Discover how an Interdisciplinary Minor in Asian and Asian American Studies can change your world!
On March 8, 2021, AAASI and AAAFS released a joint statement. Read the full statement in our posts on the home page.
AAASI’s Illuminating Resilience Project
Want to see the work some students have done with the mental health and arts initiative involving the COVID-19 pandemic?
Asian Americans are not silent. So many of us in the community are actively fighting injustices and anti-racism. However, historically, we have always been silenced, which gives the incredibly false interpretation that all Asian Americans are passive & do not care. Let's talk.
Join UConn Faculty, Staff, Graduate, Undergraduate, and Alumni Asian Americans to unlearn and relearn about each other.
We thank the over 800 attendees for coming to this event!
Resources to continue the conversation:
- Immigrant History Initiative - Strategies for talking to children about racial identity, bullying, and anti-Asian racism | click here.
- Asian American and Pacific Islander Authors and Books #iamnotavirus #makeusvisible | list of Asian American books
- Connecticut specific Facebook group | #MakeUsVisibleCT
Announcing the First Vorasane Scholarship Awards
With great excitement, we are proud to announce the inaugural winners of the Nom and Boulieng Vorasane Scholarship – Lynna Vo and Georgia Mikan.
Lynna is a Sophomore in Human Development and Family Sciences with an Early Childhood Development Specialization applying to the School of Education.
Georgia is a Junior in the Pre-Teaching Elementary Education program in the School of Education specializing in teaching History and Geography in Social Studies.
Announcing the Spring 2022 Artist-in-Residence: Ali Asgar Tara
Ali Asgar Tara (they/them/she/her) is a Bangladeshi transgender artist currently based in Brooklyn, New York. Tara combines video, text, drawing, and community performance to create political, site responsive, and cross-disciplinary collaborations. Twitter @aliasgarart
Tara’s scholarship and art are reflective of their past & present experiences in a very different social, cultural, political, and educational environment. Tara’s current research-based art practice looks at the narratives of queer liberation in the context of the global north and juxtaposes it with their experience and understanding of queerness from the global south and argues how the neoliberal global market economy depoliticizes queerness as an Identity.
This semester, they will lead regular encounters through the Decolonial Critic Lab, a bi-weekly meeting/discussion, designed to provoke critical discussion among the student and the faculty community of UConn which aim to examine the connection between decolonial methods and how Asia has been constructed, represented, mediated, and conceptualized by artists and curators across the globe at the end of the 20th century and early 21st century. Please email jason.o.chang@uconn.edu for information on
virtual attendance.
The AAASI Activist-In-Residence Program Adds Another Member
We welcome JHD (Jennifer Heikkila Díaz) as the 21-22 Activist in residence.
JHD (she/her or they/them) identifies as Korean American, Asian American, and biracial. For over two decades, she/they has worked in coalition with students, families, and school-based staff, pursuing educational equity–most of those years as a teacher, in school administration, and instructional coaching, and some of those years in education nonprofit work. She/they has had the privilege of supporting and partnering with thousands of students, families, teachers, and school leaders. Currently, JHD works at New Haven Promise as the Chief of Talent & Operations and at Fund for Teachers CT as a Program Officer. She/they is part of the CT Anti-Racist Teaching & Learning Collective, and is the co-founder of aapiNHV. She/they spends as much time as possible with young people, including her/their children, Magdalena and Gabriela.
Their residency will support K-12 teacher outreach and resource development for the Make Us Visible CT campaign to build capacity in the Connecticut school system to develop a robust and inclusive Asian American and Pacific Islander curriculum.
We're proud to continue Mike Keo's residency as well.
Meet Mike Keo, founder of the #IAMNOTAVIRUS Campaign was also a founding member of the Make Us Visible CT which successfully campaigned in the Connecticut state legislature to mandate the State Department of Education to create a K-8 Asian American and Pacific Islander model curriculum.
Read about the campaign, and find our resources here.
Upcoming Events
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Oct
4
Conversation w/ Helen Zia and 40th Year Commemoration of the Vincent Chin Case 6:00pm
Conversation w/ Helen Zia and 40th Year Commemoration of the Vincent Chin Case
Tuesday, October 4th, 2022
06:00 PM - 08:00 PM
Hartford Campus Infinity Hall
Helen Zia is a writer, activist and Fulbright Scholar. Her first book, Asian American Dreams chronicled the emergence of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders in contemporary America. Her latest book, Last Boat out of Shanghai: The Epic Story of the Chinese who Fled Mao's Revolution, was named an NPR Best Book of 2019. The daughter of immigrants from China, Helen's role as an activist in the landmark civil rights case of anti-Asian violence is featured in the award-winning film, Who Killed Vincent Chin? In 2010, she was a witness in the case for marriage equality that went to the Supreme Court. A graduate of Princeton University’s first coeducational class, Helen has received two honorary doctorates. After attending medical school, she became a community organizer, construction laborer, autoworker, and after which she discovered her life’s work as a writer. -
Oct
7
East Asia Workshop Series: Fragile Cargo: The World War II Race to Save the Treasures of China's Forbidden City.3:00pm
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Nov
3
“Picking A Side? Korea’s Complicated Pacific Strategy”4:00pm
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Nov
8
Speculative Fiction: Past, Present, and Future5:30pm
Speculative Fiction: Past, Present, and Future
Tuesday, November 8th, 2022
05:30 PM - 07:00 PM
Storrs Campus The William Benton Museum of Art
Though science fiction and other forms of speculative storytelling in the U.S. were finding their genre conventions in the Golden Age (1938-1950), they have never stopped evolving. Less than a century later there have been tremendous changes in how storytellers imagine the world, who these storytellers are, and even what we imagine. What has prompted these changes, and what do they mean for us as humans, in an interconnected world, as we hurtle through space and time?
Held in conjunction with the exhibition "Ray Guns, Dames, and the Guilty Gaze: Feminism and the Golden Age of Science Fiction Pulps".
Pam Bedore is an Associate Professor on English on the Avery Point campus who specializes in science fiction, detective fiction, and feminist literary theory, among other areas. Her publications include Great Utopian and Dystopian Works of Literature, produced for The Great Courses series.
Fred Lee is an Associate Professor in Political Science and Asian and Asian American Studies on the Storrs campus whose research focuses on racial politics. His current book project, East Asian Science Fiction as Global Political Theory, recontextualizes Asian science fiction as Asian/Asian American political theory.
Grégory Pierrot is an Associate Professor in English at the Stamford campus who specializes in American Literature, Haitian Revolutionary Studies, and the graphic novel, among other areas. He co-hosts the webinar series Decolonize That! with UConn colleague Bhakti Shringarpure.
Moderated by Dexter Gabriel, Assistant Professor of History on the Storrs campus. Dr. Gabriel’s areas of specialization include Abolition and Emancipation and Slavery in Popular Culture. As P. Djèlí Clark, he is the author of The Black God’s Drums, an Amazon Editor’s Pick, and several stories in the Dead Djinn Universe series.
Introduced by Dr. Barbara Gurr, Associate Professor in Residence in the Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program. She teaches a course titled “Feminism and Science Fiction” and is co-curator of “Ray Guns, Dame, and the Guilty Gaze: Feminism and the Golden Age of Science Fiction Pulps” on exhibit at the Benton Museum of Art.
The exhibition and related public programs are supported by the University of Connecticut Humanities Institute, Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Program, the School of Fine Arts, and the Office of the Vice President for Research.
Meet The Director!
Associate Professor of History and Director of the AAASI
(Bri Diaz/UConn Photo)
Welcome to the Asian and Asian American Studies Institute. Read Jason Chang's message here.
FOCUS ON FACULTY & INSTITUTE INITIATIVES
An interview conducted by Jason O. Chang, director of the Asian and Asian American Studies Institute, with Ryan Verano ’18 (CLAS), a UConn economics major and Asian American studies minor, on his mission in the healthcare field.
Read the interview here.