In Plain Sight: Reckoning with Anti-Asian Racism | Unit for Criticism & Interpretive Theory

In Plain Sight: Reckoning with Anti-Asian Racism features a mural created by artist Amanda Phingbodhipakkiyam

Project Leaders: Susan Koshy (Asian American Studies/English), Soo Ah Kwon (Asian American Studies), and Junaid Rana (Asian American Studies)

The Unit for Criticism and Interpretive Theory and the Department of Asian American Studies jointly received $75,000 through the Chancellor's Call to Action to Address Systemic Racism and Social Injustice Research Program to co-organize a year-long public speaker series and symposium to address the problem of anti-Asian racism. These events aim to combat the lack of awareness and understanding of historical and contemporary forms of anti-Asian racism, and to develop new frameworks for understanding present-day racial justice struggles. The events mobilize a range of testimony, dialogue, artistic expression, activism, and scholarship, to examine the distinctiveness of anti-Asian racism, to build cross-racial coalitions, and to expand knowledge of contemporary racial politics. The project is broadly constructed to include the range of Asian American communities that have been historically and currently racialized. A full calendar of events will be available in the next few weeks.

"Making It Plain: Articulating Our Racist Present"

February 4, 2022 at 3:30 PM CST

The task of our first virtual panel in this series is comparative and intersectional reflection on the necessary frameworks for thinking through and acting against racism. Panelists Roderick Ferguson (Yale), Viet Thanh Nguyen (USC), and Alfonso Gonzales Toribio (UCR) will offer brief 10-minute reflections on terms they believe are crucial for talking about racism now. Following their individual presentations, they will engage each other--pick up threads, common questions, differences, unexpected insights--and then we will open up the floor for audience participation in the discussion.

erin Khuê Ninh will lecture on "Passing for Model Minority" on March 3, 5:30 pm CST via Zoom.

erin Khuê Ninh: "Passing for Model Minority"

March 3, 2022 at 5:30 PM CST

Register for "Passing for Model Minority,"

“Passing for Model Minority” is based on an ongoing project taking to task the systems both public and private that together manufacture a particular kind of good, capitalist subject: Get your filial child, your doctor/lawyer, your model minority here. This project that has meant holding Asian American studies accountable for their field’s dogmatic refusal to see the model minority as real, even as it lives and breathes and dies in front of us: in competitive high schools and colleges, disproportionately represented in their student bodies and, further still, in their suicide tallies. Ninh's Passing for Perfect: College Impostors & Other Model Minorities (Temple UP 2021) instead accepts the empirical evidence of that racial identity, and feels for the often invisible costs of its manufacturing process: When you are raised in a box, what hurts? The talk will lean on work by sociologists Jennifer Lee and Min Zhou, arguing that Asian Americans are measured by their proximity to a tightly defined “success frame”: “earning straight A’s, graduating as the high school valedictorian, earning a degree from an elite university, attaining an advanced degree, and working in one of four high-status professional fields: medicine, law, engineering, or science.” For the children of Asian immigrants, this strict plotline and its orthodox tropes constitute cultural identity, such that to fall short in any particular is to be inauthentically Asian American.

Cathy Park Hong: A Conversation Moderated by Susan Koshy + Soo Ah Kwon

March 22, 2022 at 5:30 PM CST

Register for "Cathy Park Hong: A Moderated Conversation."

the faculty graduate seminar on histories and theories of anti-asian racism will take place April 4, 5-7pm cst

Faculty-Graduate Seminar: Histories + Theories of Anti-Asian Racism

April 4, 2022 at 5:00 pm CST

Seminar led by Susan Koshy (AAS/English) and Junaid Rana (AAS).

To access the readings, please visit this Box folder. For the password, please email Hyeree Ellis or Ashli Anda.

Register for "Histories + Theories of Anti-Asian Racism."

the faculty graduate seminar on gendered and sexualized forms of anti asian racism will take place April 18 from 5-7 pm cst via Zoom

Faculty-Graduate Seminar: Gendered + Sexualized Forms of Anti-Asian Racism

April 18, 2022 at 5:00 pm CST

Seminar led by Susan Koshy (AAS/English), Soo Ah Kwon (AAS), and Junaid Rana (AAS).

To access the readings, please visit this Box folder. For the password, please email Hyeree Ellis or Ashli Anda.

Register for "Gendered + Sexualized Forms of Anti-Asian Racism."

The culminating conference of the In Plain Sight research initiative will take place May 6-7 followed by a closing performance by Vijay Iyer + Trio.

Asian America Otherwise: Asian American Studies Conference

May 6-7, 2022 from 9-5 PM CST in the Honors Room, I Hotel

The culminating conference of the In Plain Sight: Reckoning with Anti-Asian Racism research initiative. Please note that masks are required for all attendees, except speakers.

For more information, please see the Asian America Otherwise Conference page.