News
Reflections on the 1st AAS International Graduate Students Conference
Posted on: 03/05/2006
Over the weekend, March 3-4, Debroah Kwon, Jieun Kang, and I went to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign to particpate in the first ever international Asian American Studies graduate students conference. Hosted by the Asian Pacific American Graduate Student Organization (APAGSO) at UIUC, the conference was called "Emerging Critical Scholarship on Asian Pacific American Issues." More than fifty students from almost twenty different universities across the nation, and a few from abroad, presented their work at this conference. Presentations from such diverse disciplines as gender studies and library and information science were given at the conference, which represent the true interdisciplinary scope of Asian American Studies.
It was very exciting to meet other graduate students with similar interests and be able to share our work and learn from each other in this supportive, intellectual environment. I could not catch all of the panel presentations, but I was impressed by the ones that I was able to attend. For example, one Ph.D. student from UC San Diego discussed her interesting work on the unconscious racial patriarchy that is influencing the current discourse on global sex trafficking. She described how analysts have deemed Asia and other third world cultures as implicitly amoral (ie. concubinage, etc.), so prostitution in these societies is perceived as an inherent cultural problem, while the analysts treat the female sex trafficking problem in Russia, for instance, as a result of the dire conditions after the fall of Communism in that country. To help prove her point, she showed a public service announcement commercial that was made in 2003 called "Cleaning Lady," (click here to see 'Cleaning Lady') where a Caucasian cleaning lady sees first a South Asian woman, then an Asian woman, and finally an African woman being sexually exploited by Caucasian men. In the end, the cleaning lady acts to save them and the caption implies that "you" the viewer, like the Caucasian cleaning lady, can also help.
Also at the conference, the two keynote speakers, Dr. Shirley Hune of UCLA and Dr. Kent Ono of UIUC, offered their professional and personal insights on Asian American Studies and its future. Through the speakers' talks and the conference presentations, it became clear that Asian Americanists today are not just studying Asian Americans, which makes sense since Asian American Studies is located in the larger contexts of America and the world. We are informing new ways traditional academic fields and areas can be studied, or, as Dr. Ono said in his speech, we are "decolonizing the academy." After the end of this successful conference, there was much talk about having this be an annual event hosted by a different campus each year. So stay tuned, maybe next year's will be at OSU!
Vivian Li
M.A. Student
History of Art Department
It was very exciting to meet other graduate students with similar interests and be able to share our work and learn from each other in this supportive, intellectual environment. I could not catch all of the panel presentations, but I was impressed by the ones that I was able to attend. For example, one Ph.D. student from UC San Diego discussed her interesting work on the unconscious racial patriarchy that is influencing the current discourse on global sex trafficking. She described how analysts have deemed Asia and other third world cultures as implicitly amoral (ie. concubinage, etc.), so prostitution in these societies is perceived as an inherent cultural problem, while the analysts treat the female sex trafficking problem in Russia, for instance, as a result of the dire conditions after the fall of Communism in that country. To help prove her point, she showed a public service announcement commercial that was made in 2003 called "Cleaning Lady," (click here to see 'Cleaning Lady') where a Caucasian cleaning lady sees first a South Asian woman, then an Asian woman, and finally an African woman being sexually exploited by Caucasian men. In the end, the cleaning lady acts to save them and the caption implies that "you" the viewer, like the Caucasian cleaning lady, can also help.
Also at the conference, the two keynote speakers, Dr. Shirley Hune of UCLA and Dr. Kent Ono of UIUC, offered their professional and personal insights on Asian American Studies and its future. Through the speakers' talks and the conference presentations, it became clear that Asian Americanists today are not just studying Asian Americans, which makes sense since Asian American Studies is located in the larger contexts of America and the world. We are informing new ways traditional academic fields and areas can be studied, or, as Dr. Ono said in his speech, we are "decolonizing the academy." After the end of this successful conference, there was much talk about having this be an annual event hosted by a different campus each year. So stay tuned, maybe next year's will be at OSU!
Vivian Li
M.A. Student
History of Art Department
