UCLA alumna Rita Phetmixay is the host of “Healing Out Lao’d,” a podcast dedicated to supporting the healing of intergenerational trauma that many of the Lao diaspora face. Read more about it here!
“Please allow me to share a podcast episode I have been working on that was just released today, on Operation New Life and the role Guam played in processing Vietnamese refugees after the Fall of Saigon.”
“On this day 46 years ago, my mom and grandmother left Vietnam as refugees and were processed on Guam. This podcast episode discusses their experiences; the contributions of local Chamorros in welcoming the Vietnamese refugees; the motivations of 1,600+ Vietnamese repatriates who actually decided to return to communist-unified Vietnam; and the role that Vietnamese refugees and their descendants can play in the ongoing decolonization movement on Guam.”
“This podcast episode is based on my book manuscript research. I’m very grateful for the opportunity to translate my academic writing into a format that is more accessible to a wider community!”
– Professor Evyn Lê Espiritu Gandhi
To listen to this episode, please go to the Memoirs Pasifika website or you can listen to it on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Amazon Music/Audible, etc.
The Department of Asian American Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), invites applications for part-time Lecturer positions (Non-Senate) with primary responsibility in teaching interdisciplinary courses in Asian American Studies for the 2021-2022 academic year. Appointments are usually per course, on a quarter by quarter basis and we expect to need enough Lecturers to cover 15 courses. The UCLA Department of Asian American Studies offers a major, minor, a graduate concentration, and a Master of Arts.
If you would like to apply, you can find all the information here.
Since its establishment in 1925, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation has granted nearly $400 million in fellowships to more than 18,000 individuals, among whom are more than 125 Nobel laureates, members of all the national academies, winners of the Pulitzer Prize, Fields Medal, Turing Award, Bancroft Prize, National Book Award, and other internationally recognized honors.
In this year’s class of fellows, it holds a wide range of backgrounds, fields of study, and accomplishments. In all, 49 scholarly disciplines and artistic fields, 73 different academic institutions, 28 states and 2 Canadian provinces are represented this year.
We would like to congratulate our very own, Keith Camacho, for being awarded as a 2021 Guggenheim Fellow. You continue to lead our department with full strides, and we look forward to see what you create and research.
To see more professors who have been awarded a 2021 Guggenheim Fellowship, click here.
We wanted to congratulate all undergraduate students, graduate students, as well as faculty members who have been awarded this year by the Asian American Studies Center for their scholarships and research.
In honor of the recipients, the Asian American Studies Center created a short montage here.
The Asian American Studies Center also produced a booklet highlighting all of the recipients, their awards, as well as the work that they have produced here.
In LA Rising: Korean Relations with Blacks and Latinos after Civil Unrest, UCLA Anthropology Professor Kyeyoung Park revisits the 1992 Los Angeles unrest and provides a deep dive of the interrelations between minority groups. She provides a comprehensive examination of how race, class citizenship, and culture impacted relations between multiple groups in South Los Angeles. This is an important read as many of the past issues examined are still relevant today.
Interview Chapters:
0:04 – Intro
0:53 – What is the main argument/contribution of the book?
5:09 – How did racial cartography allow you to examine relations between Korean, Black, and Latino populations?
10:09 – How does your book add to and/or challenge the narratives around the 1992 civil unrest?
13:00 – How does the book connect with current unrest related to police brutality?
15:34 – Why should someone read/assign this book?
To learn more, check out Professor Park’s book LA Rising: Korean Relations with Blacks and Latinos After Civil Unrest.
Students from this Fall 2020’s Asian American Studies 112C: Asian American Creative Writing with lecturer Neelanjana Banerjee get featured in Hyphen magazine.
Highlighting this previous Fall’s successful creative writing course a few student have received publication for their creative pieces. Student Ashley Kim‘s piece “The Half of You That’s Not Me” was featured for Hyphen magazine’s February Fiction.
View the published short story here!
We want to congratulate our Asian American Studies Students who have been awarded this year’s Asian Pacific Alumni of UCLA Scholarships!
A few of our students highlighted are:
Angela Li Exp. ’21 — Undergraduate
Angela Li is a rising senior double-majoring in Asian American studies and political science with an interest in pursuing a career in public interest law. Li is currently the director of the Asian Pacific Coalition and the Campus Retention Committee. At the intersection of both of her majors, Li has done research on hate crime legislation and human trafficking of Asian women, and is working on her Asian American studies honors thesis, which examines the relationship between xenophobia and public health.
Ngoc Nguyen Exp. ’21 — Undergraduate
Ngoc Nguyen is a UCLA senior majoring in Asian American studies, international development studies and sociology. This year, Nguyen worked with Southeast Asian student leaders at UCLA to create the Southeast Asian Students for Organizing (SEASON) conference, the first three-day, two-night conference for Southeast Asian students. It brought together around 200 students to strategize effective campus-based actions to support their community. In addition to her involvement with SEASON, Nguyen has served as president of the UCLA Vietnamese Student Union, interned with the Thai Community Development Center and Nikkei Progressives, and volunteered at the Los Angeles Stanley Mosk courthouse.
Daniel Luu Exp. ’22 — Graduate
Daniel Luu graduated from UCLA with a degree in Asian American studies and minor in urban and regional studies. He is currently earning his master’s in urban planning at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs. Luu will be the first in his family to attain a master’s degree. His focus and interests revolve around working with the Southeast Asian community (Cambodian, Vietnamese, Laotian) to combat various social issues overlooked by the general public — such as gentrification, deportation and education attainment — that affect these communities.
Through his coursework, Luu is now seeking to further understand how urban infrastructure and design can be reclaimed by Black, Indigenous and people of color (BIPOC) through aspects of storytelling, cultural arts and participatory planning. This type of work has led Luu toward finding his own identity to become an empowered community activist working toward healing both his family’s and community’s trauma.
Assistant Professor Cindy Sangalang was interviewed for a TimesOC article on the lack of culturally sensitive health care for Orange County’s Cambodian and Vietnamese American communities. Read full article here.
