Schedule

You can view the schedule for each day of the summer seminar by clicking on the day below to expand that day’s planned activities, guest speakers, readings, and viewings. You can view the full reading and viewing list on the Readings List page.

If you are a seminar participant looking for PDFs of the readings, they can be accessed here.

Sunday, July 5, 2015

Afternoon Session: 1pm – 5pm

Participants arrive in NYC in the afternoon, register with program manager, and move into Brookdale Housing facility (if applicable).

(optional) Meet in the Brookdale lobby at 5:30 to travel together to dinner.

Evening Session: 6pm – 8pm

Welcome dinner with co-directors and program manager at Nyonya (199 Grand St, New York, NY 10013).

Monday, July 6, 2015

Morning Session: 9am – 12pm (Hunter College)

Opening Session • Welcome, introductions, campus orientation, overview of seminar schedule, presentation of seminar projects, discussion of local resources, etc..

Lunch: 12pm – 2pm (Group lunch at Szechuan Chalet)

Afternoon Session: 2pm – 5pm

Cultural Practices • What can we learn about Asian America and ourselves through the cultural practices that we engage in, from the food we eat, to the work we do, to the sports we practice?

Readings
  • Ed Lin, “Chinese New Year,” from The Asian American Literary Review
  • Zohra Saed, “Samsa on Sheepshead Bay: Tracing Uzbek Foodprints in Southern Brooklyn,” from Eating Asian America: A Food Studies Reader (NYU Press, Eds. Robert Ji-Song Ku, Martin F. Manalansan, Anita Mannur)
  • Barbara Tran, “Reflection: Family Business” from The Asian American Literary Review “Local/Express: Asian American Arts and Community 90s NYC”
Viewing
  • Vision Test, Wes Kim, 2002, 6mins
  • A Son’s Sacrifice, Yoni Brook, Musa Syeed, 2008, 28mins
  • 9 Man, NYT Op-Doc, Ursula Liang, 2014, 2mins
  • Off the Menu: Asian America, Grace Lee, 2014, 54mins

Participants will have the evening free.

Tuesday, July 7, 2015

Morning Session: 9am – 1pm (Hunter College)

Youth Narratives #1: Radio and Video • How can young people gain confidence as authors of their own experiences and produce media-based projects where their knowledge become a meaningful frame for classroom discussions on identity and belonging in the U.S.? How can educators easily – with limited time and resources – work with students to produce these narratives that in turn animate interest in complex classroom subject areas or themes? In this session representatives from two of New York’s leading youth media-training organizations, Radio Rookies and Tribeca Teaches, will provide hands-on workshops on how to produce youth-based media projects in the classroom.

Viewing/Listening
  • TBA
Guest Speakers:
  • Corinne Manabat, Filmmaker, and Educator, Tribeca Teaches
  • Kaari Pitkin, Senior Producer, Radio Rookies
  • Two graduates of the Radio Rookies program

Afternoon Session: 2pm – 6pm (Hunter College)

Form and Identity in Film and Literature • How do we use experimental work in the classroom in order to create curricula that inspire our students to challenge normative assumptions around identity – here posited as “Asian American,” but certainly not limited to that category? What are stories of individuals who have mined less conventional narrative forms in order to subvert or reject mainstream conceptions of difference? What can “strange” or “difficult” work teach us about what it means to be “the other” – in the past, present, and/or future?

Readings
Viewing
  • Behold the Asian: How One Becomes Who One Is, James T. Hong, 1999, 12mins
Guest Speaker
  • Floyd Cheung, Associate Professor, Department of English, Smith College; Founding Chair, Five Colleges Asian/Pacific/American Studies Certificate Program

Participants will have the evening free.

Wednesday, July 8, 2015

Morning Session: 9am – 1pm (Hunter College)

The Archive • How do we re-define what an archive is, and how might this reexamination of the archive as a resource to be utilized and created, open up possibilities for revealing and exploring local histories of Asian American history and identity? What are alternative definitions of archives, and how might alternatives help educators and students narrate a history that challenges official American narratives?

Reading
  • Swati Marquez & Tamina Davar (Lettering by Ji-Hee Seuk), “DesiFax: Fragments We Recall” from The Asian American Literary Review “Local/Express: Asian American Arts and Community 90s NYC”
  • Herb Tam, “Chinese Americana”
Viewing
  • Grave Goods, Leslie Tai, 2012, 12mins
  • Bohulano Family Collection, 2014, CAAM, 8mins
  • Broken Tongue, 2014, Monica Saviron, 3mins
  • Emergency Needs, 2007, Kevin Jerome Everson, 6mins
  • Tom Vu Money Making Seminar Infomercial, 1985, 5mins
  • From Alex To Alex, Alison Kobayashi, 2006, 5mins
  • The Others, Aram Collier, 2008, 8mins
  • History and Memory: For Akiko and Takashige, Rea Tajiri, 1992, 32mins
Presentations
  • Seminar participants will discuss the early findings for the “Local Resource Map” project.

Afternoon Session: 2pm – 5pm

Youth Narratives #2: Bushra Rehman’s Corona • How are the experiences and subjectivities of young people expressed in fiction? In this session, writer and educator Bushra Rehman will discuss the her 2013 work Corona as well as how her work as a writer and educator intersect with larger questions around racial justice and education in her community-based writing workshops.

Readings
Guest Speaker
  • Bushra Rehman

Participants will have the evening free.

Thursday, July 9, 2015

Morning Session: 9am – 1pm (Hunter College)

Investigating Deep Histories • What happens when your personal identity becomes national politics? How can one investigate a community or national history through a personal lens? What can this framework reveal?

Reading
  • E. Tammy Kim, “New DREAMs” four-part series from Open City Magazine (make sure to read all four parts: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4)
  • Varun Sriram, “My Airport Story,” from The Asian American Literary Review “Post-9/11 Special Issue”
  • Stuart Gaffney & Ken Tanabe, “Loving Days: Images of Marriage Equality Then and Now” from War Baby/Love Child: Mixed Race Asian American Art (University of Washington Press, Eds. Laura Kina & Wei Ming Dariotis)
Viewing
  • Black Eyed Peas – “The APL Song” Patricio Ginelsa, 2003, 3mins
  • Pilgrimage, Tad Nakamura, 2008, 22mins
  • September 11 – India, Mira Nair, 2002, 9mins
  • Muni To The Marriage, Stuart Gaffney, 2004, 4mins
  • Going Home, Hung Nguyen, 2011, 20mins
  • E Haku Inoa: To Weave A Name, Christen Marquez, 2013, 55mins

Afternoon Session: 2pm – 6pm (Asian American Writer’s Workshop [AAWW])

Group dinner ordered from Purple Yam

The Archive #2 • Field trip to the Asian American Writers’ Workshop, with a two-part presentation by Jyothi Natarajan, Managing Editor of the AAWW publication The Margins, and Lawrence-Minh Bùi Davis, Founding Director and Co-Editor-in-Chief of The Asian American Literary Review (AALR), who will introduce the history of the AAWW and the AALR along with a discussion of their current projects and programs.

Reading
  • Bino Realuyo, “Letter” from The Asian American Literary Review “Local/ Express: Asian American Arts and Community 90s NYC”
  • Ed Lin, “Reflection” from The Asian American Literary Review “Local/ Express: Asian American Arts and Community 90s NYC”
  • Additional readings TBD

Evening Session: 7pm – 9pm

Public Event at the AAWW • In this evening event, co-curated by AAWW, the AALR, and NEH seminar organizers, several New York-based Asian American writers, filmmakers, and performers will present their works.

Friday, July 10, 2015

Morning Session: 9am – 1pm (Museum of Chinese in America / Manhattan Chinatown)

Chinatown Fieldtrip • MoCA curator Herb Tam will provide an introduction to the museum’s history and holdings, with an emphasis on the relationship between Chinatown communities and literature/film projects at the museum. The community walking tour will introduce participants to the history of downtown Manhattan, with an emphasis on immigrant community development and local arts movements/organizations (e.g. CAAAV – Citizens Against Anti-Asian Violence, the Basement Workshop, Bridge Magazine, the Asian American Arts Alliance, etc.)

Afternoon Session: 2pm – 6pm (Hunter College)

Project 1 Presentations / Group Discussion • In this session, seminar participants will present the findings of their “Local Resource Map” project. These presentations will be followed by a group discussion to recap observations and ideas generated from the first week of the seminar.

Participants will have the evening free.

Saturday & Sunday, July 11 — 12, 2015

Weekend free. No activities planned.

Monday, July 13, 2015

Morning Session: 9am – 1pm (Hunter College)

Legacies of Migration: Homelands and Families • Migration is a dynamic that defines the experiences of many Asian American communities and communities of color. How can we understanding migration as both a unifying experience that helps to define Asian America and also a factor that can separate different Asian American communities from each other? What are the roles of homelands, conflict and family in defining the dynamics and experiences of migration?

Viewing
  • Balikbayan, Larilyn Sanchez, 2004, 4mins
  • Nerakhoon: The Betrayal, Ellen Kuras, Thavisouk Phrasavath, 2009, 96mins
Guest Speaker
  • Thavisouk Phrasavath

Afternoon Session: 2pm – 6pm (Hunter College)

Cultures of Migration: This Asian American Life • What are the cultures of migration, and how might we understand what Asian American culture(s) is/are? How does the experience of coming from an immigrant family or position manifest itself in the decisions, relationships and cultural practices of daily life?

Listening
Viewing
  • Hypebeasts, Jess Dela Merced, 2013, 20mins
  • In Space, Visra Vichit-Vadakan, 2011, 16mins
  • Mr. New York, Vipal Monga, 8mins, 2014
  • The Good Son, Michael Sandoval, 2003, 9mins
  • Parallel Adele, Adele Pham, Adele Ray, 2008, 16mins
  • Making Noise in Silence, Mina Son, 2012, 19mins

Participants will have the evening free.

Tuesday, July 14, 2015

Morning Session: 9am – 12pm

Activisms and Community • How can we reframe Asian American history through the lens of political activism? And what can this alternative historical lens tell us about the porous division between the personal and the political, and also complicate our understanding of what it means to “be American?”

Reading
Viewing
  • Article of Faith, Christina Antonakos-Wallace, 2011, 10mins
  • San Francisco State: On Strike, Saul Rouda, David Dobkin, 1969, 20mins
  • A Village Called Versailles, Leo Chiang, 2009, 68mins

Afternoon Session: 1pm – 5pm (Jackson Heights, Queens)

Walking Tour of Jackson Heights, Queens • Walking tour of Jackson Heights, Queens, taking us through key sections of Jackson Heights in order to discuss the history and contemporary issues in that neighborhood within the context of literature, film, community organizing and youth rights, post-9/11 bias crimes, and community policing.

Participants will have the evening free. Optional group dinner in Jackson Heights.

Wednesday, July 15, 2015

Morning Session: 9am – 1pm

Labor and Loss: This Is A Bust • This session will feature a discussion with author Ed Lin, whose body of work includes coming-of-age novels, short fiction, as well as noir and mystery novels – all drawing on Chinese American experience in New York, past and present. The centerpiece of our session will be Lin’s 2007 novel This Is A Bust, which will also be a gateway for a broader discussion of how the complex realities of contemporary Asian America – labor, interracial and interethnic relations, gentrification, migration, and much more – can be incorporated into a noir murder mystery. Considering Lin’s work parallel to the moving image-based projects for this session, some of the broader questions we would also like to address include how labor – what we do to survive, formally or informally – shapes who we are? How do work, labor and the Asian American body provide a framework for understanding race, class and national identity in the US? What is “Asian American” work and how have these definitions been historically created, reinforce and subverted?

Reading
  • Ed Lin, This Is A Bust (Kaya Press)
  • Christine R. Yano & Wanda Adams, “A Life Cooking for Others: The Work and Migration Experiences of a Chinese Restaurant Worker in New York City, 1920-1946” from Eating Asian America (NYU Press)
  • Lauren Hilgers, “The Kitchen Network: America’s Underground Chinese Restaurant Workers” from The New Yorker (October 13, 2014)
Viewing
  • 100 Eggs a Minute, Anita Chang, 1996, 23mins
  • Texas Doughnut Shop, Wook Steven Heo, 2007, 21mins
Guest Speaker
  • Ed Lin

Afternoon Session: 2pm – 6pm (Hunter College)

Project Workshop / Group Discussion • Participants will workshop in groups the “Curated Thematic Archive” from this second week and engage in a group discussion to process the week’s findings thus far.

Participants will have the evening free.

Thursday, July 16, 2015

Morning Session: 9am – 1pm (Hunter College)

Performing Identities • How have Asian American film and videomakers innovated artistic forms to create new vocabularies to discuss race, class and gender? What is the role of form in talking about personal identity? Furthermore, what are the possibilities for self expression in a world where personal identities are increasingly complex, and traditional modes of representation are so limited? How can the critical examination of film form be a tool in the classroom to expand media literacy and deepen engagement with questions of content?

Viewing
  • A Slip of the Tongue, Karen Lum, 2006, 3mins
  • Insert Credit, David Nguyen, 2013, 7mins
  • Cut Piece, Yoko Ono, 1965, 6mins
  • Eels, Patty Chang, 1999, 5mins
  • Kev Jumba VideoBlog, 2012, 3mins
  • Sea in the Blood, Richard Fung, 2000, 30mins
  • Self Portrait, Stom Sogo, 2008, 2mins
  • Black Hair and Black Eyed, Julie Whang, 1995, 9mins

Afternoon Session: 2pm – 6pm (Hunter College)

Exploding Asian America / The Future • What are ways to look at and articulate Asian America as, in scholar Lisa Lowe’s words, “heterogeneous, hybrid and multiple?” How has Asian America historically been a term that defies definition by its sheer diversity and how have writers and artists represented it as a radically expansive and dynamic space that cannot be categorized as a single experience?

Readings
  • TBD
Viewings
  • Das Racist – “Who’s That? Broown!”, Thomas De Napoli, 2010, 4mins
  • American Revolutionary: The Evolution of Grace Lee Boggs, Grace Lee, 2014, 82mins

Closing Dinner: 7pm (The Kunjip, Koreatown, 32 W 32nd St, New York, NY 10016)

A group dinner to celebrate the conclusion of the seminar!

Friday, July 17, 2015

Morning Session: 9am – 1pm (Hunter College)

Presentations and Final Discussion • Participants will present their two seminar projects, and engage in a discussion to assess the overall findings from the two-week seminar.

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