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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Feb
14
"Dear Corky" Film Screening and Discussion4:30pm
"Dear Corky" Film Screening and Discussion
Tuesday, February 14th, 2023
04:30 PM - 06:00 PM
Storrs Campus SU 428
In collaboration with the Asian/Asian American Studies Institute, Join us with Filmmaker Curtis Chin. We will screen his film, "Dear Corky," and will be followed with a discussion on Corky's Legacy. -
Feb
17
East Asia Workshop Series Book Talk3:00pm
East Asia Workshop Series Book Talk
Friday, February 17th, 2023
03:00 PM - 04:30 PM
Storrs Campus zoom
UConn’s History Department and Asian and Asian American Institute present
East Asia Workshop Series Book Talk by Zoom:
Title: The Cultivated Forest: People and Woodlands in Asian History
Speakers/authors: Ian M. Miller, assistant professor of history at St. John’s University, Bradley Camp Davis is associate professor of history at Eastern Connecticut State University, Brian Lander is assistant professor of history and environment and society at Brown University. John S. Lee is assistant professor of East Asian history at Durham University.
This volume, published by University of Washington Press in 2022, synthesizes multiple perspectives on Asian forests from early history to the near present.
When: Feb 17, 2023 03:00 PM Eastern Time (US and Canada),
Register in advance for this online event via the following Zoom link:
https://us06web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZwkf-uorT0iE9By0RaRnu8FfS34-nuov_d_
After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting. -
Mar
1
Wed. Workshop- Professors Chang and Dudden3:00pm
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Mar
1
Film Screening: Chinatown Rising5:30pm
Film Screening: Chinatown Rising
Wednesday, March 1st, 2023
05:30 PM - 07:30 PM
Storrs Campus Konover Auditorium, Dodd Center
AAASI presents a UConn Honors screening of the Chinatown Rising documentary on March 1, 2023 from 5:30-7:30pm at the Konover Auditorium, Dodd Center. There will be a Q&A with Co-Director Josh Chuck after the screening.
About the film:
Against the backdrop of the Civil Rights Movement of the mid-1960s, a young San Francisco Chinatown resident armed with a 16mm camera and leftover film scraps from a local TV station, turned his lens onto his community. Totaling more than 20,000 feet of film (10 hours), Harry Chuck’s exquisite unreleased footage has captured a divided community’s struggles for self-determination. Chinatown Rising is a documentary film about the Asian American Movement from the perspective of the young residents on the front lines of their historic neighborhood in transition. Through publicly challenging the conservative views of their elders, their demonstrations and protests of the 1960s-1980s rattled the once quiet streets during the community’s shift in power. Forty-five years later, in intimate interviews these activists recall their roles and experiences in response to the need for social change.
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.