Join UMD's Asian American Studies Program and the College of Education for a talk with Dr. OiYan A. Poon on her recent book, "Asian American is Not a Color: Conversations on Race, Affirmative Action, and Family."

Dr. Poon is an award-winning researcher and leader for intersectional racial equity in education, author, and speaker. She is co-director of the College Admissions Futures Co-Laborative. Her research agenda brings together organizational theories and race and ethnic studies to study rejective admission and selection processes, the racial politics of Asian Americans and education, and affirmative action policies. She has received grants from the Gates Foundation, Joyce Foundation, and Spencer Foundation to support her research, and her work has appeared widely in national media outlets including the New York Times, the Washington Post, The Atlantic, the Chronicle of Higher Education, and the New Yorker.

Tuesday, November 12
4-5:30pm
Tawes 1121 (Ulrich Recital Hall)

We're kicking off a new series of AAST Lunch & Learns - an informal gathering to learn more about and connect with our faculty. Our first Lunch & Learn is Tuesday, October 22 from 12:30-1:30pm with Dr. Binod Paudyal!

Dr. Paudyal will share his journey into the field of Asian American Studies, including pivotal moments that shaped his academic and personal identity. He'll also share insights into his current research on identity politics, invisibility, and undesirability in Asian American studies, highlighting how these themes intersect with ongoing debates on immigration, citizenship, and belonging.

Faculty sharing will be brief to allow for open conversation! Join us for a relaxed lunch. Sandwiches from Subway will be provided. RSVP at go.umd.edu/lunchlearnoct

October is Filipino American History Month! AAST is excited to table and share more about our "AAST at 25" campaign at the Filipino Cultural Association's "Barrio", which celebrates the creation of the Filipino American Studies class at UMD. Hope to see you there!

• Date: Sunday, October 13th

• Time: 5pm-9pm

• Location: Hornbake Plaza

• Theme: Kalsada ng UMCP - A Celebration of Modern Filipino and Filipino American Culture

Welcome back to campus! Did you know that AAST turns 25 years old this year? Join AAST faculty and staff to learn about our "AAST at 25" campaign to strengthen and sustain the program! We’ve hired THREE STUDENTS to serve as our WAASE (Working for Asian American Studies Expansion) Organizers, and they’ll be helping the program with intentional community outreach and educational content creation.

We’ll also play a fun, low-key game of Jeopardy! If you've taken any AAST course, you're in luck. The game questions will be based on Asian American history, media, foodways, and more! Prizes include a limited AAST hoodie and Curtis Chin's "Everything I Learned, I Learned in a Chinese Restaurant".

Tuesday, September 24, 2024
4:30-6:30pm
Tawes 1100

Bring a friend and stay for food from Jumbo Jumbo! Please RSVP for food count and to reserve an AAST tote bag!

Join the Mid-Atlantic Region for the White House Initiative on Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians, and Pacific Islanders & the Asian American Studies Program to hear from agency representatives about how to make an impact through a career in government. After welcoming remarks, we will have a panel of federal employees describing their path to federal service from 12:20pm to 12:50pm, followed by federal agency tables providing resources for college students from 1:15pm to 2:15pm, and an interactive activity to elicit feedback from AANHPI college students about their experience.

Location: ESJ 2204

Please join the Center for Global Migration Studies for a screening of A Long March, a documentary which “follows Filipino-American veterans as they emotionally trace their paths from war to erasure by the U.S. Government, marching from an obscured history to the Federal courts, right up to the steps of Congress in search of promises denied.” (Los Angeles Pacific Film Festival) The event will also feature a Q&A session with US Army Major General Antonio Taguba. The event will be in-person in Shoemaker Hall 2102 on April 9, 2024. Asian American Studies has graciously co-sponsored this event.

Dr. Van Tran Nguyen (Visiting Professor, Theatre Scholarship and Performance Studies) will be screening her short film, ERIE COUNTY SMILE (PBS, 2021), a production made with green-screen processing. There will be a Q and A to follow and Dr. Tran Nguyen will lead a hands-on video editing and green-screen workshop showcasing green-screen as a digital narrative form. She will discuss her own video practice, highlighting her use of green-screen as a medium for diasporic folklore. Beginner video editors are welcome to attend!

Short Film Screening + Performance/Technology Workshop with Dr. Van Tran Nguyen
6-7:30pm (dinner from Manila mart will be served starting at 5:30!)
Susquehanna Hall 1120
RSVP here: go.umd.edu/greenscreen

"Love + Data = Action"

Wei Ming Dariotis has been a typical Gemini; a cis-gender Bisexual woman, mixed-race Asian American, arts activist in academia, working through collaboration and community to achieve transgressive transformation.

Thursday, February 15, 2024
5:30–7pm with reception to follow
Susquehanna Hall 1120

Lecturer Bio:
Wei Ming Dariotis, PhD, is Assistant Vice President of Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion at the University of Maryland, Baltimore. With Laura Kina and Camilla Fojas, she coordinated the Inaugural Critical Mixed Race Studies Conference (DePaul University, 2010), co-defined the discipline of Critical Mixed Race Studies, and co-founded the Journal of Critical Mixed Race Studies. She serves on the editorial board of Asian American Literatures: Discourses and Pedagogies, and co-founded Kearny Street Workshop’s legendary APAture: A Window on the Art of Asian Pacific Americans, which helped launch the career of Ali Wong, among others. She is a poet and an artist. Publications include two co-edited anthologies: Fight the Tower: Asian American Women Scholars’ Resistance and Renewal in the Academy (Rutgers, 2020) and War Baby/Love Child: Mixed Race Asian American Art (UW Press, 2013). At San Francisco State University, Dr. Dariotis was formerly Professor of Asian American Studies (1999-2022), affiliate faculty of the Educational Leadership Doctoral Program (2017-2022), and Faculty Director of the Center for Equity and Excellence in Teaching and Learning (2019-2022).

Please RSVP below for our food count!
go.umd.edu/ckal2024

Continue to wind down and prepare for finals by joining AAST for Reading Day! We'll be providing hot chocolate with marshmallows and coloring books throughout the day. Please RSVP below if you also want pupusas and tamales!

First Gen & Imposter Syndrome with Laura Bohórquez García

We are excited to announce that MICA, the Division of Student Affairs, and Asian American Studies Program have collaborated to bring Laura Bohórquez García, a first gen UndocuEducator, and entrepreneur for: First-Gen and Imposter Syndrome: Navigating Life, Leadership, and Work with and without work authorization.

Register by Monday, Nov, 6th at stamp.umd.edu/FGI. This event is open to all UMD first students. We will also have first- gen students from Towson University joining us! For any questions please contact Rocio at rfregoso@umd.edu. 

The Filipino American National Historical Society DMV Chapter and UMD Asian American Studies Program present:

Telling Our Story
Saturday, October 28, 2023
12:00pm - 2:30pm
Hornbake Library,  University of Maryland-College Park

Are you unsure how you can apply Asian American Studies courses to your future career? Join this interactive workshop to explore how to align AAST frameworks with your professional interests. Learn strategies to frame your academic experiences as transferable skill sets for life after graduation. Come reflect on your own educational journey and engage in a community discussion with your fellow AAST students, staff, faculty, and alumni!

From AAST to What You Wanna Be: Taking What You learn to Your Industry 
Thursday, October 12, 2023 | 6:00 - 7:30pm ET
Tawes 1310
Dinner will be provided from Q'doba!

This program was made possible with the support from MICA, the Graduate School, and the College of Education.

Speaker bio:
Juliana (Juju) Wong, M.Ed. [she/her] is a bicoastal educator & entrepreneur based in New York City and San Francisco. With 12+ years in higher education, Juju centers the social identities and emotions of first-generation, BIPOC students through the college to career process. She integrates her ethnic studies and equity lens to design culturally-relevant workshops for Asian Pacific Islander Desi American (APIDA) students to feel seen, validated, and humanized. All while doing it in fun, creative, and relatable ways!

Juju is a UMD alumna and received her Master’s in Student Affairs at the College of Education, served as the APIDA Graduate Coordinator at the Office of Multicultural Involvement & Community Advocacy (MICA), and helped establish the Center for Diversity & Inclusion in Higher Education (CDIHE).

FOLLOW @PROFESSORJUUJ ON TIKTOK AND INSTAGRAM!
www.tiktok.com/@professorjuuj
www.instagram.com/professorjuuj
www.julianajujuwong.com

AAST is happy to welcome our newest Calvin J. Li Postdoctoral Fellow, Dr. Joan Hong, who will be teaching AAST394: The Asian Immigrant Family and the Second Generation. If you see her, please give her a warm hello to UMD!

We will be hosting our annual AAST Welcome next Thursday, September 7 from 5-6:30pm (SQH 1120) to introduce Dr. Hong and provide updates from AAST expansion efforts. Please join us and connect with all of our faculty, staff, and minors – this is open to all! We'll be bringing Taiwanese Chicken and Fried Tofu from Jumbo Jumbo Cafe for snacks. RSVP by Tuesday, September 5 for food: go.umd.edu/aastwelcomefall23

As we await the decisions on the two Supreme Court cases considering the use of race as a factor in the admissions process, we want to show our support for education for all!

Join AAST for Together in the Fight for Affirmative Action and Beyond, hosted by UMD NAACP, Asian American Student Union (AASU), PLUMAS, and United Students Against Sweatshops (USAS).

Wednesday, June 7
6–7:30pm
Susquehanna Hall 1120
RSVP here for your free t-shirt and dinner!

Join AAST298G: Asian American Foodways for a cooking demo of spam musubi (tofu musubi will also be available)! Participants will also learn the historical context of the popular food and its connection to militarism and war.

This event is in collaboration with the UMD Campus Pantry. Food donations are welcome!

It seems that every Asian-American has at one time brought an ethnic home-cooked meal to school and experienced alienation in the school lunchroom. It has become part of our collective lore and a common memory/experience for us to connect over. But just as repeating a word over and over causes it to lose meaning, repeating an iteration of a story over and over causes it to lose its efficacy. In this workshop, we will explore how to make meaning from these memories, to turn our recollections into compelling narratives that refuse to get lost in the multitudes.

Kimberly Nguyen is a Vietnamese-American diaspora poet originally from Omaha, Nebraska but now living in New York City. Her work can be found in diaCRITICS, Muzzle Magazine, The Minnesota Review, The Journal and others. She was a recipient of a Beatrice Daw Brown Prize, and she was a finalist for Frontier Poetry’s 2021 OPEN and New Poets Awards and Palette Poetry’s 2021 Previously Published Poem Prize. She was a 2021 Emerging Voices Fellow at PEN America and is currently a 2022-2023 Poetry Coalition Fellow.

This event is in collaboration with AASU with support from the SEE

On Wednesday, March 8, the Asian American Studies Program (AAST) and Asian American Student Union (AASU) will host a town hall for AAST minors and broader student community to learn about the current efforts to expand the program. Attend to learn about the history of student organizing that led to the institutionalization of AAST at UMD in 2000! There will be breakout groups for students, staff, and faculty to exchange ideas and feedback, and collectively unite on action steps.

Pizza will be proivded!

If you would like to join virtually, register via zoom: bit.ly/aasttownhall

Dr. Nitasha Sharma, Northwestern University, Professor of African American Studies and Asian American Studies will engage in a discussion of her new book, "Hawai'i is my Haven: Race and Indigeneity in the Black Pacific." This ethnography is based on a decade of fieldwork including interviews with 60 people of African descent in the islands, including Black Hawaiians, Black Japanese, and African American transplants from the continental U.S. Two questions frame this project: What does the Pacific offer people of African descent? And how does the racial lens of African Americans illuminate inequalities, including antiBlack racism, in the islands?