News and Announcements
Amanda Ong was awarded second prize in the 2021 Bristol Short Story Prize for her story, Sifters.
Literary agent, Irene Baldoni who was on this year’s judging panel, says: “Sifters is literature in action – a touching, heartfelt act of memory and care, in this case even before someone we love has left us forever. The narrator knows that words cannot, ultimately, enclose a human existence in its wholeness and uniqueness. And yet they keep writing, gracefully, committing to paper one memory after the other, and we cannot but keep reading, thus becoming part of this attempt to defeat time.”
We are very glad that Columbia now celebrates Indigenous Peoples’ Day. The University has followed the appeal of Native American students and numerous other students, faculty and staff over the years asking for this Day to be honored. The celebration of the Day is a clear trend among various other universities as well as cities and states in this country.
History of the Day
- Including Indigenous Peoples’ rights or similar courses in the core curriculum so that the broad student body is exposed to the issues.
- Building an active meaningful relationship with the Indigenous Peoples of our area and of NYS more broadly.
- Naming a building or one of the walks in our campus with a name of the Lenape people, who are the people of the land on whose traditional territory Columbia is built.
- Placing Native American art in prominent places on campus, to honor Indigenous heritage.
- Appointing a Senior Adviser on Indigenous Affairs to the President.
- Creating a strategic plan for Columbia.
NPR’s Ailsa Chang speaks with Renzo Aroni, historian of modern Latin America, about the legacy of Abimael Guzmán, founder of the Shining Path, who died on Saturday.
Jennifer Lee’s paper based on her Presidential Address to the Eastern Sociological Society has been published in Sociological Forum, titled, Reckoning with Asian America and the New Culture War on Affirmative Action. In it, she dismantles the tropes that propel the war on affirmative action, rewrite narratives about merit and moral deservingness, and re-imagine the linked fates and linked futures of Asian Americans and other minority groups.
Professor Shana Redmond’s book Everything Man: The Form and Function of Paul Robeson (Duke University Press, 2020) has been awarded the Walter & Lillian Lowenfels Award for Criticism, a special citation of the American Book Awards from the Before Columbus Foundation.
Dr. Karl Jacoby, a Professor of American History and a Co-Director of the Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race at Columbia University, was a guest on BYUradio’s Constant Wonder. Dr. Jacoby shares insights from his book, “The Strange Career of William Ellis: The Texas Slave Who Became a Mexican Millionaire.”
Kevin Fellezs, Associate Professor of Music / African American and African Diaspora Studies, will be celebrating his latest book launch, Listen But Don’t Ask Question: Hawaiian Slack Key Guitar Across the TransPacific, at the Heyman Center for Humanities on Tuesday, Sep. 28.
Dr. Darius V. Echeverría has been featured in a spotlight interview with New Jersey’s Governor’s Hispanic Fellows Program CHPRD (Center For Hispanic Policy Research and Development).
In her interview with Columbia News, Professor Mae Ngai delves into the 19th-century Chinese migration to Anglo-American countries and finds out how those early experiences might explain the racism we see today. In her latest & timely book, The Chinese Question: The Gold Rushes and Global Politics (W.W. Norton, 2021), Mae Ngai delves into the 19th-century Chinese migration to Anglo-American countries and finds out how those early experiences might explain the racism we see today.
Aspen Words, in partnership with the Catto Shaw Foundation, is proud to present their 2021 Writers in Residence line-up which includes Professor Marie Myung-Ok Lee. She will give an in-person talk in September.
Professor Deborah Paredez’s collection YEAR OF THE DOG is the winner of the 2020 Writer’s League of Texas Book Award for Poetry!
Why Andrew Yang did an abrupt U-turn on identity politics by Brandon Tensley
“To discuss the role of identity in Yang’s mayoral campaign, I spoke with the Columbia University professor Mae M. Ngai, who focuses on questions of immigration, citizenship and nationalism.”
Columbia professor Claudio Lomnitz featured in the NY Times article “Three New Memoirs Reveal the ‘Vertigo’ of Life in the Diaspora” reviewing his memoir “Nuestra America”
Mae Ngai and David Henry Huang spoke in Issue 3 of Columbia’s Faculty of Arts and Sciences Newsletter, Justice – Equity – Rights, to talk about the impact of COVID-19 on Asian-American communities, including the historical forces that have shaped the “model minority” and “perpetual foreigner” stereotypes; the need for bystander training and intersectional allyship; whether art can catalyze social change; and more.
Mae Ngai is featured in Last Week Tonight with John Oliver in which John Oliver discusses the large and diverse group of people who fall under the term “Asian American”, the history of the model minority stereotype, and why our conversations on the subject need to be better-informed.
CSER faculty member and Sociology Professor Jennifer Lee (a leading expert on immigration, the new second generation, and race relations) reflects on her trajectory through Columbia as both an undergraduate and grad student, as well as a faculty member, on The Dean’s Table Podcast with Fredrick Harris.
Columbia News interviews CSER Media Assistant and Columbia College junior, Shailha Alam, in a Q&A about her work as programming director for Diverso, a student-run nonprofit organization dedicated to changing the face of entertainment by empowering the next generation of underrepresented storytellers.
CSER’s Co-Director, Mae Ngai, has published an article in The Atlantic that details the history of racism in the Asian American experience. Professor Ngai notes, “If we don’t understand the history of Asian exclusion, we cannot understand the racist hatred of the present.”
CSER’s Director of Undergraduate Studies, Deborah Paredez, wrote an article for NPR Music in honor of what would be Selena Quintanilla Perez’s 50the birthday. Professor Paredez also participated in a round table for NPR’s Alt.Latino. Despite dying at the young age of 23, Selena is more popular than ever. Professor Paredez speaks about how to preserve and protect the Mexican singer’s precious legacy.
In the latest Columbia Faculty Snapshot, Marie Myung-Ok Lee speaks about her upcoming novel, The Empire Hero, which touches on Anti-Asian racism. Read more about Marie’s work: https://buff.ly/3upprh6
