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
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.
A Warm Welcome to Our Newest Core Faculty Member – Assistant Professor Hana Maruyama
We are thrilled to welcome Professor Hana Maruyama to UConn this fall as Assistant Professor of History jointly appointed with the Asian and Asian American Studies Institute. A specialist in Digital Public History, she is part of this year’s exciting cluster hire in Anti-Racism and Anti-Bias. Professor Maruyama brings an impressive array of skills, strengths, and research and teaching interests which will advance our work in digital, public, Asian-American, Native American, and US history. She will also play an important role in the Department of History’s EPOCH program, the joint minor in Digital Public History being developed with Digital Media and Design, and the Asian and Asian American Studies Institute’s K-12 curriculum initiative and commitment to teaching anti-racism.
Hana C. Maruyama is a Ph.D. candidate in American Studies at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, with a graduate minor in Heritage Studies and Public History. This August she defends her dissertation, “AlienNation: The Role of Japanese American World War II Incarceration in Native Dispossession.” Her work on Japanese American World War II incarceration, how it relied on and reproduced settler colonial logics, and how it impacted American Indian and Alaska Native people. She is the co-creator/producer of Campu, a podcast created in partnership with the Japanese American oral history organization Densho. She formerly worked for American Public Media’s Order 9066, the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center, and the Heart Mountain Interpretive Center. She is yonsei (or fourth generation Japanese American) on her father’s side, with family incarcerated at Heart Mountain, Gila River, and Jerome.
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.