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.
- Na-Rae Kim, assistant professor-in-residence of Asian and Asian American studies, teaches AASI 2030: Art, Politics, and Propaganda in the Asian American Cultural Center on October 16, 2018. (Bri Diaz/UConn Photo)
- Analysis of state data shows that 1 in 4 Asian Americans in the state are women who recorded no income and their numbers are growing, but why?
- Andrew Rebatta, Associate Curator @mocanyc conducting research on the Fred Ho Collection at the UConn Dodd Center
- AASI 2030: Art, Politics, and Propaganda in the Asian American Cultural Center on October 16, 2018. (Bri Diaz/UConn Photo)
- AAASI Faculty Member, Alexis Dudden, presenting her summer research at AAASI Faculty Research Slam on September 3rd, 2019.
- A map of Asian American populations throughout Connecticut, dated 2015-2017
- Current President of the Association of Asian American Studies, Jennifer Ho, speaking at the East of California Summit
- Exhibit in the School of Nursing showcasing the works of Filipino nurses.
- Upcoming UConn Reads Events: Light From Uncommon StarsJoin UConn Reads for two weeks of wonderful events in honor of the 2022-2023 selection, Light From Uncommon Stars by Ryka Aoki.Posted on April 3, 2023
- Operation Babylift: An Adoptee’s Perspectives on the Vietnam WarOperation Babylift Mahli Xuan Mechenbier was adopted from South Vietnam through Operation Babylift after an American missionary nun found her next to a road outside of Saigon. Often categorized as a “humanitarian mission” by the United States government, Operation Babylift—which evacuated over 3,000 children during and after the Fall of Saigon—can also be characterized as controversial […]Posted on March 7, 2023
AAASI’s Illuminating Resilience Project
“Academic Integrity at Stake: The Ramseyer Article – Four Letters” edited by Alexis Dudden
Alexis Dudden is Professor of History at the University of Connecticut. Her most recent book, Troubled Apologies, interrogates the interplay between political apology and apologetic history among Japan, Korea, and the United States.She is currently working on a project examining Japan’s territorial disputes. [...]
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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Sep
25
Sikh Studies Week - Sikhism 101 4:30pm
Sikh Studies Week - Sikhism 101
Monday, September 25th, 2023
04:30 PM - 06:00 PM
Homer Babbidge Library - Class of 1947 Room
In collaboration with The Sikh Coalition and Sikh Art Gallery, the AAASI is presenting the first Sikh Studies Week featuring community leaders, scholars, and cultural workers to inspire connections for students, reveal hidden histories, share joy and tradition, discuss art and healing, and provide rich and extended professional development for educators.
Monday 9/25 @ 4:30pm “Sikhism 101” with Harman Singh in Babbidge 1947 Room; Co-Sponsored with UConn Neag School of Education
All events will be hybrid. Join us in person or online. Register online here: https://tinyurl.com/SikhStudiesWK
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Sep
26
Sikh Studies Week - Diasporic Peregrinations: Journeys of a Burmese Sikh 4:00pm
Sikh Studies Week - Diasporic Peregrinations: Journeys of a Burmese Sikh
Tuesday, September 26th, 2023
04:00 PM - 05:30 PM
Homer Babbidge Library - Class of 1947 Room
In collaboration with The Sikh Coalition and Sikh Art Gallery, the AAASI is presenting the first Sikh Studies Week featuring community leaders, scholars, and cultural workers to inspire connections for students, reveal hidden histories, share joy and tradition, discuss art and healing, and provide rich and extended professional development for educators.
Tuesday 9/26 @ 4pm “Diasporic Peregrinations: Journeys of a Burmese Sikh” with Dr. Jaspal Kaur Singh in Babbidge 1947 Room
All events will be hybrid. Register online here: https://tinyurl.com/SikhStudiesWK
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Sep
27
Sikh Studies Week - History of Sikhs in Connecticut 5:00pm
Sikh Studies Week - History of Sikhs in Connecticut
Wednesday, September 27th, 2023
05:00 PM - 06:30 PM
Sikh Art Gallery - Norwich, CT
In collaboration with The Sikh Coalition and Sikh Art Gallery, the AAASI is presenting the first Sikh Studies Week featuring community leaders, scholars, and cultural workers to inspire connections for students, reveal hidden histories, share joy and tradition, discuss art and healing, and provide rich and extended professional development for educators.
Wednesday 9/27 @ 5pm “History of Sikhs in Connecticut” with Manmohan Singh Bharara at the Sikh Art Gallery in Norwich, CT
All events will be hybrid. Join us in-person or online. Register here: https://tinyurl.com/CTSikhs
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Sep
28
Sikh Studies Week - Traditional Kirtan Performance 6:00pm
Sikh Studies Week - Traditional Kirtan Performance
Thursday, September 28th, 2023
06:00 PM - 08:00 PM
Homer Babbidge Library - Heritage Room, 4th Floor
In collaboration with The Sikh Coalition and Sikh Art Gallery, the AAASI is presenting the first Sikh Studies Week featuring community leaders, scholars, and cultural workers to inspire connections for students, reveal hidden histories, share joy and tradition, discuss art and healing, and provide rich and extended professional development for educators.
Join Gurmeet Kaur Singh and the UConn Sikh Student Association for a Traditional Kirtan performance
All events will be hybrid. Register online here: https://tinyurl.com/SikhStudiesWK
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Sep
29
Sikh Studies Week - Visual Cultures of ‘Communal’ Violence in India: Media Failures and Activist Artists 4:00pm
Sikh Studies Week - Visual Cultures of ‘Communal’ Violence in India: Media Failures and Activist Artists
Friday, September 29th, 2023
04:00 PM - 05:30 PM
Homer Babbidge Library - Class of 1947 Room
In collaboration with The Sikh Coalition and Sikh Art Gallery, the AAASI is presenting the first Sikh Studies Week featuring community leaders, scholars, and cultural workers to inspire connections for students, reveal hidden histories, share joy and tradition, discuss art and healing, and provide rich and extended professional development for educators.
Friday 9/29 @ 4pm “Visual Cultures of ‘Communal’ Violence in India: Media Failures and Activist Artists” with Dr. Inderpal Grewal in Babbidge 1947 Room
All events will be hybrid. Register online here: https://tinyurl.com/SikhStudiesWK
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Sep
29
Intimacy, Gender, and Anticolonial Internationalism 5:00pm
Intimacy, Gender, and Anticolonial Internationalism
Friday, September 29th, 2023
05:00 PM - 07:00 PM
Wood Hall Basement Lounge
Please join the History Department for this semester’s first Foreign Policy Seminar!
Michele Louro (Salem State University) will give a talk on “Intimacy, Gender, and Anticolonial Internationalism: The Case of Agnes Smedley.”The talk begins at 5pm with Q&A after. Light refreshments will be served.
Michele L. Louro is a Full Professor of History at Salem State University. She received her Ph.D. from Temple University and is broadly trained in the fields of modern South Asian history, British imperial history, and international and transnational history.Her first book, Comrades against Imperialism: Nehru, India and Interwar Internationalism (Cambridge University Press, 2018), is set between the world wars and recovers the debates, introduces the personalities, and reveals the ideas that seeded Jawaharlal Nehru’s political vision for India and the wider world. Louro is author to essays on this topic that appear in several journals including the Journal of Contemporary History (forthcoming), Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and the Middle East (2013), and Third Frame: Literature, Culture and Society (2009), as well as an essay in the edited volume, The Internationalist Moment: South Asia, Worlds and Worldviews (2014).
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Oct
12
The 3rd Mark Twain Distinguished Writer-in-Residence Program 6:30pm
The 3rd Mark Twain Distinguished Writer-in-Residence Program
Thursday, October 12th, 2023
06:30 PM
UCONN Bookstore, 1 Royce Circle, Storrs, CT
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Jan
24
Fellow’s Talk: Victor Zatsepine 12:15pm
Fellow’s Talk: Victor Zatsepine
Wednesday, January 24th, 2024
12:15 PM - 01:15 PM
Homer Babbidge Library
UCHI Fellow Victor Zatsepine (History, Asian and Asian American Studies, UConn) will give a talk with a response by Alexander Diener (Geography, University of Kansas).
This event will also be livestreamed.
Helpful Links
Asian American Cultural Center: https://asacc.uconn.edu/
Association for Asian American Faculty and Staff (AAAFS): https://asacc.uconn.edu/
Office of Diversity and Inclusion: https://diversity.uconn.edu/
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.
Contact Us
For more information about the program, please contact Jason Chang, Director of the Asian and Asian American Studies Institute, at
jason.o.chang@uconn.edu or (860) 486-5717.
Office: Beach Hall 417
For all other inquiries, please contact the CLAS Business Center at bsc@uconn.edu or (860) 486-1231.
Location:
417 Beach Hall
354 Mansfield Rd. U-1091
Storrs, CT 06269-1091
Room 425 (Conference Room)
Room 422 (Stephanie Lumbra)
Follow AAASI on Twitter
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.