Past Events
Join CSER for our Fall 2024 Open House! Come to meet CSER students and faculty, learn about CSER’s history and mission, and explore the Ethnicity and Race Studies major at Columbia. There will be two informational sessions, one from 12-1PM and another from 1-2PM. Lunch will be provided!
Columbia University Libraries and the Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race invite you to a conversation about Corky Lee’s Asian America, a stunning retrospective of the photographer’s life’s work—a selection of the best photographs from his vast collection, from his start in New York’s Chinatown in the 1970s to his coverage of diverse Asian American communities across the country until his untimely passing in 2021. Known throughout his lifetime as the “undisputed, unofficial Asian American photographer laureate,” the late photojournalist Corky Lee documented Asian American and Pacific Islander communities for fifty years, breaking the stereotype of Asian Americans as docile, passive, and, above all, foreign to this country.
Author, historian, and winner of the 2022 Bancroft Prize, Mae Ngai, will join Joanne Kwon and Ava Chin for a conversation about Corky Lee and Asian American community in New York.
Local bookseller, Wordup, will also be onsite with copies of the book for purchase.
Please note: For members of the general public, RSVP is required for entry by October 21. Your registration will generate an email with a QR Code on or before 10/24/2024. Please bring this code, along with your ID, for admittance to the Columbia campus. It is recommended that you arrive early, as you will need to check-in with Public Safety at the Butler Library entrance upon arriving. Register here!
Event Contact Information: Anne Cong-Huyen (ac5539@columbia.edu)
Asian Americans are the quintessential swing voter group who has the power to shape elections up and down the ticket and throughout the country. Learn more about Asian American voters and why they matter in the 2024 election. Join us by registering for the inaugural event of the Asian American Initiative at Columbia University.
Led by Jennifer Lee, the Asian American Initiative is an ambitious new project focused on making the experiences of Asian Americans central to our understanding of America. The goals of the initiative are to use evidenced-based research to drive change in our public narratives, and to forge a greater sense of belonging and pride for and among Asian Americans.
Doors open at 5:00pm with a reception to follow at 7:00pm. Register here!
To close out Latinx Heritage Month, we invite you to a powerful reading by Denice Frohman, a celebrated poet and performer whose work resonates with themes of identity, culture, and social justice.
Following the reading, Frohman will be joined in conversation by Dr. Frances Negrón-Muntaner, Julian Clarence Levi Professor in the Humanities, acclaimed scholar, filmmaker, and cultural critic. This dialogue will delve deeper into the themes explored in the reading and offer insights into the intersections of art, activism, and Latinx identity. Register here!
This event is sponsored by the Office of the Vice Provost for Faculty Advancement, Greater Caribbean Studies Program, Hispanic Institute, and the Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race.
Join us for CSER’s Fall 2024 Welcome Back Social on Thursday, October 3rd from 6-8PM in CSER’s seminar room! All CSER students, faculty, affiliates, and community members are welcome to join. Dinner will be provided.
Join us for the groundbreaking book launch of “Corky Lee’s Asian America.” In honor of 2024 AAPI Heritage Month, “Corky Lee’s Asian America” offers a profound reflection on Asian American history and activism. Featuring never-before-seen photographs alongside Corky’s most renowned images, the book encapsulates his lifelong commitment to documenting moments of inclusion, resistance, and ethnic pride.
Known throughout his lifetime as the “undisputed, unofficial Asian American photographer laureate,” the late photojournalist Corky Lee documented Asian American and Pacific Islander communities for fifty years, breaking the stereotype of Asian Americans as docile, passive, and, above all, foreign to this country. Corky Lee’s Asian America is a stunning retrospective of his life’s work—a selection of the best photographs from his vast collection, from his start in New York’s Chinatown in the 1970s to his coverage of diverse Asian American communities across the country until his untimely passing in 2021.
Join Hua Hsu, David Henry Hwang, Akemi Kochiyama, and Mae Ngai for this event, moderated by Chris Kwok and cohosted with Asian American Bar Association of NY.
The Columbia University Department of History and the Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race present a Book Talk and Q&A on, “The Color Black: Enslavement and Erasure in Iran” with Beeta Baghoolizadeh. She is a historian and Associate Research Scholar at the Mossavar-Rahmani Center for Iran and Persian Gulf Studies. Her first book The Color Black: Enslavement and Erasure in Iran (Duke University Press, March 2024) examines questions concerning race, gender, historiography, and visuality through the lens of enslavement and abolition in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The Color Black has won the Scholars of Color First Book Award at Duke University Press.Baghoolizadeh’s work has been published in the American Historical Review (AHR), Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa, and the Middle East (CSSAAME), and Lateral: Journal of the Cultural Studies Association. Prior to joining Princeton, Beeta was an Assistant Professor of History and Critical Black Studies at Bucknell University. Her research has been supported by the Social Science Research Council (SSRC), and she has also been a Research Fellow at the Bard Graduate Center and a Regional Faculty Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wolf Humanities Center.
Thursday, April 18, 2024, 12-2pm
420 Hamilton Hall, CSER Seminar Room
Refreshments will be provided!
It is with great pride that we send this announcement on behalf of Dr. Echeverría, the CSER Project Seminar professor who once again is enthusiastically organizing our 16th Annual CSER Symposium on Friday, April 5 from 10 am to 2:00 pm.
The Senior Research Symposium is a crucial component of the Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race academic experience, which seeks to generate innovative thinking about race, ethnicity, indigeneity and other categories of difference in order to better understand their role and impact in modern societies.
The symposium offers CSER honor students an opportunity to share and receive feedback on their original research. This event also enables students the chance to hone their oral presentation skills in order to supplement their analytical projects they have been exploring over the course of the last academic year.
In this spirit, we are thrilled to extend a heartfelt invitation to you to be a part of this extraordinary event, where you will have the opportunity to witness the incredible work our emerging scholars have dedicated themselves to throughout the academic year.
If attending in person isn’t feasible for you, fear not! We’ve made provisions for virtual participation via Zoom. Simply complete the RSVP form linked here: RSVP for 16th Annual CSER Symposium at Columbia University and we will ensure you receive the Zoom link well in advance of the symposium.
CSER presents our third speaker of the Spring 2024 seminar series, Dr. Dylan Rodríguez of the University of California, Riverside as he presents his talk, Counterinsurgency Machine: Reframing the U.S. “Social Justice (etc.)” Ensemble on April 4, 2024.
He is a professor in the Department of Media and Cultural Studies. In his talk, he will discuss how, “as the smoke and dust settle from multi-scaled mobilizations and autonomous radical actions in places from Minneapolis and Mauna Kea to Standing Rock and Stop Cop City, an ensemble of “social justice” initiatives emerges to enlist and empower ostensible abolitionists, decolonizers, and revolutionaries (insurgents), redirecting their labor and political energy to activities that restore the functionality, if not the legitimacy, of state power and the extended apparatuses of global capital.”
Location: 420 Hamilton Hall, CSER Seminar Room
