A. Architecture of Diversity: Dilemmas of Race and Space for Asian American Students in Higher Education. Dissertation Abstracts International: Social Sciences and Humanities, vol. 71, no. 11, pp. 3927, 2011.

• Abstract: This mixed methods study examines the contradictory experiences of Asian American college students who are simultaneously experiencing the benefits of academic success, including socioeconomic mobility and, to a certain extent, social inclusion, yet are unable to escape racialization. Conceptually, this study both incorporates and challenges recent work on Asian American identity and racial politics. Empirically, this investigation examines the uncertainties and varying experiences of Asian American college students “from below.” That is, rather than assuming that Asian Americans students, and Asian Americans more generally, are already located within the contemporary US racial order, my perspective emphasizes their efforts to position themselves. Asian American college students’ experiences are examined in depth by using a unique combination of qualitative and quantitative methods, spatial theory, and visual sociology. A symbolic interactionist approach is employed to understand how they situate themselves within the rapidly changing dynamics of Asian American racialization today. Qualitative analysis of interviews and quantitative analysis of data from a large scale longitudinal survey of undergraduate students’ experiences, combined with analysis of student-created photographs reveal that many Asian American college students are grappling with a series of dilemmas and tensions. These dilemmas are a result of the conflicting messages they are receiving about the role of higher education in their lives and the fluctuating levels of salience of Asian American racial identity. Furthermore, membership within the pan-ethnic racial category of “Asian American” is not assumed for many of these students. In fact, a number of the participants in this study are unsure about the importance of their Asian American racial identity and frequently contesting, negotiate, and, in some cases, ignore (or at least attempt to ignore) their racial identifications.

Lim, Jeehyun. Between foreigners and citizens: Bilinguals in Asian American and Latino literature, 1960–2000. Dissertation Abstracts International: Social Sciences and Humanities, vol. 71, no. 11, pp. 4024, 2011.

• Abstract: The immigration reform of 1965 ushered in a tide of multiculturalism in the U.S. The new immigration changed the demographics of the U.S. as Asians and Latinos came to form the two largest groups of immigrants in the post-1965 era. The social debates on bilingualism between 1967, when bilingual education was first debated in Congress, and 1998, when Proposition 227 banned bilingual education from public schools in California, illustrate the negotiations around the incorporation of Asian Americans and Latinos into the national body. While the popular understanding of bilingualism in the 1960s viewed it as a disadvantage — a euphemism for linguistic handicap — the liberal approach to bilingualism tried to turn the liability of bilingualism into an asset. The two faces of bilingualism as liability and asset correspond to the oscillating position of Asian Americans and Latinos as racialized subjects and exemplary multicultural subjects in multiculturalism. In this dissertation, I place a number of well-known Asian American literary texts in dialogue with the debates on bilingualism to examine what the social discourse of bilingualism can offer for understanding of these texts and to see what the literary representations of bilinguals can show about the psychology and affective landscape of bilingualism that often go unnoted in the social discourse of bilingualism. I argue that the representation of bilinguals in Asian American and Latino literature shows the social negotiations around bilingualism that either result in the bilingual’s becoming an exemplary citizen-subject or her perpetual relegation to a realm outside the social norms. The writers I examine, including Maxine Hong Kingston, Helena Maria Viramontes, Richard Rodriguez, Chang-rae Lee, Julia Alvarez, and Ha Jin, show the depth and breadth of a literary imagination that reaches into the heart of the psychological and social experiences of bilinguals. In their writings, the bilingual characters ruminate on the meaning of language and belonging, negotiate their state of racialization in and between two languages, and configure the place of language between identity and commodity. The literary bilingual’s navigation of the various social values accorded bilingualism demonstrates the place of the Asian American and Latino subject within a managerial multiculturalism.

Schiff, Sarah Eden. Word of Myth: Critical Stories in Minority American Literature. Dissertation Abstracts International: Social Sciences and Humanities, vol. 71, no. 11, pp. 4026, 2011.

• Abstract: Since the 1960s, African American, Native American, Asian American, and Chicano/a literatures have captivated the national imagination. “Word of Myth” contends that minority authors’ pervasive use of myth has been foundational to this boom in literary production. Because it imposes order on the unknown and makes what is historically specific seem natural and timeless, myth has proven invaluable for minority authors to challenge master narratives while simultaneously reconstructing marginalized ones. Though myth is conventionally understood as a politically conservative narrative form, I argue that it can both conserve and liberate, sanction and qualify. In myth, minority writers found the means to transmit cultural values, intellectual traditions, and silenced histories while retaining an oppositional political stance. To map the ways crosscultural US literatures deploy myth, I draw on a broad spectrum of myth theory, from mid-century structuralists Carl Jung and Mircea Eliade to more recent scholars of religion and philosophy such as Paul Ricoeur and Wendy Doniger. Considering texts by contemporaneous authors across cultural divides, each chapter of my dissertation identifies formal dynamics by which US literatures of race and ethnicity forge symbolic space for alternate mythologies in order to confront the leviathan of American exceptionalism. Because myth appears in all cultures but demands cultural context to be understood, it proves to be an especially useful theoretical lens for comparative American literary studies. By making myth a central critical category, “Word of Myth” identifies literary strategies used in common by authors of disparate racial backgrounds, explains the significance of these connections in the context of national politics, and thereby revises the prevailing narrative of American literary history. Rather than a series of unconnected movements or an assortment of multicultural tokens, post-1960s US minority literature, through its emplotment of alternate origin stories, has fundamentally changed the imagination of Americans — both how we imagine and who we imagine Americans to be.

Li, Shijian. When Does Social Capital Matter for Health? The Moderating Roles of Ethnicity, Income and Gender. Dissertation Abstracts International: Social Sciences and Humanities, vol. 71, no. 11, pp. 4181, 2011.

• Abstract: Many empirical studies have suggested that social capital is positively related to health. However, little research has been conducted into how social capital is distributed and whether social capital matters for health uniformly or differentially across socio-economic statuses or racial/ethnic groups in the United States. This research seeks to address the gaps by examining the distribution of social capital across racial/ethnic, income, education and gender groups in the general population as well as among three Asian American subpopulations. It investigates whether social capital is associated with Asian Americans’ health, and, if so, whether such associations are moderated by ethnicity, income or gender. The research draws data from two nationally representative surveys: the National Comorbidity Survey Replication (NCS-R), and the National Latino and Asian American Study (NLAAS). Exploratory factor analysis is used to generate social capital indicators from respondents’ social networks and their subjective evaluations of family and neighborhood life. Dependent variables include both physical and mental health outcomes as well as health behavior. Findings reveal that Whites, females and individuals with higher incomes and more education have higher levels of social capital. Logistic regression analysis shows that while social capital, in particular structural social capital, is generally associated with better health outcomes, some dimensions of social capital are associated with an increased risk of smoking. More importantly, the study finds that social capital and health associations are moderated by ethnicity, income and gender, with Vietnamese and low-income individuals receiving higher returns from social capital. Additionally, the negative effect of social capital on smoking is much stronger for women than for men. The findings of this study provide empirical evidence for a new line of reasoning which views the value of social capital for health as contingent on social context. Future research should take social context into account when examining the health effects of social capital. Additionally, social work practitioners should consider tailored interventions for targeted populations in order to maximize the benefits of social capital while minimizing its negative effects. As empirical investigations in this field are relatively new, additional research is needed to advance theory, research and practice.

Lee, Sharon S. (Un)seen and (Un)heard: The Struggle for Asian American “Minority” Recognition at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 1968-1997. Dissertation Abstracts International: Social Sciences and Humanities, vol. 71, no. 12, pp. 4305, 2011.

• Abstract: Are Asian American college students “minorities”? Using a measure of statistical parity of a student body compared to a state’s demographics, Asian Americans have often been excluded from minority student status because they are “overrepresented.” As a result, universities overlook their need for culturally and racially relevant curricula and support services. Unable to argue that they are underrepresented and depicted as the “model minority,” Asian American students have struggled to have their educational needs seen and heard. This dissertation examines the historical development of academic and support services for Asian American students at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) from 1968 to 1997. UIUC is home to the largest Asian American Studies program and Asian American cultural center in the Midwest, products of years of activism by Asian American students who challenged university discourses that they were not minorities. By investigating archival and oral evidence, the complex and nuanced experiences of Asian American students are revealed, beyond misperceptions of their seamless integration in predominantly white universities and beyond model minority stereotypes. This study of Asian American students offers a broader concept of “minority status” that is currently limited by a statistical focus and a black/white racial lens.

Fung, Catherine Minyee. Perpetual Refugee: Memory of the Vietnam War in Asian American Literature. Dissertation Abstracts International: Social Sciences and Humanities, vol. 71, no. 12, pp. 4392, 2011.

• Abstract: This dissertation investigates the ways in which the refugee provides a counternarrative to models of citizenship that privilege immigration and assimilation. I treat the refugee as a figure that is suspended between citizen and alien, and that is at once constructed by state apparatuses and deployed in order to reify or contest what the nation supposedly stands for. Refugee status is granted with adherence to specific laws and regulations set by the US and the international community. At the same time, the “success” or “failure” of refugees’ resettlement is often used to both rewrite the US’s involvement in past wars and justify its involvement in current ones. For example, the narrative of the “good refugee,” which valorizes capitalism and equates “freedom” with upward mobility, is now often used to fold the Vietnam War into the United States’ list of “good wars.” Rather than view the refugee as a mere byproduct of war, I argue for a method of treating the refugee as a rubric upon which the United States constructs its collective history. Thus Perpetual Refugee offers a critical examination of how the Vietnam War serves as a condition that allows for refugees to be represented, as well as of the terms of citizenship that the war negotiates. Chapter One examines Vietnamese American cultural production, focusing on the ways in which memoirs written by second-generation Vietnamese Americans channel memory of the war, and the loss that it produced, through tropes of wounding, which become the condition that grants visibility for refugees in the United States. Chapter Two expands upon this issue of nationalism and visibility through an examination of a refugee group that is “nation-less” and largely invisible: the Hmong who fought as allies to the U.S. during the “Secret War” in Laos and Cambodia. Chapter Three unpacks the category of the refugee as it is mediated through literary, psychological and legal discourses. Chapter Four challenges the genre of “Vietnam War literature” by reading Monique Truong’s The Book of Salt as a novel that relies on memory of the war in producing its meaning.

Zhou, Chao. Three Essays on the Economics of Racial and Ethnic Differences. Dissertation Abstracts International: Social Sciences and Humanities, vol. 71, no. 12, pp. 4497, 2011.

• Abstract: The United States contains an enormous variety of racial and ethnic groups, many of which have faced discrimination, both historically and today. My dissertation studies how minority races and ethnic groups were (and are) treated differently and how these treatments affect economic outcomes from different angles, including income, education, employment and health. Historically, blacks were denied access to many hospitals because of their race. Chapter One uses a historical natural experiment — federally-mandated hospital desegregation — to study the impact of access on racial differences in deaths from motor vehicle accidents. Focusing primarily on Mississippi, I use detailed micro-data from the US Vital Statistics matched with race-specific hospital survey information. Combining this data set with a race-specific distance to the nearest hospital before and after integration, I find that, on average, distance to nearest hospital fell by 50 miles for blacks after integration. I also show that distance and accident mortality were positively correlated: increases in distance to the nearest hospital were associated with higher mortality. Chapter Two focuses on a contemporary issue — Racial and ethnic differences in medical utilization. I focus on the heart failure because it is the leading noncancerous diagnosis for patients in hospice care and the leading cause of hospitalization among Medicare beneficiaries. In a national sample of Medicare beneficiaries with heart failure, I find that blacks and Hispanics used hospice care for heart failure less than whites after adjustment for individual and market factors. Blending both historical and contemporary analysis, Chapter 3 studies a previously unnoticed trend — a secular decline from 1960 to 2000 in the relative likelihood that Asian-Americans worked in the public sector. In 1960 Asian Americans were nearly ten percentage points more likely to work in the public sector than were Whites, but by 2000 the gap had declined to two percentage points. I argue that this relative decline in public employment reflects relative improvement over time in labor market outcomes in the private sector for Asian Americans.

Carlisle, Shauna K. From Healthy to Unhealthy: Disaggregating the Relationship between Race, Nativity, Perceived Discrimination, and Chronic Health. Dissertation Abstracts International: Social Sciences and Humanities, vol. 71, no. 12, pp. 4565, 2011.

• Abstract: There is a clear association between race and health outcomes in the United States. Needed is a systematic examination of the relationship between chronic health and race, ethnicity, nativity, and length of residency. Further, the role of perceived discrimination and health decline must be explored beyond broad racial categories with the inclusion of Caribbean ethnic subgroups. Utilizing the linked data from the Collaborative Psychiatric Epidemiology Surveys (CPES), this dissertation addresses the gap in literature by examining differences in reports of chronic cardiovascular, chronic respiratory, and chronic pain conditions across three samples of Asian American (n=1,628), Latino Americans (n=1,940), and Afro-Caribbean American (n=978) respondents. Chapter 2 examines the ethnic subgroup variation in chronic health by comparing self-reports of chronic conditions across diverse subgroups of Asian American (Vietnamese, Filipino, Chinese), Latino American (Cuban, Portuguese, Mexican), and Afro-Caribbean (Haitian, Jamaican, Trinidadian/Tobagonian) respondents. Chi square analysis reveals significant differences by race for chronic cardiovascular [c2 (2, n=4969) 16.77, p< .00001, respiratory [c2 (2, n=4975) 10.23, p<.0001], and pain conditions [c2 (2, n=4973) .22, p>.8]. Logistic regression revealed significant differences in reports of chronic conditions across nine ethnic subgroups Chapter 3 examines the nativity differences in reports of chronic cardiovascular, respiratory, and pain conditions between foreign-born (n=3,579) and native-born (n=1,409) respondents. Results reveal that native-born respondents were significantly more likely to report chronic respiratory [c2(1, n=4958) 30.78, p^,.05] and pain [c2(1, n-4958) 3.77, p^,.05] conditions than were their foreign-born counterparts. Logistic regression models reveal significant associations between chronic conditions, and other demographic factors known to influence immigrant health. Chapter 4 explores the relationship between chronic conditions, nativity, perceived discrimination, and length of residency among the three racial and nine ethnic subgroups. Afro-Caribbean subgroups were more likely to report perceived discrimination than Asian and Latino American subgroups were. However, a significant positive association with perceived discrimination was found only for Latino American respondents (b=.60; P^,01). An interaction term called “exposure” was created to estimate the effects of long-term exposure to perceived discrimination among foreign-born respondents in this study. Logistic regression analysis was conducted to determine which groups within the model were more likely to report exposure effects.

Jain, Sonali. For Love and Money: Second-Generation Indian American Professionals in the Emerging Indian Economy. Dissertation Abstracts International: Social Sciences and Humanities, vol. 71, no. 12, pp. 4579, 2011.

• Abstract: Against a background of shifting global economic dynamics, this dissertation explores questions raised when an emergent migration stream — that of high-skilled, second-generation Indian American professionals — “returns” to India, even as their parents continue to reside in the US. My analysis draws from qualitative interviews with 48 second-generation Indian Americans working in the Indian cities of New Delhi, Mumbai and Hyderabad, and I supplement the interviews with ethnographic data. I find that second-generation Indian Americans “return” to take advantage of economic opportunities in the emerging Indian economy and also to emotionally connect or reconnect to the ancestral homeland. Drawing on sociological frameworks of globalization and transnationalism, I examine the lived experiences of second-generation Indian Americans in three spheres in India: home, work and community. My analysis reveals that in the home sphere, even as respondents realize a deepening of their attachments to India, they struggle with the social and cultural realities of living in a “new” and globalized India. Their experiences are shaped in part by their location in a transnational social field spanning the US and India, which affords them the opportunity to constantly juxtapose and compare their lives in both countries. In the work sphere, I find that they strategically emphasize both Indian and American ethnicities. Ethnicity then becomes a powerful tool that respondents selectively deploy in order to accrue advantages in the workplace. As they adapt to life in India, many connect to the country on a more personal level, as manifested by their engagement in the civic sphere. Animated by a desire to contribute to “India”, respondents get involved in civic life in India in a variety of ways, facilitated in part by their embeddedness in transnational networks spanning the US and India. The findings from this dissertation point to the emergence of an important but under-recognized phenomenon in the transnational migration literature. At least for some second-generation immigrant groups, “return” to the ancestral homeland may be a growing phenomenon, with important implications for questions of transnational mobility, belonging and ethnicity.

Kang, Hyeyoung. Exploring Sense of Indebtedness toward Parents among Korean American Youth. Dissertation Abstracts International: Social Sciences and Humanities, vol. 71, no. 12, pp. 4582, 2011.

• Abstract: Korean American youth experience immigration-related parent-child challenges including language barriers, generational cultural divides, and parental unavailability. Despite these challenges, studies suggest their lack of negative effects on these youth’s global perception of their parents and an indication of positive relationships in Korean immigrant families. Evidence suggests the important role of Korean American youth’s positive meaning-making in their perceptions of their parents and past family challenges, as well as the salience of their perception of parental sacrifice in the process of positive meaning making. Thus this study proposed Korean American youth’s sense of indebtedness toward parents as an important concept that may be useful to understand the gap between parent-child challenges and their outcome among Korean immigrant families. Using symbolic interactionism theory and grounded theory methods, this exploratory qualitative study examined the role of Korean American youth’s sense of indebtedness toward their parents in understanding the process of positive meaning-making. The findings show that the majority of these youth developed their narrative sense of indebtedness toward parents, in which they incorporated SIP-related perceptions into their own narratives. However, only some youth internalized sense of indebtedness toward parents, making these perceptions integral part of their own beliefs by attributing personal and significant meaning to these perceptions. The findings suggest that Korean American youth’s internalization of sense of indebtedness toward parents may play a role as a protective factor against parent-child challenges by positively affecting the youth in cognitive, affective, and behavioural domain, through which it appeared to help youth overcome parent-child challenges and promote more positive parent-child relationships.

Chatterji, Miabi. The Hierarchies of Help: South Asian Service Workers in New York City. Dissertation Abstracts International: Social Sciences and Humanities, vol. 72, no. 01, pp. 0248, 2011.

• Abstract: Services are the fastest-growing sector of the U.S. economy and are sold to the working class as a source of sustainable employment that will replace manufacturing jobs. Drawing on ethnographic research with South Asian low-wage immigrant workers in three South Asian American commercial enclaves in New York City as well as their managers and Mexican and Central American coworkers, I challenge this vision of the service sector as a new haven of working-class stability. In-person service jobs are chronically contingent, insecure, and idiosyncratically managed, and contemporary urban services are largely unregulated, with weak enforcement of laws for worker protection. This environment leaves low-wage immigrant employees — the backbone of the industry — open to a wide range of abuses. Through analyzing my participants’ everyday conflicts with one another, their narrations of their dating and love lives, and their fraught interactions with their managers, this study shows how recent immigrants run a gauntlet of racialization, gendering, and the molding of class consciousness. In response, they fashion their own informal rules in order to make sense of their work world and define their positions within it. My analysis of their predicament, while extending the scholarship on urban immigrant communities, has critical implications for the politics of multiracial labor in the modern workplace.

Hall, Matthew S. From a World Away to Living Next Door: The Residential Segregation and Attainment of America’s Newest Immigrants. Dissertation Abstracts International: Social Sciences and Humanities, vol. 72, no. 01, pp. 0379, 2011.

• Abstract: As the immigrant population in the U.S. swells in size and expands across the geographic landscape, virtually every aspect of contemporary social life is being transformed, influencing natives’ job prospects, the challenges faced by local schools, and America’s ethnic mix and cultural identity. These and other issues are closely related to immigrant settlement patterns across U.S. neighborhoods. Understanding immigrants’ imprint on the residential landscape is thus central to broader debates over how immigration impacts American life and how immigrants fare in their new home. This dissertation seeks to address this important topic by providing a detailed, yet comprehensive account of new immigrants’ residential circumstances. Specifically, I use neighborhood-level data from Census 2000 and household-level data from the American Housing Survey to explore patterns and correlates of residential segregation and attainment for ten new immigrant groups. In sum, I find that the assimilation of new immigrants is clearly underway: Greater socioeconomic resources and acculturation are associated with greater proximity to native-born whites, lower residential isolation, higher-quality housing, and better neighborhoods. On the other hand, my research also points to a rigid racial/ethnic pattern with Asian immigrants being less segregated and occupying superior housing and neighborhood environments than Latin American and Caribbean immigrants. The extraordinarily high levels of segregation for black immigrants are especially disturbing and indicate the continued relevance of the principle of black exceptionalism. I also show that the fairly high levels of immigrant group segregation in established metropolitan areas are being reproduced in new and nongateway metropolitan destinations. Despite some of these troubling patterns, my analysis generally suggests that immigrant segregation does not translate into poor housing and neighborhood outcomes. While I do find that the odds of homeownership are lower for immigrants in segregated contexts, and that segregation is consistently detrimental for Mexican immigrants’ residential attainment, segregation tends to have no effect or exerts positive ones on other measures of housing and neighborhood quality. All in all, this research points not just to the challenges faced by new arrivals in American residential life, but also to the clear signs that new immigrants are participating in the American Dream.

Narui, Mitsu. A Foucauldian analysis of Asian/American Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual Students’ Process of Disclosing their Sexual Orientation and Its Impact on Identity Construction. Dissertation Abstracts International: Social Sciences and Humanities, vol. 72, no. 02, pp. 0554, 2011.

• Abstract: In recent years, the number of traditional-aged Asian/American gay, lesbian and bisexual (GLB) college students has steadily increased. Despite this trend, this population has largely been neglected within the research literature. As a group, Asian/American GLB students are distinctively positioned within society, facing pressures from the Asian/American, White, heterosexual, and GLB communities. The purpose of this study was to better understand how and why Asian/American GLB students disclosed their sexual orientation to others during college and the impact of that disclosure on their construction of identity. Methodologically, a Fouaculdian analysis (particularly situational analysis) was conducted with the primary data sources being semi-structured interviews; secondary sources included documents (including blogs, Facebook posts, and personal essays), participant observations, and fieldwork. Overall, the goal of this study was to find out how disclosing one’s sexual orientation affected the study’s participants’ experiences in college.

Guerrero, Perla M. Impacting Arkansas: Vietnamese and Cuban Refugees and Latina/o Immigrants, 1975-2005. Dissertation Abstracts International: Social Sciences and Humanities, vol. 72, no. 02, pp. 0636, 2011.

• Abstract: This research considers the effects of the arrival of refugees from Vietnam and Cuba and Latina/o immigrants (mainly ethnic Mexicans) to the U.S. South. I use newspaper articles and state and federal archives to analyze how refugees and immigrants were racialized in the state. I examine each group’s racialization with attention to the historical moment in which they entered homogenously White, Protestant, and Republican northwest Arkansas and I find that contextual forces such as local history, U.S. foreign policy, national political context, social class status, and dominant racial discourses articulated in ways that drew on long-standing ideologies. The racialization of Vietnamese refugees in 1975 was affected by their placement in Arkansas at the end of the Vietnam War, in a moment when the nation was dealing with having lost an exceptionally contentious episode within the ongoing Cold War. Vietnamese were cautiously welcomed with a rhetoric of American values which opposed communism and had to make good on promises to help the United States’ former allies. Their reception was further shaped by their status as largely professionals, college-educated, and English-proficient, nonetheless, fear of “yellow peril” promulgated. In contrast to the Vietnamese, Cuban refugees arrived in 1980 amidst national and international accusations that Fidel Castro’s government had unleashed criminals, prostitutes, and the mentally ill. Given these circumstances, and that this cohort of Cuban refugees was largely working-class, gay, and of African descent, they were constructed as criminal and deviant and Arkansans and their politicians mobilized to remove them from the state. Latinas/os (immigrants and U.S.-born), particularly ethnic Mexicans, began arriving in the early 1990s during a significant economic regional reorganization which provided many of them with low-wage work. They were all quickly constructed as “illegal aliens,” with their behaviors in public and private spaces severely condemned and policed. The history and relationship between the State of Arkansas and the federal government also shaped the reception of the groups in important ways as local (city and state) versus extra-local (federal agencies) control became central to the debates over the changes occurring in northwest Arkansas. Generally, there were hostile reactions toward Vietnamese, Cubans, and ethnic Mexicans because Arkansans deemed the new groups a threat to their community, their way of life, and their country.

Willms, Nicole A. Japanese-American Basketball: Constructing Gender, Ethnicity, and Community. Dissertation Abstracts International: Social Sciences and Humanities, vol. 72, no. 03, pp. 0997, 2011.

• Abstract: This study explores the ways that an ethnic-based sports league organizes and understands itself in the context of larger racial /ethnic and gender hegemonies in sport. Using primarily qualitative data drawn from observations and interviews, augmented by archival and survey research, I analyze the social construction of gender, ethnicity, and community within Japanese-American basketball leagues and tournaments (“J-Leagues”) in the Los Angeles area using a three-level theoretical framework that examines social interactions, structural contexts, and cultural symbols. Japanese-American Basketball is an institution with a unique gender regime that provides a space for and is supported by cultural symbols and social interactions that differ from those typically found in mainstream sports. The core reason for this alternate pattern in gender relations is the importance of community-building for Japanese Americans. Girls and women in the leagues are a necessary component of community-building — their active participation is an important element for maintaining the expansiveness of the leagues. Successful women connected to the J-Leagues also provide symbolic resources for the Japanese-American community that help build ethnic solidarity and that are seen as comparable, if not superior, to those offered by male counterparts. Within this milieu, female athleticism is normalized, encouraged, supported and respected. Outside of the community, however, girls and women often face different reactions. The gender regime in the J-Leagues exists in the context of larger sociohistorical circumstances. Early discriminatory laws and practices punctuated by the mass incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II created the settings, necessity, and desire for a strong ethnic community. These same circumstances also served to erode elements of patriarchy within the Japanese-American family. These structures influenced Japanese Americans to place a high value on institutions that promote community and to be open to active participation by women (particularly when it serves the goals of maintaining community). Furthermore, the enduring racialization of Japanese Americans in the United States as “Asian” involves controlling images that often portray women as small, weak, and feminine while also regarding them as foreign and unassimilable. This study reveals the ways in which engagement with a physical and all-American sport such as basketball contests both types of images. Participation by either sex — and especially successful participation in mainstream environments — feeds this counter-hegemonic project.

The following is a list of recent academic journal articles and doctoral dissertations from scholars in the social sciences and humanities that focus on race/ethnicity and/or immigration, with a particular emphasis on Asian Americans. The academic journal articles are generally available in the libraries of most colleges and universities and/or through online research databases. As always, works included in this list are for informational purposes only and do not imply an endorsement of their contents.

Special Issue: “Generations.” Asian American Literary Review. (Volume 3, Issue 1, Spring 2012).

“Are there any continuities,” wonders scholar Min Hyoung Song, “between the earlier generation of writers which first raised the banner of an Asian American literature and a later generation of writers which inherited it?”

This is the question AALR’s Spring 2012 issue on “Generations” poses to 29 writers, poets, playwrights, spoken word performers, scholars, and publishers of various generations, regions, and ethnic and artistic communities. What emerges is a vital survey of generational continuities and divergences-not to mention some necessary reevaluation of how “generations,” “Asian American,” and “Asian American literature” might be understood. Respondents include Genny Lim, David Mura, Velina Hasu Houston, Giles Li, Gary Pak, Neelanjana Banerjee, Fred Wah, Anna Kazumi Stahl, Sunyoung Lee of Kaya Press, and Allan Kornblum of Coffee House Press, among others.

Other issue features include: Maxine Hong Kingston interviewed by Min Hyoung Song; Miguel Syjuco interviewed by Brian Ascalon Roley; Afaa Michael Weaver interviewed by Gerald Maa; a dialogue on “Asian American form” between Karen Tei Yamashita, Sesshu Foster, R. Zamora Linmark, Ray Hsu, Timothy Yu, Larissa Lai, Lawrence-Minh Bùi Davis, and Srikanth Reddy; new poetry by Dilruba Ahmed, Ed Bok Lee, R. Zamora Linmark, Wing Tek Lum, and Afaa Michael Weaver; an email to Monique Truong from The New York Times; new writing by Ed Park; translations of work by Hiromi Itō and Carlos Yushimito del Valle; reviews of Tao Lin’s Shoplifting from American Apparel and Richard Yates, the new edition of Sui Sin Far’s Mrs. Spring Fragrance, Srikanth Reddy’s Voyager, and Monique Truong’s Bitter in the Mouth.

Special Issue: “Asian Americans in Global Cities: Los Angeles – New York Connections and Comparisons.” AAPI Nexus: Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders — Policy, Practice and Community. (Volume 10, Number 2, Fall 2012).

This special AAPI Nexus issue examines Asian American experiences in global cities through comparative studies of Los Angeles and New York. The demographic facts are astonishing — more than a quarter of the sixteen million Asian Americans reside in either of the two greater metropolises where they comprise more than a tenth of the total population in each region. Consequently, it is difficult to fully understand and appreciate Asian American experiences without studying these two global cities.

The comparative approach offers great analytical potential because it can generate insights into what phenomena transcend regions and patterns that are produced by factors and forces common to Asian Americans regardless of location and fundamental global-city processes. The comparative approach can also identify phenomena that are unique to each region, such as outcomes of specific local and regional structures and dynamics. . . .

Our hope is that this issue will be a stimulus to further theorizing and empirical analyses of Asian Americans in global cities including those beyond Los Angeles and New York. . . . Scholarly research, however, is not sufficient. Our goal was to compile a set of articles that contributes to engaged practices. . . . We believe that this principle should be integral to future comparative work.

List of articles:

• Shih, Howard and Melany De La Cruz-Viesca. “A Tale of Two Global Cities: The State of Asian Americans in Los Angeles and New York.”

• Nakaoka, Susan. “Cultivating a Cultural Home Space: The Case of Little Tokyo’s Budokan of Los Angeles Project.”

• Sze, Lena. “This is Part of Our History: Preserving Garment Manufacturing and a Sense of Home in Manhattan’s Chinatown.”

• Le, C.N. “New Dimensions of Self-Employment among Asian Americans in Los Angeles and New York.”

• Rotramel, Ariella. “We Make the Spring Rolls, They Make Their Own Rules: Filipina Domestic Workers’ Fight for Labor Rights in New York City and Los Angeles.”

• Chang, Benji and Juhyung Harold Lee. “Community-Based? Asian American Students, Parents, and Teachers in Shifting Chinatowns of New York and Los Angeles.”

Yep, Kathleen S. 2012. “Peddling Sport: Liberal Multiculturalism and the Racial Triangulation of Blackness, Chineseness and Native American-ness in Professional Basketball.” Ethnic and Racial Studies. 35(6):971–987.

• Abstract: Abstract Deploying liberal multiculturalist discourse, the media depicts professional basketball as a post-racial space where all talented players, regardless of their race, can thrive if they work hard. An analysis of the construction of non-white players in the 1930s and in 2010 demonstrates sport as modulated by racially charged discourse. As part of a liberal multiculturalist frame, the coding of basketball players as hero, threat and novelty serve to privilege whiteness and replicate racialized and gendered images that can be traced to the 1930s. In doing so, the article highlights how liberal multiculturalism involves racial triangulation and the simultaneous processes of hyper-racialization and de-racialization.

Kiang, Lisa, Jamie Lee Peterson, and Taylor L Thompson. 2011. “Ethnic Peer Preferences Among Asian American Adolescents in Emerging Immigrant Communities.” Journal of Research on Adolescence. 21(4):754–761.

• Abstract: Growing diversity and evidence that diverse friendships enhance psychosocial success highlight the importance of understanding adolescents’ ethnic peer preferences. Using social identity and social contact frameworks, the ethnic preferences of 169 Asian American adolescents (60% female) were examined in relation to ethnic identity, perceived discrimination, and language proficiency. Adolescents with same- and mixed-ethnic friends reported significantly greater ethnic centrality than those with mostly different-ethnic friends. Adolescents with same-ethnic friends reported significantly higher perceived discrimination and lower English proficiency than those with mixed- and different-ethnic friends. Open-ended responses were linked to quantitative data and provided further insight into specific influences on peer preferences (e.g., shared traditions, homophily). Results speak to the importance of cultural experiences in structuring the friendships and everyday lives of adolescents.

Narui, Mitsu. 2011. “Understanding Asian/American Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual Experiences from a Poststructural Perspective.” Journal of Homosexuality. 58(9):1211–1234.

• Abstract: This study explores the college experiences of nine Asian/American gay, lesbian, and bisexual students and, specifically, the impact of concealing or revealing their sexual orientation on their emerging sense of self. By utilizing a Foucauldian, poststructural theoretical perspective, the researcher found that the students navigated multiple discourses, and their decisions about revealing their sexual orientation were based on relationships formed within those discourses. These decisions, in turn, helped many of the students grasp their emerging agency within the dominant discourse. To conclude, the researcher discusses the implications of these findings for higher education as a whole.

Diaz, Maria-elena D. 2012. “Asian Embeddedness and Political Participation: Social Integration and Asian-American Voting Behavior in the 2000 Presidential Election.” Sociological Perspectives. 55(1):141–166.

• Abstract: Despite the abundance of electoral research, a recurring finding is that Asian-Americans in multivariate analyses are less likely to vote compared to all other Americans. Yet Asians have high levels of education and income, the strongest predictors of voting behavior. This article goes beyond individual-level characteristics and examines how the ways in which Asian-Americans are connected to communities moderate individual-level characteristics and influence their electoral participation. Using hierarchical generalized linear modeling, variability in Asian-American voting behavior is studied with 2000 Current Population Survey voting data and county data primarily from the 2000 U.S. Census. The main findings are that social integration, either by highly assimilating communities or through ethnic organizing, facilitates political incorporation and electoral participation. Where neither condition exists, Asian-Americans are less likely to vote.

Pih, Kay Kei‐ho, Akihiko Hirose, and KuoRay Mao. 2012. “The Invisible Unattended: Low‐wage Chinese Immigrant Workers, Health Care, and Social Capital in Southern California’s San Gabriel Valley.” Sociological Inquiry. 82(2):236–256.

• Abstract: This study investigates the factors affecting the availability of health insurance, the accessibility of health care, and the dissemination of the relevant information among low-wage Chinese immigrants in Southern California by relying on the concepts of social and cultural capital. Using community-based research and in-depth interviews, our study suggests that a severe shortage in health care coverage among low-wage Chinese immigrants is influenced by the lack of employment with employer-provided health insurance within the Chinese “ethnoburb” community. Although the valuable social capital generated by Chinese immigrant networks seems to be sufficient enough to provide them with certain practical resources, the lack of cultural capital renders the social network rather ineffective in providing critical health care information from mainstream American society.

Zonta, Michela M. 2012. “The Continuing Significance of Ethnic Resources: Korean-Owned Banks in Los Angeles, New York and Washington DC.” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies. 38(3):463–484.

• Abstract: Mirroring the geographic expansion of the Korean population and Korean-owned businesses beyond long-established enclaves, Korean-owned banks can increasingly be found in areas where the presence of mainstream banks is more visible and competition is potentially stronger. Yet, despite competition, Korean banks continue to expand and thrive. By focusing on the recent development of Korean banking in Los Angeles, New York and Washington DC, this article explores the role of ethnic resources in the expansion of Korean banking outside their protected market. Findings suggest that ethnic resources and ties to ethnic enclaves are still important in supporting the ethnic economy in environments characterised by weaker ties and increasing competition by mainstream businesses.

Spencer, James H., Petrice R. Flowers, and Jungmin Seo. 2012. “Post-1980s Multicultural Immigrant Neighbourhoods: Koreatowns, Spatial Identities and Host Regions in the Pacific Rim.” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies. 38(3):437–461.

• Abstract: Recent trends in migration across the Pacific Rim have suggested that neighbourhoods have become important sources of community identity, requiring a re-evaluation of the relationship between urban places and immigrants. Specifically, we argue that the notion of ethnic enclaves may not fit well with some of the newer, post-1980s immigrant populations in Pacific Rim cities. Using data from the cases of Los Angeles, Tokyo and Beijing, we argue that Korean settlement in these cities represents a new kind of immigrant neighbourhood that links Korean migrants with other migrant communities, consumers in the broader region and local government interests to produce places that mitigate increasingly multicultural and multi-ethnic urban hierarchies in their localities. This role has become particularly important regarding real estate and economic development strategies.

Yoon, In-Jin. 2012. “Migration and the Korean Diaspora: A Comparative Description of Five Cases.” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies. 38(3):413–435.

• Abstract: The international migration and settlement of Koreans began in 1860 and there are now about 6.8 million overseas Koreans in 170 countries. Each wave of Korean migration was driven by different historical factors in the homeland and the host countries, and hence the motivations and characteristics of Korean immigrants in each period were different. The diverse conditions in and government policies of the host countries also affected the mode of entry and incorporation of Koreans. A contrast is drawn between the ?old? and the ?new? Korean migrations. The former consists of those who migrated to Russia, China, America and Japan from the mid-nineteenth to the early twentieth century. They were from the lower classes, pushed out by poverty, war and oppression in the homeland. Few returned to the homeland but preserved their collective identities and ethnic cultures in their host societies. The new migrants to America, Europe and Latin America since the 1960s, however, come from middle-class backgrounds, are pulled by better opportunities in the host countries, travel freely between the homeland and host countries, and maintain transnational families and communities. Despite these differences, overseas Koreans share common experiences and patterns of immigration, settlement and adaptation.

Here are some more announcements, links, and job postings about academic-related jobs, fellowships, and other opportunities for those interested in racial/ethnic/diversity issues, with a particular focus on Asian Americans. As always, the announcements and links are provided for informational purposes and do not necessarily imply an endorsement of the organization or college involved.

Call for Papers: North American Chinese Sociologists Conference

Call for Papers
The 2012 North American Chinese Sociologists Association (NACSA) Annual Conference
Denver, Colorado, August 16, 2012

The 2012 NACSA Annual Conference will be held on August 16th in Denver, Colorado, following the great tradition of our association to hold a one-day mini-conference prior to the annual meetings of the American Sociological Association (August 17-21, 2012). The aim of this year’s conference is broadly defined to be two-fold: to promote scholarly research on Chinese society, culture, economy, and immigrant life in the greater Chinese Diaspora, and to continue building bridges and guanxi among scholars of Chinese heritage and non-Chinese ancestry in North America, Asia, and other parts of the world.

Theme(s)
The themes of this year’s conference are open. We call for submissions of regular papers/panels and will let themes emerge from the submissions. We encourage scholars and graduate students from mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and the greater Chinese Diaspora to submit papers/panels in either English or Chinese.

Sessions
The 2012 mini-conference plans to hold 8 concurrent sessions and a plenary session.

Submission Deadline: Early May, 2012 (email hao@jhu.edu if you need more time). Submit your paper or abstract via email to: Lingxin Hao (hao@jhu.edu).

Individual papers: Complete papers or paper abstracts will be considered. Paper abstracts may be 1-2 pages but must contain sufficient detail and evidence of timely completion for the program committee in its decision making. Papers to be presented at the ASA are eligible for this submission. List the authors’ and coauthors’ names, organizational affiliations, and email addresses.

Panels: Any NACSA member can organize a panel. Each panel should consist of three presenters and a discussant. The panel organizer must submit a proposal specifying the theme of the panel along with the
summaries/abstracts of the papers selected. List all panelists’ names, organizational affiliations, and email addresses.

Submissions may be in English or in Chinese. The program committee assumes that the language used in individual papers/abstracts or panel proposals would be the same as the language used in presentation at the
annual conference. Papers should be formatted in Word or pdf and sent as an attached file.

Acceptance Announcement: Mid May, 2012
Email announcements to all organizers/discussants/authors about the tentative panels to which their presentations are assigned. A formal acceptance letter will be provided to all the authors for their
travel funding application and/or visa application purposes.

Visit http://www.nacsa.net/ for a tentative annual conference program after June 15 of 2012.

Full Paper Submission Deadline: August 1, 2012
A full paper is to be submitted to the organizer/presider/discussant of the assigned session.

Contact Persons:
Professor Lingxin Hao
President of NACSA
Department of Sociology
Johns Hopkins University
3400 N. Charles Street
Baltimore, MD 21218, U.S.A.
Tel. 410-516-4022; Email hao@jhu.edu

Registration Fee
The registration fee for each participant is US$15 for regular and associate members, US$10 for students. Fees may be paid in form of a personal check or a bank draft, payable to “NACSA,” via regular mail prior to Augest 1, 2010 or on site in Atlanta. Checks should be sent to the treasurer: Professor Yang Cao, Department of Sociology, 9201 University City Blvd., Charlotte, NC, 28223, U.S.A.

Travel Funds
All participants will be responsible for their own traveling to and from the conference. NACSA would be happy to assist you in applying for travel funds.

Membership Renewal
Current members should renew their 2011 membership. The membership fee is $15 for regular member, $10 for associate member, $5 for student member, and $300 life-time member. Both current and new members may fill out their membership forms (see attached) and mail them with their membership dues in checks or bank drafts, payable to “NACSA,” to Professor Yang Cao, Department of Sociology, 9201 University City Blvd., Charlotte, NC, 28223, U.S.A.

Summer Institute: Global Migration and Health

7th Summer Institute on Global Migration and Health
Los Angeles, California, USA
June 25-29, 2012

The 7th Summer Institute on Migration and Global Health is an international event that offers researchers, faculty, graduate students and professionals working with migrant communities around the world, a unique opportunity to learn about different health issues that affect mobile populations. International experts will present on the relationship between migration and global health from public health, public policy, and social science perspectives.

The five-day course includes a combination of lectures, workshops, and field trips, offering an exceptional opportunity to learn and to create professional networks.

Date: June 25-29, 2012
Place: Monday- Wednesday: The California Endowment, Los Angeles Conference Center
Thursday: University of California Los Angeles
Friday: Consulate of Mexico in Los Angeles

Registration Fee: Early Registration (by May 28th): Students $290, Professionals $450
After May 28th: Students $350, Professionals $540
Poster session: Deadline to submit abstracts to Liliana.Osorio@sdcounty.ca.gov: May 14, 2012

The event will be in English. For more information and to register please visit our website.

Call for Submissions: Asian American Studies

Concentric: Literary and Cultural Studies, a refereed scholarly journal based in Taipei, Taiwan, is planning a special issue on Asian American Studies.

Concentric: Literary and Cultural Studies
Vol. 39 No. 2 | September 2013

Special Topic Call for Papers: “Phantom Asian America”
Deadline for Submissions: January 31, 2013

Since its emergence in the late 1960s, Asian American studies has gained ground in the academy, and yet the term “Asian America”itself remains in doubt. Where is Asian America? Who are Asian Americans? What constitutes Asian American experience and who is qualified to speak for and about Asian Americans? Why does “Asian American” remain an appealing identity category despite its inherent vagueness?

The special topic “Phantom Asian America”invites essays that probe into histories, literatures and other modes of cultural expression to reflect on the making and meaning of Asian America. We invoke the image of the “phantom” to highlight not only the instability and permeability of Asian America but also the haunting power and affecting forces of Asian American experiences.

Issues of concern may include: Is Asian America a “phantom” entity? How has the presence of Asian Americans as “spectral” others infiltrated Asia and America and caused changes in social structures and cultural coalitions? Is “Asian American” (as both an identity category and an instituted discipline/discourse) haunted by its own ghostly others? Who are the “phantom figures” occupying the margins of Asian America and what are their stories? With what strategies could we excavate the “phantom histories”-histories repressed and untold-about Asian America?

“Phantom Asian America”also welcomes articles that meditate on the “phantastic” lure of Asian American identity in transnational contexts. How have Asian American cultures been circulated and received around the globe? How could we re-appraise Asian American histories and cultures in a world of shifting borders and
transnational links? What does it mean to teach and undertake Asian American studies outside the United States, especially in Asia? Is “Asian American” a substantive presence in Asia or a phantom of Asia’s desire for globality? This special topic encourages contributors to move beyond a narrowly defined Asian America to explore its “phantomistic” circumferencesand permutations, with attention to the networks of power and affect between, as well as beyond, Asia and America.

Concentric: Literary and Cultural Studies is a peer-reviewed journal published two times per year by the Department of English, National Taiwan Normal University, Taipei, Taiwan. Concentric is devoted to offering innovative perspectives on literary and cultural issues and advancing the transcultural exchange of ideas. While committed to bringing Asian-based scholarship to the world academic community, Concentric welcomes original contributions from diverse national and cultural backgrounds.

Each issue of Concentric publishes groups of essays on a special topic as well as papers on more general issues. The focus can be on any historical period and any region. Any critical method may be employed as long as the paper demonstrates a distinctive contribution to scholarship in the field. Please visit our website for more information and submission guidelines.

Campaign for Asian American Studies at Williams College

Dear Supporters,

Please take a few seconds to sign a letter of support to bring attention to faculty, Committee for Educational Policy, and administration the importance of Asian American Studies at Williams College by clicking here and forwarding this to your respective organization.

I am emailing you on behalf of the Campaign for Asian American Studies at Williams. As a member of the AAPI community, I am asking you for your support of our efforts.

We understand the lack of resources available on this campus, but after more than 20 years of fighting to stabilize this intellectual endeavor at Williams only to feel from both administration and faculty that this study is not a priority. We are willing to work with the administration and the CEP to institutionalize AA Studies in the curriculum either by creating a separate program or to combine with an already existing department. We need your support to show the faculty and administration that there is widespread support for AA Studies. If we can prove to them that individuals outside of the Williams community see its significance in the Williams curriculum, they will be more likely to open up to our suggestions as we work together towards our goal.

AA Studies is an ethnic study, not an area studies such as Asian Studies. The understanding of the Asian American experience both in America and across the globe is a legitimate and growing intellectual field since the 60s. We are trying to convince the CEP, administration, and faculty to recognize its significance given our current resource-limited situation. We cannot do this without your and your organization’s help. The Asian American experience includes a broad group of individuals including South Asians, South East Asians, East Asians, and those from the Middle East.

We need your and your organization to help stand with us. It only takes one electronic signature from each person in your organization for us all to make a difference in the Williams curriculum. Please forward this email to your organization at large. If you would like more information about what we are all about, please check out aastudieswilliams.wordpress.com. Also, please urge your members to sign our petition here.

Thank you.
Campaign for Asian American Studies at Williams

Teaching Fellowships in China

OYCF Teaching Fellowships 2012-13

The Overseas Young Chinese Forum (“OYCF”), a non-profit organization based in the United States, is pleased to announce that it is now accepting applications for its Teaching Fellowships, which sponsor short term teaching trips by overseas scholars or professionals (Chinese or non-Chinese) to universities or other comparable advanced educational institutions in China. The subjects of teaching include all fields of humanities and social sciences, such as anthropology, art, communication, economics, education, geography, law, literatures, philosophy, political science, sociology, etc.

OYCF will grant thirteen fellowship awards to support short term teaching trips during the Academic Year of 2012-13, including five OYCF-Ford fellowships in the amount of $2,500 each and nine OYCF-Gregory C. and Paula K. Chow fellowships in the amount of $2,000 each. The application deadline is August 15, 2012. Awards will be announced on September 15, 2012.

If you have a Ph.D., J.D., J.S.D. or a comparable graduate degree from, or is currently an advanced doctoral candidate (having passed the Ph.D. qualification examination and finished at least three years of graduate studies) in a university in North America or other areas outside China, and are interested in teaching a covered subject in a college or graduate school in Mainland China, please find online the Information and Application Procedures for the OYCF Teaching Fellowships at http://www.oycf.org/Teach/application.DOC. Ph.D. students are highly encouraged to apply because an independent teaching experience will add significant weight in the resumes and help build strong connection with China’s academia. We also give preference to advanced Ph.D. student applicants who would combine this teaching opportunity with their dissertational research in China.

As noted therein, preference will be given to teaching proposals that include comparative or interdisciplinary perspectives; are about subjects that China is in relative shortage of teachers; or will be conducted at universities in inland provinces and regions. This year, we dedicate at least 3-4 fellowships as the Central or Western Region Teaching Fellowships to teaching fellows who plan to teach in an inland province or autonomous region. Accordingly, teaching proposals specifically designed for teaching in these regions are especially welcome.

To submit your application, you will need an application form, a brief letter of interest, curriculum vitae or resume, a detailed course syllabus, an invitation letter from your host institution in China. Detailed instruction and application form can be found at the above web link. For more information about OYCF or its teaching program, please visit http://www.oycf.org. For questions concerning OYCF Teaching Fellowships or their application process, please contact Qiang Fu at qf6@soc.duke.edu.

The following new books look at the historical, cultural, and political dimensions of how Asian Americans have been portrayed and imagined in media, literature, and popular culture. As always, a book’s inclusion is for informational purposes only and does not necessarily mean a full endorsement of its contents.

Black Power, Yellow Power, and the Making of Revolutionary Identities, by Rychetta Watkins (University Press of Mississippi)

Images of upraised fists, afros, and dashikis have long dominated the collective memory of Black Power and its proponents. The “guerilla” figure-taking the form of the black-leather-clad revolutionary within the Black Panther Party-has become an iconic trope in American popular culture. That politically radical figure, however, has been shaped as much by Asian American cultural discourse as by African American political ideology. From the Asian-African Conference held in April of 1955 in Bandung, Indonesia, onward to the present, Afro-Asian political collaboration has been active and influential.

In Black Power, Yellow Power, and the Making of Revolutionary Identities, author Rychetta Watkins uses the guerilla figure as a point of departure and shows how the trope’s rhetoric animates discourses of representation and identity in African American and Asian American literature and culture. In doing so, she examines the notion of “Power,” in terms of ethnic political identity, and explores collaborating-and sometimes competing-ethnic interests that have drawn ideas from the concept.

The project brings together a range of texts-editorial cartoons, newspaper articles, novels, visual propaganda, and essays-that illustrate the emergence of this subjectivity in Asian American and African American cultural productions during the Power period, roughly 1966 through 1981. After a case study of the cultural politics of academic anthologies and the cooperation between Frank Chin and Ishmael Reed, the volume culminates with analyses of this trope in Sam Greenlee’s The Spook Who Sat by the Door, Alice Walker’s Meridian, and John Okada’s No No Boy.

The Oriental Obscene: Violence and Racial Fantasies in the Vietnam Era, by Sylvia Shin Huey Chong (Duke University Press)

The Oriental Obscene is a sophisticated analysis of Americans’ reactions to visual representations of the Vietnam War, such as the photograph of the “napalm girl,” news footage of the Tet Offensive, and feature films from The Deer Hunter to Rambo: First Blood Part II. Sylvia Shin Huey Chong combines psychoanalytic and film theories with U.S. cultural history to explain what she terms the oriental obscene: racialized fantasies that Americans derived largely from images of Asians as the perpetrators or victims of extreme violence.

Chong contends that these fantasies helped Americans to process the trauma of the Vietnam War, as well as the growth of the Asian American population after the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1965 and the postwar immigration of Southeast Asian refugees. The oriental obscene animated a wide range of political narratives, not only the movements for and against the war, but causes as diverse as the Black Power movement, law-and-order conservatism, second-wave feminism, and the nascent Asian American movement. During the Vietnam era, pictures of Asian bodies were used to make sense of race, violence, and America’s identity at home and abroad.

Seven Contemporary Plays from the Korean Diaspora in the Americas, by Esther Kim Lee (Duke University Press)

Showcasing the dynamism of contemporary Korean diasporic theater, this anthology features seven plays by second-generation Korean diasporic writers from the United States, Canada, and Chile. By bringing the plays together in this collection, Esther Kim Lee highlights the range of themes and styles that have enlivened Korean diasporic theater in the Americas since the 1990s. Some of the plays are set in urban Koreatowns. One takes place in the middle of Texas, while another unfolds entirely in a character’s mind. Ethnic identity is not as central as it was in the work of previous generations of Asian diasporic playwrights.

In these plays, dramas of diaspora and displacement are likely to be part of broader stories, such as the difficulties faced by a young mother trying to balance family and career. Running through those stories are themes of assimilation, authenticity, family, memory, trauma, and gender-related expectations of success. Lee’s introduction includes a brief history of the Korean peninsula in the twentieth century and of South Korean immigration to the Americas, along with an overview of Asian American theater and the place of Korean American theater within it. Each play is preceded by a brief biography of the playwright and a summary of the play’s production history.

The Chinese Diaspora on American Screens: Race, Sex, and Cinema, by Gina Marchetti (Temple University Press)

The Chinese Diaspora on American Screens looks at the way in which issues of race and sexuality have become central concerns in cinema generated by and about Chinese communities in America after the mid-1990s. This companion volume to Marchetti’s From Tian’anmen to Times Square looks specifically at the Chinese diaspora in relation to ethnic, racial, gender, and sexual identity as depicted in the cinema.

Examining films from the United States and Canada, as well as transnational co-productions, The Chinese Diaspora on American Screens includes analyses of films such as The Wedding Banquet and Double Happiness in addition to interviews with celebrated filmmakers such as Wayne Wang. Marchetti also reflects on how Chinese identity is presented in a multitude of media forms, including commercial cinema, documentaries, experimental films, and hybrid digital media to offer a textured look at representations of the Chinese diasporic experience after Tian’anmen.

Straitjacket Sexualities: Unbinding Asian American Manhoods in the Movies, by Celine Shimizu (Stanford University Press)

Depictions of Asian American men as effeminate or asexual pervade popular movies. Hollywood has made clear that Asian American men lack the qualities inherent to the heroic heterosexual male. This restricting, circumscribed vision of masculinity—a straitjacketing, according to author Celine Parreñas Shimizu—aggravates Asian American male sexual problems both on and off screen.

Straitjacket Sexualities: Unbinding Asian American Manhoods in the Movies looks to cinematic history to reveal the dynamic ways Asian American men, from Bruce Lee to Long Duk Dong, create and claim a variety of masculinities. Representations of love, romance, desire, and lovemaking show how Asian American men fashion manhoods that negotiate the dynamics of self and other, expanding our ideas of sexuality. The unique ways in which Asian American men express intimacy is powerfully represented onscreen, offering distinct portraits of individuals struggling with group identities. Rejecting “macho” men, these movies stake Asian American manhood on the notion of caring for, rather than dominating, others.

Straitjacket Sexualities identifies a number of moments in the movies wherein masculinity is figured anew. By looking at intimate relations on screen, power as sexual prowess and brute masculinity is redefined, giving primacy to the diverse ways Asian American men experience complex, ambiguous, and ambivalent genders and sexualities.

Here are some more announcements, links, and job postings about academic-related jobs, fellowships, and other opportunities for those interested in racial/ethnic/diversity issues, with a particular focus on Asian Americans. As always, the announcements and links are provided for informational purposes and do not necessarily imply an endorsement of the organization or college involved.

Video Contest: Asian American Justice Center

Asian American Justice Center (AAJC) and the American Community Survey (ACS) Public Service Announcement Video Contest

ABOUT THE ACS: The Census Bureau administers the ACS, which provides detailed information for many Asian American population groups that can’t be obtained anywhere else. The government needs information about you that will affect resource distribution for many services Asian American families need, including schools and roads. Your PSA video submission will help spread the word on the importance of the ACS in building better communities for Asian Americans and encourage others to participate if they receive the survey.

Contest Guidelines:

• Your video must address why the ACS is important for the Asian American community and/or the individual’s Asian American family (see attached for more information)
• Your video must note in some fashion that the information provided by respondents to the ACS is confidential and protected by law (i.e. the Census Bureau cannot share your information with anyone else, not even other federal agencies.)
• Your video must incorporate an image of the American Community Survey somehow
• Your video must be 90 seconds in length
• Please submit the following information in an e-mail body accompanying your entry attachment: name, phone number, e-mail, brief explanation of your submission
• Please submit original work only
• Entries must be submitted in any of the following formats: AVI, MPG, WMV, and MPEG
• Signed release forms are required for copyrighted images or materials. Release forms are also needed for “subjects,” whether private or public citizens
• Multiple entries may be submitted
• Must be 18 years of age to participate

Grand Prize of $1,000
Two Runner-Up Prizes of $500

Deadline for Submissions: April 16, 2012. Submit all entries to: psacontest@advancingequality.org. By submitting a PSA entry to: psacontest@advancingequality.org I consent to the following terms & conditions:

In consideration for submitting my video submission to the contest, I hereby grant, consent and authorize the Asian American Justice Center, its affiliates, licensees, successors, assigns, legal representatives, agents, employees and contractors (“AAJC”) the irrevocable and unrestricted right to use, reuse, publish and republish such video/PSA for any purpose and in any manner or medium (e.g. print or electronic medium such as publications, marketing materials and Web content), and to alter the same without any restriction, as AAJC may determine in its sole discretion. AAJC reserves the right to not publish or otherwise use your video in the event AAJC determines, in its sole discretion, that your video contains inappropriate language, content, etc. I hereby release AAJC from any and all claims and liability relating to such video/PSA.

For more contest rules and information click here.

Networking Event: Asian Americans in Boston

Asian|Boston Media Group (ABMG) is proud to announce the 5th Asian|Boston Networking Event, the ABNE-V. At this event, we will also be unveiling the first annual ‘ABMG Awards.’ This program was established to recognize Asian Americans, who reside and contribute to New England and New York, via excellence in their respective fields of media, high-technology, medicine, education, etc.

ABMG’s inaugural award will be in the media division, and will be presented during the event. It’s an honor to announce that the recipient of the first annual ABMG’s ‘Distinguished Asian-American in Media’ award is . . . WHDH-TV’s 7News Reporter, Susan Tran.

The ABNE-V and ABMG Awards Ceremony will be held on Thursday, April 26th, at Hei La Moon Restaurant in Chinatown. Time: 6:30pm-9:30pm. Interested in being a Presenter at the ABNE-V? ‘Presenters’ are individuals or businesses that do short 3-minute promotions for their particular cause, ideas, new business ventures, etc. (Please see below for guest ticket info and how to become a ‘Presenter’). We will be honored to see you at the ABNE-V.

Best regards,
Leo Anthony

Location:
Hei La Moon Restaurant
88 Beach St
Chinatown, Boston (617) 338-8813

There is a parking garage adjacent to the restaurant.

Event Details:

• Please RSVP by Monday, April 23rd, to info@asianboston.com
• $20 per person at door. Includes buffet dinner
• Cash Bar
• For group or student discounts, please contact Ted at woo77@comcast.net

How to Become a Presenter:
Please send a Presenter request with your business topic to Ted at woo77@comcast.net.

About Asian|Boston Media Group
Asian|Boston Media Group (AB|MG) is the first media company for the entire Asian community of the northeastern United States, with an ever-growing national/international interest. It is our goal to utilize the most reputable resources in order to deliver products of unparalleled quality. Our market is the most rapidly growing demographic in the United States, and we are expanding accordingly.

Call for Applications: Vietnamese American Social Justice Training

We’re excited to announce the call for applications for Hai Ba Trung School for Organizing, 2012! This is a progressive training program for young Vietnamese Americans. Please forward widely.

Hai Bà Trưng School for Organizing, 2012

The Hai Bà Trưng School for Organizing is a training program for young organizers, ages 18-25. As a participant, you’ll have the opportunity to explore what it means to be a progressive Vietnamese American, learn the basics of organizing theory and skills, and connect to local Vietnamese American organizers doing social justice work. The training will focus on best practices and challenges unique to organizing in the Vietnamese community.

The training will be held from June 22 to June 24, 2012 (Friday-Sunday) in Los Angeles and Orange County. In alignment with election season, this year’s training may explore electoral organizing and its challenges and opportunities for the Viet community. Click here to download the application. The deadline to submit applications is no later than: Friday April 27, 2012 by 5pm to hbt.organize@gmail.com.

The School’s planning committee is made up of Vietnamese American progressives with experience in organizing youth, low-wage workers, immigrants, and women from diverse communities. We have worked in non-profit organizations as well as volunteer groups, and believe in building the capacity of the Vietnamese American community to work for social justice. For questions, email us at hbt.organize@gmail.com.

Fellowship: Japanese American Citizens League

The Japanese American Citizens League (JACL), the nation’s oldest and largest Asian American civil and human rights organization, is now accepting applications for the 2012-2013 JACL Mike M. Masaoka Congressional Fellowship.

The Mike M. Masaoka Fellowship Fund was established in 1988 to honor Mike M. Masaoka for a lifetime of public service to the JACL and the nation. Masaoka was the JACL’s national secretary, field executive, national legislative director of the JACL’s Anti-Discrimination Committee, and the JACL Washington, D.C. Representative. He worked tirelessly to advance the cause of Japanese Americans during difficult times in our history. He was instrumental in the formation of the 442nd Regimental Combat Team and for the abolition of many discriminatory laws against Asian Americans. He passed away in 1991.

The Fund was set up by good friends of Mike Masaoka. Dr. H. Tom Tamaki of Philadelphia administered the program for the JACL for twenty years since its inception in 1988. The JACL Washington, D.C. office now administers the Masaoka Fellowship.

The JACL Masaoka Fellows are placed in the Washington D.C. Congressional offices of members of the U.S.House of Representatives or the U.S. Senate for a period of six to eight months. The major purpose of the Masaoka Fellowship is to develop leaders for public service. The current Masaoka Fellow is Mackenzie Walker, who is working in the office of Congresswoman Judy Chu of California.

Floyd Mori, National Executive Director of the JACL, stated: “The Mike M. Masaoka Fellowship is a wonderful program which gives young people the opportunity to work in the office of a member of Congress and to learn the workings of government firsthand. The friends of Mike Masaoka had great foresight in establishing the Fund for the Fellowship to develop leadership.”

National JACL President, David Kawamoto, said: “We encourage young members of the JACL who are college graduates to apply for this Fellowship which offers a unique experience for service in the nation’s capital. We anticipate that these young people will be our future leaders in the JACL.”

Interested college graduates may find further details and application materials at our website. Applicants must be current members of the JACL. Applications should be submitted to the JACL Washington, D.C. office as per instructions on the website. The deadline for applications is May 20, 2012. The announcement of the selected Fellow is expected to be made by July 1, 2012.

Fellowship: National Gay & Lesbian Task Force

National Gay & Lesbian Task Force: 2012 Summer Academy Fellowship

Application Deadline: Monday April 30, 2012. Decisions will be made and communicated by June 29. Placement dates are July 30–November 9, 2012.

What is the Academy for Leadership and Action?

The Task Force’s Academy for Leadership and Action (the Academy) prepares leaders to fill the staff, board, and volunteer roles critical to the success of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) movement. Through direct action we strive to win immediate policy gains, develop leadership and long-term organizational capacity and build stronger alliances between secular and religious communities.

The Task Force is committed to building a social justice movement where everyone can be their full selves. We work with individuals and communities that reflect the full spectrum of LGBT people and their allies. We bring a racial and economic justice analysis to all of our movement building work and makes explicit the connections to struggles against systematic oppression. The Academy for Leadership and Action’s ultimate goal is to build movements, leaders and organizations that transform society.
What is the Summer Academy Fellowship?

This isn’t your average fellowship — this is your chance to create change! The Academy Fellowship is a paid social justice fellowship that’s furiously intense. The program provides the first-hand real-world experience working for social justice that is necessary for becoming a professional organizer. You’ll learn to disseminate a progressive worldview that connects LGBT issues to struggles against racism, classism, ableism, and spiritual oppression; to build relationships with a broad-cross section of other LGBT movement leaders, especially in communities of faith and communities of color; and to mobilize mass numbers of people for direct action targeted at achieving immediate political gains for the LGBT community.
Stipend and Placement

Fellows are paid a net stipend of $500 per week. The 2012 term runs for 15 weeks, from July 30–November 9, 2012. Position placement varies and fellows will need to be able to travel for long periods of time. This year potential placements and travel locations are New York City, Los Angeles, Minnesota, Maine, and Washington. Fellows are responsible for their own housing and living expenses.

Applications must be received by Monday, April 30. Decisions will be made and communicated by June 29. Questions can be sent to: Causten Wollerman, cwollerman@thetaskforce.org. Selection of fellows is based on the demonstrated critical thinking and values as observed in the application and interviews.

Call for Papers: Immigration Conference, France

Comparative and Multi-sited Approaches to International Migration
12-14 December 2012, Paris, Ined
Deadline for submission: 1st June 2012

The objective of the conference is to promote a multi-sited and comparative approach to international migration, explicitly bringing together researchers and research evidence from different parts of the world. The conference will focus on quantitative approaches to international migration that deal simultaneously with processes in places of origin and destination. Papers are welcomed across a number of areas and regions, with those that address significant policy concerns especially welcome.

Keynote speakers:

• Cris Beauchemin (Ined, France)
• Eleonora Castagnone (Forum Internazionale ed Europeo di Ricerchesull’Immigrazione, Italy)
• Katherine Donato (Vanderbilt University, USA)
• Amparo González-Ferrer (Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, Spain)
• Georges Groenewold (Nidi, the Netherlands)
• Douglas Massey (Princeton University, USA)
• Valentina Mazzucato (Maastricht University, The Netherlands)
• Emilio Parrado (University of Pennsylvania, USA)
• Bruno Schoumaker (Université Catholique de Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium)
• Hania Zlotnik (Population Division-DESA, United Nations)

Time magazine is compiling their annual list of the Top 100 Most Influential People of 2012 and is giving people the opportunity to vote on whether each of their nominees should be included in the Top 100 list.

Think Jeremy Lin should be included? I certainly cast my vote for “definitely!” Among their list of nominees, there are several Asians and Asian Americans, so if you’re so inclined, cast your vote for those who you think should be included in Time’s list. The deadline for voting is Friday, April 6.

The U.S. Census Bureau has finalized their official data on our nation’s population and has just released their report brief “The Asian Population: 2010” that summarizes its major findings about the Asian American population in 2010, and in particular, how it compares to the last decennial Census taken in 2000. Below are some of the most significant highlights.

Growth Since 2000

• The Asian American population (monoracial and mixed-race) grew from 11.9 million in 2000 to 17.3 million in 2010. This represents an increase of 45.6% since 2000. This proportional increase from 2000 is the highest of all the major racial/ethnic groups (in comparison, the Latino/Hispanic population grew 43% from 2000 to 2010.

Increases Within Each Ethnic Group

• Among the six largest Asian ethnic groups (monoracial and mixed-race), who collective make up over 87% of the total Asian American population, Indians experienced the largest increase — 67.6% — since 2000. All Asian ethnic groups (monoracial and mixed-race) that had a population of at least 1,000 in 2000, Nepalese experienced large increases in their population — from 9,399 to 59,490 in 2010, an increase of 533%. Overall, the largest Asian ethnic group is the Chinese at 3.8 million (monoracial and mixed-race).

Huge Increase in Mixed-Race Asian American Population

• Mixed-race Asian Americans (those who self-identified as having some Asian ancestry) increased from 1.6 million in 2000 to 2.6 million in 2010, an increase of 60%. Of all mixed-race Asian Americans, 61% self-identified as half White and half Asian.

Geographic Distribution

• In terms of total numbers, the state with the largest Asian American population, not surprisingly, is California — 5.6 million Asian Americans lived in the Golden State in 2010 and they represented 14.9% of California’s total population. But the state with the highest proportion of its residents being Asian American is Hawai’i — 57.4% of the Aloha State’s population is Asian American. The state that experienced the biggest increase in its Asian American population from 2000 to 2010 is Nevada — from 112,246 to 242,916, an increase of 114%.

  The first map below shows the proportion of Asian Americans by county in 2010. The second map shows the growth of Asian American residents by county in 2010.

Again, you can read more findings from the 2010 Census about the Asian American population in the Census Bureau’s recently-released summary report, The Asian Population: 2010.

The following new books examine the intersections of Asian American racial/ethnic identity, power and institutional relationships with mainstream U.S. society, and how community dynamics affect their sense of belonging within this context. As always, a book’s inclusion is for informational purposes only and does not necessarily mean a full endorsement of its contents.

Chinese Chicago: Race, Transnational Migration, and Community Since 1870, by Huping Ling (Stanford University Press)

Numerous studies have documented the transnational experiences and local activities of Chinese immigrants in California and New York in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Less is known about the vibrant Chinese American community that developed at the same time in Chicago. In this sweeping account, Huping Ling offers the first comprehensive history of Chinese in Chicago, beginning with the arrival of the pioneering Moy brothers in the 1870s and continuing to the present.

Ling focuses on how race, transnational migration, and community have defined Chinese in Chicago. Drawing upon archival documents in English and Chinese, she charts how Chinese made a place for themselves among the multiethnic neighborhoods of Chicago, cultivating friendships with local authorities and consciously avoiding racial conflicts.

Ling takes readers through the decades, exploring evolving family structures and relationships, the development of community organizations, and the operation of transnational businesses. She pays particular attention to the influential role of Chinese in Chicago’s academic and intellectual communities and to the complex and conflicting relationships among today’s more dispersed Chinese Americans in Chicago.

Uncle Swami: South Asians in America Today, by Vijay Prashad (The New Press)

Within hours of the attacks on the World Trade Center, misdirected assaults on Sikhs and other South Asians flared on streets across the nation, serving as harbingers of a more suspicious, less discerning, and increasingly fearful world view that would drastically change ideas of belonging and acceptance in America.

Weaving together distinct strands of recent South Asian immigration to the United States, Uncle Swami creates a richly textured analysis of the systems and sentiments behind shifting notions of cultural identity in a post 9/11 world. Vijay Prashad continues the conversation sparked by his celebrated work The Karma of Brown Folk and confronts the experience of migration across an expanse of generations and class divisions, from the birth of political activism among second generation immigrants to the meteoric rise of South Asian American politicians in Republican circles to the migrant workers who suffer in the name of American capitalism.

A powerful new indictment of American imperialism at the dawn of the twenty-first century, Uncle Swami restores a diasporic community to its full-fledged complexity, beyond model minorities and the specters of terrorism.

Samurai among Panthers: Richard Aoki on Race, Resistance, and a Paradoxical Life, by Diane C. Fujino (University of Minnesota Press)

An iconic figure of the Asian American movement, Richard Aoki (1938–2009) was also, as the most prominent non-Black member of the Black Panther Party, a key architect of Afro-Asian solidarity in the 1960s and ’70s. His life story exposes the personal side of political activism as it illuminates the history of ethnic nationalism and radical internationalism in America.

A reflection of this interconnection, Samurai among Panthers weaves together two narratives: Aoki’s dramatic first-person chronicle and an interpretive history by a leading scholar of the Asian American movement, Diane C. Fujino. Aoki’s candid account of himself takes us from his early years in Japanese American internment camps to his political education on the streets of Oakland, to his emergence in the Black Panther Party.

As his story unfolds, we see how his parents’ separation inside the camps and his father’s illegal activities shaped the development of Aoki’s politics. Fujino situates his life within the context of twentieth-century history—World War II, the Cold War, and the protests of the 1960s. She demonstrates how activism is both an accidental and an intentional endeavor and how a militant activist practice can also promote participatory democracy and social service.

The result of these parallel voices and analysis in Samurai among Panthers is a complex—and sometimes contradictory—portrait of a singularly extraordinary activist and an expansion and deepening of our understanding of the history he lived.

Chinese Mexicans: Transpacific Migration and the Search for a Homeland, 1910-1960, by Julia Maria Schiavone Camacho (University of North Carolina Press)

At the turn of the twentieth century, a wave of Chinese men made their way to the northern Mexican border state of Sonora to work and live. The ties–and families–these Mexicans and Chinese created led to the formation of a new cultural identity: Chinese Mexican. During the tumult of the Mexican Revolution of 1910, however, anti-Chinese sentiment ultimately led to mass expulsion of these people.

Julia Maria Schiavone Camacho follows the community through the mid-twentieth century, across borders and oceans, to show how they fought for their place as Mexicans, both in Mexico and abroad. Tracing transnational geography, Schiavone Camacho explores how these men and women developed a strong sense of Mexican national identity while living abroad—in the United States, briefly, and then in southeast Asia where they created a hybrid community and taught their children about the Mexican homeland.

Schiavone Camacho also addresses how Mexican women challenged their legal status after being stripped of Mexican citizenship because they married Chinese men. After repatriation in the 1930s-1960s, Chinese Mexican men and women, who had left Mexico with strong regional identities, now claimed national cultural belonging and Mexican identity in ways they had not before.

Plague, Fear, and Politics in San Francisco’s Chinatown, by Guenter B. Risse (Johns Hopkins University Press)

When health officials in San Francisco discovered bubonic plague in their city’s Chinatown in 1900, they responded with intrusive, controlling, and arbitrary measures that touched off a sociocultural conflict still relevant today. Guenter B. Risse’s history of an epidemic is the first to incorporate the voices of those living in Chinatown at the time, including the desperately ill Wong Chut King, believed to be the first person infected.

Lasting until 1904, the plague in San Francisco’s Chinatown reignited racial prejudices, renewed efforts to remove the Chinese from their district, and created new tensions among local, state, and federal public health officials quarreling over the presence of the deadly disease. Risse’s rich, nuanced narrative of the event draws from a variety of sources, including Chinese-language reports and accounts. He addresses the ecology of Chinatown, the approaches taken by Chinese and Western medical practitioners, and the effects of quarantine plans on Chinatown and its residents.

Risse explains how plague threatened California’s agricultural economy and San Francisco’s leading commercial role with Asia, discusses why it brought on a wave of fear mongering that drove perceptions and intervention efforts, and describes how Chinese residents organized and successfully opposed government quarantines and evacuation plans in federal court. By probing public health interventions in the setting of one of the most visible ethnic communities in United States history, Plague, Fear, and Politics in San Francisco’s Chinatown offers insight into the clash of Eastern and Western cultures in a time of medical emergency.

The House on Lemon Street: Japanese Pioneers and the American Dream, by Mark Rawitsch (University Press of Colorado)

In 1915, Jukichi and Ken Harada purchased a house on Lemon Street in Riverside, California. Close to their restaurant, church, and children’s school, the house should have been a safe and healthy family home. Before the purchase, white neighbors objected because of the Haradas’ Japanese ancestry, and the California Alien Land Law denied them real-estate ownership because they were not citizens. To bypass the law Mr. Harada bought the house in the names of his three youngest children, who were American-born citizens. Neighbors protested again, and the first Japanese American court test of the California Alien Land Law of 1913—The People of the State of California v. Jukichi Harada—was the result.

Bringing this little-known story to light, The House on Lemon Street details the Haradas’ decision to fight for the American dream. Chronicling their experiences from their immigration to the United States through their legal battle over their home, their incarceration during World War II, and their lives after the war, this book tells the story of the family’s participation in the struggle for human and civil rights, social justice, property and legal rights, and fair treatment of immigrants in the United States.

The Harada family’s quest for acceptance illuminates the deep underpinnings of anti-Asian animus, which set the stage for Executive Order 9066, and recognizes fundamental elements of our nation’s anti-immigrant history that continue to shape the American story. It will be worthwhile for anyone interested in the Japanese American experience in the twentieth century, immigration history, public history, and law.

Vanishing Filipino Americans: The Bridge Generation, by Peter Jamero (University Press of America)

Documentation of Filipino American history is largely limited to the Manong Generation that immigrated to the United States during the early 1900s. Their second-generation children — the Bridge Generation — are now in their sixties, seventies, and eighties; however, the literature is silent regarding their life in America.

Vanishing Filipino Americans explores the Bridge Generation’s growing up years; their maturation as participants in Filipino youth clubs; their development of a unique subculture; their civic participation; and their triumphs and struggles in America’s workforce. Jamero begins the process of documenting the experiences and contributions of these second-generation Filipino Americans, addressing a significant void in the history of Filipinos in America.

Asian American Racial Realities in Black and White, by Bruce Calvin Hoskins (Lynne Rienner Publishers)

What does it mean for an Asian American to be part white or part black? Bruce Hoskins probes the experience of biracial Asian Americans, revealing the ways that our discourse about multiracial identities too often reinforces racial hierarchies.

Hoskins explores the everyday lives of people of Asian/white and Asian/black heritage to uncover the role of our society s white-black continuum in shaping racial identity. Mixing intimate personal stories with cutting-edge theoretical analysis, he directly confronts the notion that multiracial identity provides an easy solution for our society s racial stratification.

Here are some more announcements, links, and job postings about academic-related jobs, fellowships, and other opportunities for those interested in racial/ethnic/diversity issues, with a particular focus on Asian Americans. As always, the announcements and links are provided for informational purposes and do not necessarily imply an endorsement of the organization or college involved.

Conference: Applied Research

AAPIPRC Organizes National Conference on Applied Research

Stakeholders from the non-profit sector, government, and higher education are coming together in the first national conference to focus on collaborative policy research for Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders (AAPI). The conference is sponsored by the Asian American and Pacific Islander Policy Research Consortium (AAPIPRC) and will take place on Wednesday, April 11, 2012 from 1-6pm at the National Education Association in Washington, D.C.

“This conference is a first step towards a powerful collaboration that will help ensure that future national policies actually take our communities into consideration in a meaningful way,” says Lisa Hasegawa, Executive Director of the National Coalition for Asian Pacific American Community Development.

Public policy impacts our daily lives, from immigration and health coverage, to neighborhood infrastructure and media institutions. Yet, there is currently no think tank focused specifically on how policy impacts AAPI communities. This conference fills that gap by promoting research that complements the existing work of advocacy, service and policy groups, while creating a pipeline for scholars interested in applied research.

“There is great need to elevate the local concerns of our growing and diverse AAPI populations to the national level,” says Tarry Hum, Associate Professor at City University of New York. “This is an opportunity to explore research collaborations that will address national policy issues from the perspectives of AAPI communities.”

There will be a special pre-conference at 10:30am for students and youth. “I’m hoping to connect my past work experience and current schooling to community-based policy and advocacy,” says Ami Patel, an Asian American Studies graduate student at UCLA, who previously organized and advocated for green jobs and tuition relief.

Co-sponsors include the National CAPACD, the White House Initiative on AAPIs, the National Education Association, and the Association for Asian American Studies.

Free registration is available at: http://www.aapiprc.com/

Founded in 2010, the Asian American and Pacific Islander Policy Research Consortium is dedicated to producing knowledge that advances the field of Policy and Asian American and Pacific Islander Studies in the United States. The consortium’s members are the CUNY Asian American / Asian Research Institute, UMass Boston Institute for Asian American Studies, UC AAPI Policy Multi-campus Research Program, and UCLA Asian American Studies Center.

Online Survey: Social Experiences of Asian American Women

Call for Asian American women (ages 18 or older) to participate in a survey and a chance to win an Amazon.com gift certificate

My name is Pauline Chan, a graduate student in the Counseling Psychology doctoral program. I am a second generation Chinese American and am working on my dissertation under the direction of Dr. Belle Liang. The study focuses on the social experiences of Asian American women. The study has been approved by the Boston College Office for Research Protections Institutional Review Board (Protocol #12.172.01A).

I am writing to ask Asian American women to participate in my online dissertation research survey and to offer an opportunity to be entered in a random drawing for an Amazon.com gift certificate for participation in the survey (5 $20 gift certificates and 2 $50 gift certificates available).

To participate in the study, participants must:

• Be 18 years or older, and
• Self-identify as a woman who is Asian American or a member of an Asian American subgroup

In this survey participants will be asked questions about social experiences in different contexts, social attitudes, culture and well-being. The survey will take approximately 35-45 minutes to complete and may be found at the following link:
https://bclynch.qualtrics.com/SE/?SID=SV_5ovPhtb1hD7Ra0A

In exchange for their time, participants will be given an opportunity to enter a random drawing for an Amazon.com gift certificate when they have completed the survey. Participants who complete the survey will also be offered access to the results of the study once it is completed.

The survey responses are completely anonymous. Any name or email information given will not be linked in any way to the responses and will only be used for the purposes of distributing the gift certificates. Any individual demographic information will also remain confidential and will not be linked to any names or email addresses. Participation is completely voluntary and participants may withdraw from the study at any time.

As there are limited studies about the Asian American experience, all participant responses will be helpful in contributing to our knowledge about Asian Americans. It is my hope that the results of the study will provide insights that will help to improve the life experiences of Asian American women.

If you have any questions, please contact me at chanpa@bc.edu or 617-966-4001. You can also reach my dissertation advisor, Belle Liang, at liangbe@bc.edu or 617-552-4079. Thank you in advance for your help and your time.

Conference: South Asian Youth Leaders

Apply Now for Rise Up!
SAALT Young Leaders Institute
May 5-8, 2012 | Washington, DC
Application deadline: March 23, 2012

Are you a South Asian American college student who wants to change your campus and community? Apply to participate in Rise Up! today!

What is Rise Up! and why should I apply?
Rise Up! is a great way to build your leadership skills, meet fellow students looking to positively impact their communities, and learn how to be an effective advocate and communicator on and off campus. There is no fee to participate and travel and lodging expenses are covered by SAALT!

Rise Up! is an opportunity for 15 South Asian American college students from around the country to come together for a four day convening in Washington, DC on May 5-8, 2012.

What can you expect?

• Learn how federal policy is made and how you can impact it
• Explore important issues such as civil rights, immigration, and political participation
• Develop skills around documentation of community stories and advocacy
• Gain insight from experienced community-based leaders who will offer their advice and guidance
• Go back to your campus with an action plan to document community narratives and create policy change

Application deadline is March 23rd. Email info@saalt.org for more information.

Positions: Korean American Immigrant Rights

About NAKASEC
The National Korean American Service and Education Consortium (NAKASEC) is a dynamic grassroots-based organization empowering the Korean American community through education, advocacy and community organizing. We seek to project a national progressive voice and build the movement for social change. Our current program areas include Immigrant Rights, Economic Security, Youth Organizing & Leadership Development, and Civic Engagement & Voter Empowerment.

NAKASEC Seeking a Qualified Applicants for Two Positions

Postion #1: Program Associate (Immigrant Rights, Civic Engagement)
Priority Deadline: March 23, 2012

Position Description
NAKASEC is looking for a hard-working individual to become part of its team as a Program Associate supporting its Immigrant Rights Project and 2012 Civic Engagement & Voter Empowerment program. This is a Full-Time Position based in Washington, DC. Major Responsibilities Include:

• Be part of a team to develop and implement national grassroots mobilizing campaigns that includes community education, organizing, and media & online communications
• Build and maintain relationships with organizations and community members in the Mid-Atlantic and Southeast region
• Assist in the coordination of a national, non-partisan voter education and mobilization campaign including educational materials development and voter research as well as supporting local field efforts for the 2012 Elections
• Research, analyze, and produce materials on relevant policy issues
• Represent NAKASEC at constituent and coalition partner meetings, events and conferences
• Support the executive director in administrative activities as necessary including producing and maintaining relevant grant reports and other documentation

Required Qualifications

• Commitment to immigrant rights, civil rights, and social justice issues
• Experience working on community issues and/or civic participation initiatives
• Results-oriented, organized and strong attention to detail
• Works well in teams but can also take initiative and work independently
• Strong written and verbal communications and interpersonal skills
• Proficiency in Korean language strongly preferred

An ideal candidate will possess previous experience in community organizing, issue-based campaign development and/or a willingness to learn; be creative; demonstrated flexibility; and willing to work some evenings and weekends. Ability to drive is a plus. Reports to: Deputy Director

To Apply:
Please send a cover letter, resume, writing sample and salary history and requirement to Morna Ha, Executive Director, mha@nakasec.org. Please write “Program Associate Search” in the subject line. Please note that due to the volume of applications we receive, we are able to only respond to those applicants whom we are interested in interviewing. No phone calls please.

NAKASEC offers a competitive salary commensurate with experience and full health & dental benefits. We are an equal opportunity employer. NAKASEC has offices in Washington DC and Los Angeles and local affiliates in Los Angeles (the Korean Resource Center) and Chicago (the Korean American Resource and Cultural Center) and works in partnership with community based organizations across the nation. Visit www.nakasec.org and/or our Facebook page for more information.

Priority deadline by March 23, 2012. Applications will be considered on a rolling basis.

= = = = = = = =

Position #2: Communications Intern – Spring and Summer 2012

Position Description
NAKASEC is looking for a Communications Intern for Spring and Summer 2012. He/She will assist the Deputy Director in communications and media activities and will play a critical role in the communications team implementing traditional and social media strategies. This is a full-time position, unpaid based in Washington, DC. College credit can be made available.

Major Responsibilities Include:

• Monitoring national and regional news on issues that NAKASEC and affiliates work on, compiling daily news clips for internal staff distribution and bookmarking articles online
• Updating and maintaining a database of mainstream, regional, ethnic and online journalists, producers and bloggers
• Tracking press work, creating paste-ups of placements and updating monthly media reports
• Creating and maintaining an editorial calendar for media strategies
• Assisting with drafting materials such as press releases, media advisories, biographies, pitch letters and or other correspondence
• Uploading relevant media articles and placements to Facebook, Twitter and website
• Support Deputy Director and project teams to ensure timely progress of work
• Providing general office support

Qualifications

• Commitment to immigrant rights, civil rights, and social justice issues
• Results-oriented, organized and has strong attention to detail
• Willingness to learn, ability to follow instructions, take initiative, multi-task, work quickly and be flexible
• Be a team player
• Excellent written, oral and interpersonal skills
• Ability to speak, write and understand intermediate Korean
• Knowledge of Microsoft Office Suite (primarily Word and Excel) and Web 2.0 experience
• Bachelor’s degree or current enrollment in an undergraduate or graduate program, preferably in communications

Reports to: Deputy Director

To apply:
Please send a cover letter, resume and two writing samples to Jane Yoo, Deputy Director, jyoo@nakasec.org. Write “Communications Intern Search” in the subject line. College credit can be made available – check with your school administration for details.

Writing samples should be no longer than three pages. An article, press release or similar type of communications writing sample is preferred. Incomplete applications will not be considered. Please note that due to the volume of applications we receive, we are able to only respond to those applicants whom we are interested in interviewing. No phone calls please. We are an equal opportunity employer.

NAKASEC has offices in Washington DC and Los Angeles and local affiliates in Los Angeles (the Korean Resource Center) and Chicago (the Korean American Resource and Cultural Center) and works in partnership with community based organizations across the nation. Visit www.nakasec.org and/or our Facebook page for more information. Applications will be considered on a rolling basis.

Scholarships: Asian American Government Network

Asian American Government Executives Network (AAGEN)
Scholarship Program 2012

The mission of AAGEN is to promote, expand and support Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) leadership in Government. In accordance with AAGEN’s mission, the scholarship program has been designed for students in their continuing education to better prepare themselves for positions of leadership and trust in the Federal, State and Local governments.

Two (2) scholarships for $1,500.00 and two (2) scholarships for $1,000 will be awarded in 2012. The AAGEN scholarship is a one-time award; former AAGEN scholarship winners are not eligible.

POLICIES, PROCEDURES, AND RULES
The Scholarship Program is administered under the general direction of the Board of Directors (BoD), but its day-to-day management is the responsibility of AAGEN’s Chairperson or the latter’s designee.

The applications for the scholarship will be accepted until April 1, 2012. The application form can be found at the AAGEN website www.aagen.org. Notification of the awardees will be made prior to each year’s annual AAGEN Leadership Conference. Announcement and presentation of the awards will be made by the Scholarship Awards Committee at the annual AAGEN Leadership Conference.

Scholarship checks will be made out to the college or university the recipient will be attending. These checks will be directly deposited into the student’s account.

SCHOLARSHIP AWARDS COMMITTEE
The AAGEN Scholarship Awards Committee has the responsibility for receiving, reviewing and judging the applications. The Committee, comprised of three members, will have a period of four (4) weeks for its deliberations. It shall prepare and submit a written recommendation of its choices for scholarship awards to the Chair of AAGEN by May 1st of each year. It shall be the latter’s responsibility to relay promptly the recommendations to the Board of Directors. The BoD’s concurrence of the Awards Committee’s recommendations shall be binding. If there is a protest from any BoD member on a particular proposed ‘awardee’, the full BoD and the Scholarship Awards Committee must come to a resolution within 2 weeks, or the award will not be made.

ELIGIBILITY FOR AWARDS
All persons submitting applications in the AAGEN Scholarship Program should be aware that the program is governed by the following requirements:

1. The application, supported by documentation (transcripts from an accredited post-secondary school for current students or from high school for students starting at a college or university), must show a record of academic excellence, service at the local, state and/or federal government, and a seriousness of purpose in pursuing post-secondary education/training goals
2. The applicant must provide information about courses which will be taken and how they will improve the applicant’s ability to serve at the local, state, and/or federal level
3. The applicant must support the principles advanced by AAGEN
4. The applicant must be a U.S. citizen or legal U.S. permanent resident

SCORING CRITERIA
Applications will be evaluated based on five (5) criteria listed below.

1. Relationship of courses to be taken (or field of study) with service at the local/state and/or federal government levels
2. Demonstration of academic achievement and excellence with a copy of either standardized test scores (SAT, ACT, GRE) and/or a 3.3 or better grade point average
3. School, employment or extra-employment activities that demonstrate a seriousness of purpose in serving at leadership positions in the local/state and/or federal government levels
4. Letters of nomination and recommendation from a school counselor, teacher, public official or an AAGEN member, who knows the applicant well and is qualified to recommend the applicant. The letters should convey information about the applicant and his/her ability to serve in leadership positions at the local, state or federal government. These letters should not be written by a family member of the applicant
5. Each applicant is required to respond to at least three of five questions listed below. Each essay must be typed or submitted on a disk or a flash drive or by e-mail; double-spaced, and contain no more than 500 words

FIVE ESSAY TOPICS
Please respond to any three of the five questions listed here. Each essay should contain no more than 500 words. Please submit these with your application.

1. What does public service mean to you and how does it relate to your future goal of serving in leadership positions at the local, state and/or federal level?
2. What experience from your own life has influenced your development into ethical leadership?
3. What are the challenges to increasing APA/minority representation and diversity in public service leadership? What solutions would you propose?
4. What are the two special attributes or capabilities that set you apart from other applicants in leadership situations?
5. What leader at the local, state or federal level has inspired you to public service?

Please send the complete electronic application package to:
Scholarship Awards Committee
Chair: Dr. Glenda Nogami
Glenda.nogami@streufert.net

FURTHER INFORMATION
If you have any questions or for additional information, please leave a message at 717-215-9782.

Conference: Asian Americans and National Policy

Expanding the Asian American and Pacific Islander Voice in National Policy
Wed. April 11, 2012
1-6pm
Location: National Education Association
1201 16th St NW
Washington, DC 20036

Registration deadline is Monday April 2nd

Public policy impacts our everyday lives, from immigration and health coverage, to neighborhood infrastructure and media institutions. Stakeholders from the nonprofit sector, government and higher education are coming together to discuss opportunities, challenges and alternatives for collaborative applied research. Detailed schedule to come.

**Special pre-conference at 10:30AM for students and youth**
Register at: http://www.aapiprc.com/
FMI: aapipolicy@gmail.com

Sponsors:
Asian American and Pacific Islander Policy Research Consortium
CUNY Asian American / Asian Research Institute
UMass Boston Institute for Asian American Studies
UC AAPI Policy Multi-campus Research Program.
UCLA Asian American Studies Center

Co-Sponsors (as of March 2, 2012):
National CAPACD
White House Initiative on AAPIs
National Education Association
Association for Asian American Studies

Workshop: Southeast Asian Leadership & Advocacy

Southeast Asia Resource Action Center (SEARAC)
Now Accepting Applications for SEARAC’s Leadership & Advocacy Training!

SEARAC is now accepting applications for our 14th annual Leadership & Advocacy Training. This training is open to any applicants who are Southeast Asian American or who work with Southeast Asian American communities across the country. The training will be held from July 15-17 in Washington, D.C. The application is available online. Apply today!

Why should I attend? Learn about issues in education, health care, immigration, and aging that affect Southeast Asian Americans. Learn how to develop an advocacy ask. Visit Washington, D.C. and your member of Congress. Be part of an amazing nationwide network. Make friendships for life.

Who should attend? Southeast Asian Americans who want to learn more about policy and advocacy. The training is open to people of all ages. In the past, we’ve had professionals, young professionals, elders, staff of community-based organizations, and high school, undergraduate, and graduate students attend. The training is tailored to Southeast Asian Americans, but is also open to anyone working with the Southeast Asian American community.

How much advocacy and policy experience should I have? The SEARAC training is geared toward those who are starting out in their knowledge of advocacy and policy. No prior knowledge of advocacy and policy is required. Knowledge of the issue areas we cover (education, health care, immigration, and aging) is helpful but not required.

How much does it cost? SEARAC makes the training as affordable as possible for our participants. Our stipends cover most of the costs of travel, lodging, and food, but participants may need to cover a small portion of their own travel. If you are accepted, we ask for a $75 deposit to hold your place, and it will be refunded once you complete the training.

When is the application due? SEARAC will accept applications until Sunday, April 29 at midnight PDT.

For more information visit the SEARAC Leadership & Advocacy Training page here. Questions? Contact Riamsalio (Kao) at riamsalio@searac.org or by phone at (202) 667-4690.

Call for Supporters: Mixed-Race Bone Marrow Documentary

My name is Nelson Medina and I am the Producer of Marketing and Distribution of the documentary Mixed Match, which is being produced by Meditating Bunny Studio Inc., a Vancouver-based independent production company founded by filmmaker Jeff Chiba Stearns.

Mixed Match is a feature-length documentary that explores the need to find mixed ethnicity bone marrow and cord blood donors to donate to multiethnic patients suffering from life threatening blood diseases such as leukemia. This live action and animated film focuses on the main characters’ struggles to survive against incredible odds.

We are fundraising $25,000 through IngieGoGo, to cover expenses in the production and post-production stages. We would be most appreciative of your support in spreading awareness to this fundraising campaign.

We feel that Mixed Match might capture the interest of the audience of Asian Nation, as the film highlights the stories of many part-asian multiethnic patients. This is a film that will help spread awareness of the challenges faced by mixed people with blood diseases, as well as encourage people to join the bone marrow registry and donate core blood to increase the likelihood of finding multiethnic marrow matches.

The fundraising website can be found at www.indiegogo.com/mixed-match. For more information about the film, please visit www.mixedmatchmovie.com. The trailer can be seen at http://youtu.be/bI2gMNSUqKU. Electronic press kits are available by request.

Thank you so much for your time and consideration.

Best regards,
Nelson Medina
Producer of Marketing and Distribution for Mixed Match
Meditating Bunny Studio Inc.

Today, March 8, is International Womens Day. To commemorate this event, The Daily Beast (an online magazine that is part of the Newsweek media corporation) has compiled a list of “150 Women Who Shake the World.”

Since this site focuses on Asians and Asian Americans, I am particularly glad to see that the list includes numerous women from Asia and a couple of Asian Americans as well, specifically Kamala Harris (Attorney General of California) and Ai-Jen Poo (community activist for immigrant domestic workers).

In reading their descriptions, it is clear that while many of their contributions may benefit women most immediately, their work uplifts us all as human beings. Keep up the good work and the good fight, ladies.

The following new books examine some political, economic, and cultural issues of Southeast Asian ethnic groups in Asia and in the U.S. that do not get as much scholarly and public attention from compared to larger east Asian ethnic groups — Hmong, Laotians, Cambodians, and Thais. As always, a book’s inclusion is for informational purposes only and does not necessarily mean a full endorsement of its contents.

Thais in Los Angeles, by Chanchanit Martorell and Beatrice “Tippe” Morlan (Arcadia Publishing)

Los Angeles is home to the largest Thai population outside of Thailand. With a relatively recent history of immigration to the United States dating to 1965, reports estimate that 80,000 Thais make their home in Southern California. In spite of its brief history in the United States, the Thai community in Los Angeles has already left its mark on the city. While the proliferation of Thai-owned businesses and shops has converted East Hollywood and some San Fernando Valley neighborhoods to destinations for cultural tourism, the Thai community in Los Angeles County reverberates still from global attention over the 1995 El Monte human trafficking case. The great popularity of Thai cuisine, textiles, and cultural festivals continues to preserve, enrich, and showcase one of Asia’s most distinctive cultures.

The Persistence of Cambodian Poverty: From the Killing Fields to Today, by Harold Kerbo (McFarland Publishing)

Since the tragedies of the “killing fields” and the rule of the Khmer Rouge, the global community has largely ignored the social issues plaguing Cambodia. Though the infamous killings have largely stopped, poverty and corruption are rampant in contemporary Cambodia. This book includes a short history of Cambodia and covers the systemic nature of Cambodian poverty, the economic success stories of Vietnam and Laos, the corruption in Cambodia, and hopes for its future. Intended for the general reader, this book is particularly relevant to those interested in the broader issue of eliminating world poverty.

Writing from These Roots: Literacy in a Hmong-American Community, by John M. Duffy (University of Hawai’i Press)

Writing from These Roots documents the historical development of literacy in a Midwestern American community of Laotian Hmong, a people who came to the United States as refugees from the Vietnam War and whose language had no widely accepted written form until one created by missionary-linguists was adopted in the late twentieth century by Hmong in Laos and, later, the U.S. and other Western nations. As such, the Hmong have often been described as “preliterates,” “nonliterates,” or members of an “oral culture.” Although such terms are problematic, it is nevertheless true that the majority of Hmong did not read or write in any language when they arrived in the U.S.

For this reason, the Hmong provide a unique opportunity to study the forces that influence the development of reading and writing abilities in cultures in which writing is not widespread and to do so within the context of the political, economic, religious, military, and migratory upheavals classified broadly as “globalization.”

Drawing on life-history interviews collected from Hmong refugees in a Wisconsin community, this book examines the disparate political and institutional forces that shaped Hmong literacy development in the twentieth century, including, in Laos, French colonialism, Laotian nationalism, missionary Christianity, and the CIA during the Vietnam War. It further examines the influences on Hmong literary in the U.S., including public schooling, evangelical Christianity, ethnic self-help organizations, and media discourses about Hmong refugees.

In relating the particulars of the Hmong story, the author asks broad questions–still urgent and unresolved–about the nature of literacy development: How do people learn to read and write? What are the forces that nourish, compel, sustain, deny, or redeem literacy? What processes are at work when a majority of people within a given culture, begins, for the first time in its history, to acquire and use written language? And, finally, in what ways do minority peoples–refugees, immigrants, and others–claim the possibilities of literacy for themselves, using it as an instrument to compose identities, cultures, and conceptions of the world? Writing from These Roots offers a theoretical perspective on these and other questions concerning literacy development, one rooted in the symbolic interactions of peoples, cultures, and nations.

Laotian Daughters: Working toward Community, Belonging, and Environmental Justice, by Bindi V. Shah (Temple University Press)

Laotian Daughters focuses on second-generation environmental justice activists in Richmond, California. Bindi Shah’s pathbreaking book charts these young women’s efforts to improve the degraded conditions in their community and explores the ways their activism and political practices resist the negative stereotypes of race, class, and gender associated with their ethnic group.

Using ethnographic observations, interviews, focus groups, and archival data on their participation in Asian Youth Advocates—a youth leadership development project—Shah analyzes the teenagers’ mobilization for social rights, cross-race relations, and negotiations of gender and inter-generational relations. She also addresses issues of ethnic youth, and immigration and citizenship and how these shape national identities.

Shah ultimately finds that citizenship as a social practice is not just an adult experience, and that ethnicity is an ongoing force in the political and social identities of second-generation Laotians.

Facing the Khmer Rouge: A Cambodian Journey, by Ronnie Yimsut (Rutgers University Press)

As a child growing up in Cambodia, Ronnie Yimsut played among the ruins of the Angkor Wat temples, surrounded by a close-knit community. As the Khmer Rouge gained power and began its genocidal reign of terror, his life became a nightmare. Teenaged Ronnie was left orphaned, literally buried under the bodies of his family and friends. In this stunning memoir, Yimsut describes how, in the wake of death and destruction, he decides to live.

Escaping the turmoil of Cambodia, he makes a perilous journey through the jungle into Thailand, only to be sent to a notorious Thai prison. Fortunately, he is able to reach a refugee camp and ultimately migrate to the United States, another frightening journey to the unknown. Yet he prevailed, attending the University of Oregon and becoming an influential leader in the community of Cambodian immigrants. Facing the Khmer Rouge shows Ronnie Yimsut’s personal quest to rehabilitate himself, make a new life in America, and then return to Cambodia to help rebuild the land of his birth.