Spring 2002 Events
AAS Film Series, 2001-2002
Fighting the Tide: Asian American Resistance
AAS's annual film series for the 2001-2002 year has the theme of, "Fighting the Tide: Asian American Resistance." Throughout history Asian Americans have confronted stereotypes and racism which have barred them from equal participation in U.S. society. And while conventional wisdom may imagine Asian Americans silently enduring injustice and avoiding confrontation, in reality, there exists a long and proud legacy of protest and resistance within the Asian American community. This year’s series will screen films which portray these acts of resistance, be they legal battles defying the Internment of Japanese Americans, political protests of housing discrimination and inner-city plight, or cultural rejections of demeaning media images and stereotypes resulting in a reaffirmation of Asian American culture and ethnicity.

Each showing of the film series took place from Noon - 1:00 p.m. in the Illini Union and will be followed by discussion.

Spring 2002

Friday February 8, 2002
Unfinished Business, 217 Illini Union
Unfinished Business tells the story of Fred Korematsu, Gordon Hirabayashi, and Minoru Yasui-- three men who courageously defied the government and were separately convicted and imprisoned for violating Executive Order 9066, which led to the unjust internment of their people. The film interweaves the personal stories of the three men with startling archival footage of wartime anti- Japanese hysteria, the evacuation and incarceration, and life in the camps.

Friday March 1, 2002
Sa I gu: From Korean Women’s Perspectives, 209 Illini Union
The April 29, 1992, Los Angeles crisis underscored the voiceless-ness and invisibility of Korean Americans in U.S. society. Over half of the material losses were sustained by Korean Americans. Sa-I-Gu brings these faces back, exploring the perspectives of the immigrant women who comprise more than half of Korean American shopkeepers. *part of a month long series of events to commemorate the tenth anniversary of the Los Angeles Unrest

Wednesday March 6, 2002
Another America, 209 Illini Union
Director Michael Cho investigates his own family history and tragedy as he explores the Black/Korean conflict in the inner city as illuminated by the Los Angeles uprisings of 1992. The murder of his uncle in Detroit forces Cho to take a close look at his family's own experiences as Korean American merchants. *part of a month-long series of events to commemorate the tenth anniversary of the Los Angeles Unrest

Friday March 29, 2002
Out in Silence, 209 Illini Union
In Out in Silence, Vince Crisostomo, a gay man and aspiring singer from San Francisco, recalls the feelings of isolation that made him leave his close-knit, conservative family and drift to Hawaii and New York. Shocked to learn that he was HIV positive, Vince realized how little he, as an Asian American, knew about HIV/AIDS. After losing his lover to the disease, Vince became active in AIDS education.


Friday April 12, 2002
The Bhangra Wrap AND Gimme Somethin' To Dance To! What is Bhangra? 405 Illini Union
Both of these documentaries reveal a vibrant youth subculture that fuses hip hop, rap, and Bhangra music. Based mainly in New York and Toronto, Bhangra Houseis propagated through alternative radio, party DJs, and hip urban clubs where South Asian youth have carved out their own unique sense of style, identity, and voice that is an uncompromised mix of old and new, South Asian and American.

The Los Angeles Civil Unrest: Ten Years in Retrospect
A month of events to commemorate the LA Unrest
Friday March 1, Noon - 1:00 p.m., Room 209 Illini Union
Film showing of Sa I Gu

Wednesday, March 6, Noon - 1:00 p.m., Room 209 Illini Union
Film showing of Another America

Friday March 8, 1:00 p.m. - 3:00 p.m., 210 Illini Union
a lecture by Michael Thornton, Professor of Afro American Studies, Universitiy of Wisconsin Madison
"Black Revolt: Asian American Newspapers and the LA Riots."
This talk is part of a larger book project on mainstream and ethnic minority newspaper (Latino, black, and Asian American) coverage of relations between groups of color. The talk explores how 5 Asian American newspapers understood and explained the LA riots.

Monday, March 11, 1:00 p.m. - 3:00 p.m., Lucy Ellis Lounge, Foreign Language Building
“Mourning Los Angeles”, a workshop by Min Song, postdoctoral fellow of AAS at UIUC. This workshop will examine the cultural meaning of the loss portrayed in the documentary Sa-I-Gu by placing this loss next to critical discussions on grief, melancholia, and trauma.

Tuesday March 26, 3:00 p.m. - 5:00 p.m., Levis Music Room
A lecture by Edward Chang, Associate Professor of Ethnic Studies, University of California Riverside
"Ethnic Peace in the American City: Building Community in Los Angeles Ten Years after the Unrest"
The year 2002 marks the ten-year anniversary of the Rodney King verdict and the resulting days of civil unrest in Los Angeles. On this tenth anniversary, we seek to better reflect and understand the past as well as assess the present and future. What were the economic, historical, and social conditions that led up to these events? What has changed in a decade? Does the future bode well? This lecture will address the state of affairs today in Los Angeles among African Americans, Asian Americans, and Latinos by one of the foremost interpreters of the Los Angeles civil unrest and race relations.Paid for by the Asian Pacific American Resource Committee.

Tuesday March 26, 8:00 p.m. - 10:00 p.m., 100 Lincoln
"Smash Hits and Pop Flies: An Evening of Performance with Dan Kwong"
Performing a medley of short works from his various solo shows, master storyteller Dan Kwong navigates the treacherous waters of identity politics with an open heart, a wacky sense of humor, and keen insight. Part of this medley will be the piece, “New Season”, Kwong's response in the aftermath of the Los Angeles riots. Sponsored by the Asian Pacific American Coalition. Paid for by the Asian Pacific American Resource Committee.

Monday, April 1, 7:00 p.m., Studio Theatre, Krannert
The Department of Theatre's staged reading of Anna Deavere Smith's drama Twilight. Twilight uses verbatim the words of people who experienced the Los Angeles riots to expose and explore the devastating human impact of that event.

Cosponsors of these events are:
Afro-American Studies and Research Program, Anthropology, College of Communications, History, Illinois Program for Research in the Humanities, Latina/ Latino Studies, Minority Student Affairs, School of Music, Social Work, Sociology, Political Science, Women and Gender in Global Perspectives Program, Women’s Studies
Paid for by the Asian Pacific American Resource Committee.

Dan Kwong Lecture, "The Personal is Political: Storytelling as Liberation tool"

Performance Artist Dan Kwong delivered a lecture, "The Personal is Political: Storytelling as a Liberation Tool." In this lecture, Kwong will show brief video clips, discuss his work, and answer questions about his creative process and philosophy of live performance. This lecture is supported by the Lorado Taft Lectureship on Art Fund/ College of Fine and Applied Arts.
Thursday, March 28, 1:30 p.m. 66 Main Library

2001-2002 AAS Workshop Series:
New Frontiers: Asian American Studies in the Midwest
The Asian American Studies Program is pleased to announce a 2001-2002 Workshop series, "New Frontiers: Asian American Studies in the Midwest." This is an interdisciplinary workshop for interested faculty and graduate students that will meet through the year. Each session of the Workshop will focus on one scholar's work in progress. The workshop is designed to provide an informal setting for academic discussion: a short presentation of the work followed by open dialogue and conversation.

We have chosen this year's theme because it highlights the most recent work being done on Asian Americans in the Midwest. This new work signals a movement in the field towards establishing new paradigms that depart from and revise the California/West coast-centric foundations of Asian American Studies. This Midwestern Asian American scholarship not only focuses on our immediate environ but signals a paradigm shift and a re-orientation of the field. We hope that interested faculty and graduate students will use this Workshop to become familiar with each other's research themes and methodologies and come to challenge traditional notions of research in AAS.

Spring 2002 presenters:
Friday February 15, 2002, 1:00 p.m. - 3:00 p.m., Room 385 Education Building
"A Historical and Cultural Comparison of the Schooling of Japanese American and Hmong Children in the Midwest" Susan Matoba Adler, Assistant Professor, Curriculum and Instruction, University of Illinois Urbana Champaign
This paper draws from three studies on Asian Americans in the Midwest and focus on the historical, political and cultural contexts of post-internment Japanese Americans, and post-Vietnam Hmong refugees in the Midwest. They have been stereotyped as both "model minority" and educationally "at-risk" for their cultural and linguistic differences, yet both groups share dispersement and resettlement due to government intervention. Their stories illustrate the diversity of Asian Americans in the Midwest.

Friday April 19. 2002, 1-3pm, 302 Lincoln Hall
"Between White and Black: Class, Race, Gender, and National Culture among Chicago's Filipinos before 1965"
Barbara Posadas, Professor of History, Northern Illinois University.
This paper examines the experiences of the young, mostly male Filipinos who settled in Chicago prior the restriction of immigration from the Philippines in 1934. It focuses on the ways in which they negotiated their lives--work experiences, family formation, community construction, and national identity--in an urban milieu increasingly polarized between Whites and Blacks. Their story barely overlaps that of the more numerous Filipinos who migrated after 1965 but brief comparisons and contrasts will be drawn between the old-timers' and the newcomers' histories.

Moon-Kie Jung, Assistant Professor, Sociology
Martin Manalansan, Assistant Professor, Anthropology
Yoon Pak, Assistant Professor, Educational Policy Studies

Fall 2001 Events
Asian American Studies Program Film Series, 2001-2002
Fighting the Tide: Asian American Resistance

AAS's annual film series for the 2001-2002 year has the theme of, "Fighting the Tide: Asian American Resistance." Throughout history Asian Americans have confronted stereotypes and racism which have barred them from equal participation in U.S. society. And while conventional wisdom may imagine Asian Americans silently enduring injustice and avoiding confrontation, in reality, there exists a long and proud legacy of protest and resistance within the Asian American community. This year’s series will screen films which portray these acts of resistance, be they legal battles defying the Internment of Japanese Americans, political protests of housing discrimination and inner-city plight, or cultural rejections of demeaning media images and stereotypes resulting in a reaffirmation of Asian American culture and ethnicity.

Friday, September 7, 2001
Forbidden City U.S.A., 314A Union
In the swinging thirties, crowds were packing the nation's premiere all-Chinese nightclub, Forbidden City. Like Harlem's Cotton Club, which featured America's finest African American entertainers, Forbidden City gained an international reputation with its unique showcase of Chinese American performers in all-American extravaganzas. This engaging documentary details the untold stories of a generation of Asian American pioneers who fought cultural barriers and racism to pursue their love of American song and dance.

Friday, October 5, 2001
Letters to Thien, 407 Union
Thien Minh Ly, eldest son, beloved brother, community leader and college graduate, was 24 years old when he was brutally murdered in 1996 on the tennis courts of Tustin High School in California. He is memorialized through anecdotes, tributes and letters from his family and friends who address him one year after his death. A letter commencing with the boast, "Oh, I killed a jap [sic] a while ago," led to the arrest of Thien's young murderers and to the community's struggle to have the murder declared a hate crime.

Friday, November 9, 2001
Do 2 Halves Really Make a Whole?, 407 Union
Asian Americans of bi- and multi-racial backgrounds often encounter confusion, rejection, and frustration in coming to terms with their identities. Performance artists Velina Hasu Houston, Dan Kwong, and Brenda Wong Aoki address the diverse viewpoints of people with multiracial Asian through their creative work and discuss how they have resisted constricting societal definitions and instead embraced all their heritages.

Friday, December 7, 2001
The Fall of the I Hotel, 407 Union
This film brings to life the battle for housing in San Francisco. The brutal eviction of the I-Hotel's tenants in 1977 ended a decade of spirited resistance. Almost 20 years since the International Hotel's demolition, the former site of the heart of Manilatown and home to more than 10,000 people in the 1950s, is still vacant. Many of its surviving elderly residents still seek low-cost replacement housing. This film resonates very clearly in the '90s as homelessness becomes a fact of life in many cities today.

2001-2002 Asian American Studies Program Workshop Series:
New Frontiers: Asian American Studies in the Midwest

AAS is pleased to announce a 2001-2002 Workshop series, "New Frontiers: Asian American Studies in the Midwest." This is an interdisciplinary workshop for interested faculty and graduate students. Each session of the Workshop will focus on one scholar's work in progress. The workshop is designed to provide an informal setting for academic discussion: a short presentation of the work will be followed by open dialogue and conversation.

We have chosen this year's theme because it highlights the most recent work being done on Asian Americans in the Midwest. This new work signals a movement in the field towards establishing new paradigms that depart from and revise the California/West coast-centric foundations of Asian American Studies. This Midwestern Asian American scholarship not only focuses on our immediate environ but signals a paradigm shift and a re-orientation of the field. We hope that interested faculty and graduate students will use this Workshop to become familiar with each other’s research themes and methodologies and come to challenge traditional notions of research in Asian American Studies.

Fall 2001 Presenters:

September 21, 2001, 1:00 p.m. -3:00 p.m., Lucy Ellis Lounge, FLB
"Regional Transgressions: Midwestern Anti-Asian Violence in an Age of "Western" Anti-Chinese Riots and 'Southern' Anti-Black Lynching: 1889," Victor Jew, Assistant Professor, History, Michigan State University.
This seminar examined a large city-wide anti-Chinese riot that occurred in Milwaukee in 1889 which was sparked by the rumor that two Chinese laundrymen had molested Milwaukee white girls. It explored the dynamics of cultural memory; the social history of Chinese Milwaukeens during the 1880's, and the gender dynamics of an all-male Chinese community.

Friday October 26, 2001, 1:00 p.m. - 3:00 p.m., 37 Education Building
"Becoming a Chinese Family in St. Louis: What Chinese Culture Means to Families Formed Through Adoption From China," Andrea Louie, Assistant Professor, Anthropology, Michigan State University. This paper is based on preliminary research with families in St. Louis who have adopted children from China. In what ways are adoptive families creating their own form of Chinese/Chinese American culture and how does this culture relate to alternative perspectives that emphasize flexible views of culture and cultural production? How do parents deal with the tension between celebrating their children's differences and the desire to raise them in "American" homes?

Friday November 30, 2001. 1-3pm, Lucy Ellis Lounge, FLB
"Race, Space, and the "Heartland”: Regional Constructions of Asian American Identities in the Midwest," Barbara Kim, Assistant Professor, Asian and Asian American Studies, California State University, Long Beach. This qualitative study explores the intersection of regionalism, regional identities, and racial/ethnic identities as articulated by Asian Americans in Michigan. It considers how the respondents' ideas of the Midwest as a space, and their locations as Asian Americans living in the Midwest, compare with their conceptualizations of Asian American experiences in the U.S.

Moon-Kie Jung, Assistant Professor, Sociology
Martin Manalansan, Assistant Professor, Anthropology
Yoon Pak, Assistant Professor, Educational Policy Studies

AASP Fall 2001 Council Meeting
"the Outsiders: Racial Profiling and Asian Americans"
In the wake of the World Trade Center/ Pentagon terrorist attacks, a national backlash in the form of physical and verbal assaults has occurred against Americans of Muslim/ Arab/ and South Asian descent. Despite generations of citizenship in the U.S., Asian Americans have faced this kind of backlash during times of US- Asia tensions; they are stereotyped as “foreigners” and the targets of blame for these tensions. All Asian ethnic groups have encountered this brand of stereotyping: Japanese Americans were interned during WWII, Wen Ho Lee and other Chinese Americans endured racial profiling under strained US-China relations, and Vincent Chin was brutally beaten during an economic recession that fueled anti-Japan sentiments in the auto industry.

What can history tell us of these incidents? Why are Asian Americans targeted in this way, when other racial minorities are not? AAS sponsors its Fall 2001 Council meeting, an all campus open forum, to discuss these issues.

Speakers include:
Moderators: George Yu, AAS and James Anderson, Educational Policy Studies

Panelists:

Pallassana Balgopal, Social Work, to address South Asian American experiences
Yuki Llewellyn, Assistant Dean of Students, to address the Internment of Japanese Americans
Min Song, Asian American Studies Program, to address the Vincent Chin case

Thursday October 4, 2001
4:00 p.m. - 6:00 p.m.
Latzer Hall, YMCA, 1001 S. Wright Street

All-state conference, "Asian American Studies in Illinois"

AAS co-sponsored with the Office of Governor George H. Ryan the first ever all-state conference, "Asian American Studies in Illinois,"November 2-3, 2001 at the Illini Center in Chicago.

This jointly sponsored conference was designed to showcase one Illinois ethnic group which has had a long history, has been one of the fastest growing ethnic groups in the state in recent years, and has established itself as an academic discipline.

The conference began with an opening banquet and all-day Saturday sessions which addressed the history of Asian American Studies program development in Illinois colleges and universities, the role of student activism in establishing programs, different models of Asian American Studies curriculum, and the relationships of Student Affairs and community organizations with Asian American Studies.

Keynote speakers during the conference included Dr. Hazel Loucks, Deputy Governor of Education and Workforce Training and Ngoan Le, Former Commissioner, President Clinton’s Commission on Asian Americans, who spoke on “Public Policies and its Relevance to Asian American Studies.”

Participating institutions included: the Asian American Institute, Columbia College, DePaul University, the University of Chicago, Harano Associates, the University of Illinois at Chicago, the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign, Illinois State University, Lake Forest College, Loyola University, Northern Illinois University, Northwestern University, and Polychrome Publishing.