News and Announcements
PRIZE WINNERS
Academic Excellence
Junet Bedayn, Grace Fox
Best Thesis
Benjamine Mo, Nikita Leus-Oliva
Special Citation: Student Leadership and Service
CSER Student Advisory Board
GRADUATES
MAJORS
Ezequiel Baiza, Junet Bedayn, Zane Braudrick, Rachel Chang, Adelina Correa Loftus, Grace Fox, Sofia Grosso, Benjamine Mo, Deja Operana-Fox, Kianna Pete, Antonio Rodriguez, Karime Sanchez, Samuel Slater, Rae Stokes, Nathalia Tavares
CONCENTRATORS
Lisbel Guzman, Kaya Kim, Euni Lee, Michelle Molina, Pooja Patel
Nominated Work: Seeing Red: Indigenous Land, American Expansion, and the Political Economy of Plunder in North America
A piercing analysis of exploitative colonial arrangements made by the U.S. in the settling of the Old Northwest, and of Native resistance.
Please join us in congratulating Professor Shana Redmond on her award of a fellowship from the Guggenheim Foundation.
Professor Mae Ngai delivered the Hatfield Lecture for the Oregon Historical Society at the Schnitzer Concert Hall in Portland on March 27 and the Holden Lecture at the University of New Hampshire on April 4.
The auditorium in Avery was full for a teach-in on Ethnic Studies on March 24, sponsored by the CSER Student Advisory Board and Azine. Speakers included veterans of the 1996 ethnic studies hunger strike, Sung E Bai, Liz Kaufman, and Irene HongPing Shen. Grad student Ethan Chua led an interactive workshop on effective student organizing.
Marie Myung-Ok Lee’s book “The Evening Hero” was highlighted in Columbia’s Article “These 9 Faculty Books Will Make Terrific Holiday Gifts.” It is a novel that follows the life of a Korean immigrant, Dr. Yungman Kwak, by moving back and forth between the past and the present.
Professor Mae Ngai gave a lecture on The Chinese Question at History Books, a program for NYC public school teachers, sponsored by the NYC Dept. of Education Social Studies Dept and its Asian American- Pacific Islander curriculum program, on Dec 12, 2022, at Immigrant Social Services in Chinatown.
An essay with the above-mentioned title was published this month as:
Chapter 13 for the Handbook of Linguistic Human Rights, Robert Phillipson and Tove Skutnabb-Kangas eds,, Wiley-Blackwell Publishers, Hoboken N.J., pp. 195-209, 2023; also available online as of November 2022, https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/9781119753926.ch13.
Summary: A human rights approach to language means that we focus on the people, on the language community, and their dignity. Practices of the past, but even of today, make clear that the eradication of Indigenous languages is not a ‘natural phenomenon’, but mostly a result of systemic discrimination. This chapter approaches linguistic human rights from an international law point of view, specifically, two aspects: (a) linguistic human rights as part of the broader category of cultural human rights; and (b) how the lens of time impacts on LHRs and what international law has to say about the issues that arise. The human rights approach and the concept of continuing violations of human rights undergird this essay.
Excerpt from the article:
“Two ‘grand masters’ of Asian American Studies have produced provocative recent books. Mae Ngai’s The Chinese Question: The Gold Rushes and Global Politics (W.W. Norton) takes the well-known story of Chinese gold miners in 19th-century California and expands it to incorporate global movements of people and capital from California to Cape Town. Ngai’s inclusion of the voices of Chinese gold miners is groundbreaking.”
Read the full article here.
Catherine Fennell’s current project about public housing in the Midwest has received a faculty grant from the Office of the Provost. Her work examines how the social and material legacies of 20th-century urbanism shape the politics of social difference, collective obligation, and utopian imagination in the contemporary U.S. In this article on Columbia News, Fennell discusses her work along with how she came to be an urban anthropologist, and advice for anyone contemplating the same path.
Professor Mae Ngai is featured in the PBS Series The Bigger Picture (with Vincent Brown) on Alfred Stieglitz’s 1907 photo, “The Steerage.”
Professor Mae Ngai spoke in conversation with poet and essayist Cathy Park Hong at Rutgers-Newark, “Responding to Anti-Asian Hate: Politics, Organizing, and Education” on September 28th, 2022 and delivered the Howard Zinn Memorial Lecture at Boston University on September 29, 2022.
“The Chinese Question: The Gold Rushes and Global Politics,” a book written by Professor Mae Ngai, is on Cundhill’s 2022 shortlist.
The Chinese Question chronicles how a feverish alchemy of race and money brought Chinese to the West and reshaped the nineteenth-century world ― from Europe’s subjugation of China to the rise of the international gold standard and the invention of racist, anti-Chinese stereotypes that linger to this day.
Read more here
Professor Mae Ngai, Lung Family Professor of Asian American Studies, Professor of History, and Co-Director of CSER, was quoted on China Initiative’s new article “After the China Initiative: Seeking Accountability.” She said the China Initiative was a “despicable and blatant case of racial profiling by the Trump DOJ, intended to inflame anti-China sentiment, both protectionist and nativist.”
Read more here
CeMeCA supports a series of applied research projects that tackle some of the region’s most pressing challenges, including state violence within and across borders, corruption, and forced migration, its consequences, and its criminalization.
Read more here
MA student Ashley Wells has been selected for the Campbell Award, given by the alumni association to students who have demonstrated exceptional leadership on campus.
