Events

Asian America Across the Disciplines Series Spring 2021 presents Stephanie Sun

Stephanie Sun was appointed the Executive Director of the Pennsylvania Governor’s Advisory Commission on Asian Pacific American Affairs (GACAPAA) in June, 2020. She had been serving as a Commissioner on GACAPAA beginning in April 2018. Prior to joining the Office of the Governor Tom Wolf, Sun served as the Associate Director of Partnerships, Philly Counts, for the City of Philadelphia, responsible for developing engagement strategies with diverse communities to promote participation in the 2020 U.S. Census. In 2020, she was also assigned to work on COVID-19 and the election.

Sun worked for government diplomatic agencies in both China and South Korea, and for 3 Fortune 120 international corporations in 3 countries, China, South Korea, and the U.S. She also has experience in corporate philanthropy as a grant analyst working on both international and domestic grants and has also written grant applications. She previously worked as the Marketing Manager for the Greater China Region for SK Group, a Global Fortune 100 company, with a staff of 400 salespeople reporting to her through their sales managers.

Sun serves as an active board member of multiple non-profit organizations including the Welcoming Center for New Pennsylvanians, Working Families Partnership (AFL-CIO), Keystone Progress Education Fund (KPEF), Asian Mosaic Fund Giving Circle (AMF), United Chinese Americans (UCA), and Lansdowne Symphony Orchestra (LSO). In addition, she serves on several advisory boards, including the College of Public Health, Temple University.

Sun is a journalist, and served as the senior director of the main local Chinese language newspaper based in Philadelphia, informing and being a voice for the immigrant community, and serving as an advocate for grassroots and marginalized people.

In 2016, Sun collaborated with Philadelphia City Council to organize the first-ever City Council public hearing concerning the Asian Pacific American (APA) community in the history of Philadelphia. And she has been constantly advocating for the rights of crime victims in the APA community, and facilitating their interaction with law enforcement.  
Stephanie earned a Master's degree in Journalism and Media Management in China. She studied for her Ph.D. in International Relations in South Korea.

Hosted by Dr. Fariha Khan, ASAM Associate Director in ASAM 104-401Asian American Communities.

Asian America Across the Disciplines Series Spring 2021 presents Interior Exclusion, Japanese American Incarceration During WWII, in conversation with Shirley Ann Higuchi, JD, Chair, Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation.

Shirley Ann Higuchi, Chair of the Heart Mountain Wyoming Foundation shares the arc of her story from growing up in a predominantly black and white community in Ann Arbor, Michigan; getting her law degree from Georgetown Law in Washington, DC; working at a high powered DC law firm; to the crisis and surprise of her mother's deathbed wish and her pivotal moment visiting the place of her parents' WWII incarceration at Heart Mountain. Higuchi now chairs the foundation that runs the only privately owned former WWII incarceration site and bridges the communities of Cody, Wyoming and the Japanese Americans who were incarcerated there during WWII. She shares her evolution and strategies as a leader and activist in the Japanese American community and underlining the importance of knowing one's own personal family history in order to step boldly into the future. 

The daughter of American concentration camp survivors, Ms. Higuchi will share personal anecdotes from her family’s incarceration ordeal and how that has shaped her involvement in the pilgrimage movement. The lecture will also examine the intergenerational trauma that exists within the Japanese American community, and the Redress lobbying campaign that ended with a formal apology from the US government.

Asian America Across the Disciplines Series Spring 2021 presents Folklore Methods and Theory, Model Minority, Ethnicity; South Asian Americans in conversation with Samip Mallick, Exec. Director, South Asian American Digital Archive (SAADA)

Samip is the Co-Founder and Executive Director of the South Asian American Digital Archive. He was formerly the Director of the Ranganathan Center for Digital Information (RCDI) at the University of Chicago Library. He has a M.S. in Library and Information Sciences from the University of Illinois, a Bachelors degree in Computer Science from the University of Michigan College of Engineering, and has done graduate work in History at Jawaharlal Nehru University in India. He was also previously the Assistant Bibliographer for the Southern Asia Collection at the University of Chicago Library and has worked for the South Asia and International Migration Programs at the Social Science Research Council (SSRC).

Film screening & discussion of the movie "June", Director Huay-Bing Law

ASAM 215-401 Asian American Gender and Sexualities

Each year, during the month of January, the University of Pennsylvania and our surrounding communities come together to commemorate the life and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. This commemoration includes a day of service on our campus and in the Philadelphia community from January 2021 and continues with programming and events through February 2021.

This year's theme is "Black Panthers(s), Black Power: Celebrating Black (Super) Heroism. Come jam with us as we groove to the music styling of Glenn Bryan & Friends. Be inspired by Nia-Next,the youth performance company of Danse4Nia Repertory Ensemble. Laugh with Kenny Ray Walker!

Join the Arthur Ross Gallery for a Conversation with Curlee Holton, Master Printmaker and Director of the David C. Driskell Center, University of Maryland, College Park

Please join co-authors David L. Eng and Shinhee Han for the launch of Racial Melancholia, Racial Dissociation: On the Social and Psychic Lives of Asian Americans (Duke University Press, 2019).

In Racial Melancholia, Racial Dissociation critic David L. Eng and psychotherapist Shinhee Han draw on case histories from the mid-1990s to the present to explore the social and psychic predicaments of Asian American young adults from Generation X to Generation Y. Combining critical race theory with several strands of psychoanalytic thought, they develop the concepts of racial melancholia and racial dissociation to investigate changing processes of loss associated with immigration, displacement, diaspora, and assimilation. These case studies of first- and second-generation Asian Americans deal with a range of difficulties, from depression, suicide, and the politics of coming out to broader issues of the model minority stereotype, transnational adoption, parachute children, colorblind discourses in the United States, and the rise of Asia under globalization. Throughout, Eng and Han link psychoanalysis to larger structural and historical phenomena, illuminating how the study of psychic processes of individuals can inform investigations of race, sexuality, and immigration while creating a more sustained conversation about the social lives of Asian Americans and Asians in the diaspora.

Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic there has been an alarming increase in the incidence of anti-Asian and anti-Asian American behavior. This session will explore the roots and long history of anti-Asian and anti-Asian American behavior along with strategies and resources to respond to it.

This event will be offered during Penn Global Week as part of the Penn Global Opportunities Fair, where Penn undergraduate and graduate students from across all schools and programs are invited to explore the many exciting international initiatives, student support services, and global opportunities that make up life at Penn.

The politics of American identity are rooted in memory. What do Alex Haley’s Roots and the Jewish scriptural tradition teach us about the constitution of race in the USA?

In an effort to deepen public understanding of race, this free online lecture series beginning January 2021 uses the prism of Jewish experience to examine intersections of race and religion, drawing lessons from the history of antisemitism, examining the role of Jews in the racialized culture of the United States, and exploring the role of race in Jewish identity. Leading scholars in Jewish Studies, Critical Race Studies, and Religious Studies will share insights and research that deepens the conversation about race, racism and anti-racism in contemporary society, both American and Jewish.