Category: Announcement

Blue, Orange, and Yellow Logo for GSA UCSB

Support for Asian and Pacific Islander Graduate Student Alliance

Posted on | by Thomas Mazanec

We, the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultural Studies, express solidarity with the Asian and Pacific Islander Graduate Student Alliance here at UC Santa Barbara. We affirm and support the statement they issued in the wake of the recent hate crime in Atlanta:

Dear APIGSA members,

In the horror and trauma of last night’s anti-Asian attack in Atlanta, we share your grief. We condemn the blatant racism, misogyny, and anti-sex worker violence. We mourn the loss of Daoyou Feng, Hyeon-Jeong Park, Julie Park, Xiaojie Tan, Delaina Ashley Yaun, Paul Andre Michaels, and the two as-yet unnamed victims, and hold their families and communities in our hearts today.

We also acknowledge that a restorative justice-modeled response rejects calls to expand the carceral state. We witness in anger the police response to this domestic terrorist’s actions, which was to refer to him as having “a really bad day.” We remember that the carceral state is a product of white supremacy and anti-Blackness, and that it does not and cannot protect our communities. We call for models of justice that look beyond current violent systems towards a more just and liberatory future.

If you, or allies in your orbit, are in a position to do so, please consider donating to the following resources:

  • this specifically Atlanta-based group for Asian organizing
  • an ongoing Google doc of Asian orgs grouped by state and community
  • this list of 61 ways to donate to Asian communities organized by goal (community restoration, legal defense, etc.)
  • this Twitter thread for resources focused on immigrants, lower-income Asians, and sex workers
  • an Instagram thread with organizations and calls to action for non-Asian allies

Lastly, here is a thread on the entwined histories of anti-Asian and anti-Black racism and the need for solidarity.

Our work does not end here. As stated in our mission statement, APIGSA strives to create and maintain spaces of support for graduate students of Asian panethnicity, advocating for a more critically accurate representation of Asian, Asian American, and Pacific Islander students. Our work includes connecting our struggles and directing our anger in service of broader resistance movements.

We will be reaching out over the next few days with more offerings to help support each other. In the meantime, we appreciate any input on ways that APIGSA can continue to provide a stronger, more holistic representation of the issues concerning AAPI lives. We are here as community members, as resources, and as advocates.

In solidarity,
APIGSA board
https://apigsa-ucsb.wixsite.com/apigsa/about

IHC Funding Award Winners, Winter 2021, orange banner

Yan Liu Wins Interdisciplinary Humanities Center Award

Posted on | by Thomas Mazanec
Congratulations to our graduate student Yan Liu for receiving a Visual, Performing, and Media Arts award from the Interdisciplinary Humanities Center for his project “Hong Kong at the Crossroads”!
Here is a description of his project:
Since February 2019, the Anti-Extradition Law Amendment Bill Movement in Hong Kong had continued unabated until the first half of 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic broke out and a new national security law was passed. The Movement, therefore, has entered a new era. With Hong Kong at the crossroads, protesters have been trying to find out ways to effect political change while abiding by the law. This project intends to produce a documentary that offers the latest and most comprehensive account of Hong Kongers’ experiment with innovative forms of protest and assembly against the renewed backdrop.
Read more about all the IHC graduate awards (which include EALCS-affiliated project Gaming+) here:
Flyer for "Teresa Teng and the Network Trace" at UC Berkeley by Andrew F. Jones on 2/17 at 6:30-8PM

Lecture Series: Sound and Screen from Taiwan

Posted on | by Thomas Mazanec

Prof. Hanpging Xu has helped put together a lecture series titled Sound and Screen from Taiwan under the sponsorship of the Center for Taiwan Studies as well as the Confucius Institute. For the Winter quarter, we have three exciting lectures lined up, respectively on February 17th (6:30-8:00 p.m.), February 25th (4:00-5:30 p.m.), and March 8th (6:30-8:00 p.m.):

  1. Professor Andrew Jones (Berkeley) will speak on pop diva Teresa Teng (邓丽君) and the sonic regime of geo-political affect and power across the Taiwan Strait.
  2. Professor Yingjin Zhang (UCSD) will take a sociological and culturalist approach to situate the Taiwan film industry in the context of globalization.
  3. Professor Tze-lan Deborah Sang (Michigan State University) will discuss Taiwanese documentary films through the lens of critical queer studies.

For more details, see the flyers below, visit our Events page, or contact Prof. Xu.

Image of an Ainu woman sitting on a mat outdoors

Faculty Talk: Ainu Indigenous Modernity in Japan: Bringing Our Ancestors Home by Ann-Elise Lewallen

Posted on | by Thomas Mazanec

Image of an Ainu woman sitting on a mat outdoors

Join Prof. Ann-Elise Lewallen on Wednesday, February 10, at 5:30pm Pacific Time, as she delivers a guest lecture for the University of San Francisco on “Ainu Indigenous Modernity in Japan: Bringing Our Ancestors Home.” Event Description:

The USF Center for Asia Pacific Studies welcomes Dr. ann-elise lewallen (University of California, Santa Barbara) for an examination of Ainu colonial reckoning and eventual repatriation that unmasks the ongoing violence of settler colonialism in Japan and the ways that honoring kin relations and ancestral places enables a healing process to begin.

In Japan, Ainu experiences of Indigenous modernity have been shaped by a trifecta of settler colonialism, violent interruption of Ainu kin relations with land, and severed kin ties with birth communities due to urbanization and economic pressure. From the mid-19th through 20th century, the Japanese state instituted assimilation policies reinforcing racialization of Ainu bodies as distinct from ethnic Japanese. Thousands of Ainu ancestors were robbed from their resting places to be used for research into “evolutionary origins.” From 2016, while courts ordered repatriation of some ancestral remains, roughly 1,676 Ainu remains were still held in Japanese universities. Meanwhile, in 2020 the Japanese government opened its National Ainu Museum (Upopoy), consolidating all domestic Ainu remains under one roof. Contestations for how ancestors should be memorialized and honored oscillate between two poles. On the one hand, some Ainu communities have employed legal modernity using settler tools like the courts to repatriate ancestors. In contrast, others advocate to continue genetic research on these ancestors and thus boost Ainu indigeneity, which invokes a bio-genetic modernity. This talk explores how Indigenous modernity through bio-genetic tools such as DNA and blood testing has been pitted against legal and political tools of modernity such as backing indigenous sovereignty through the UN Declaration on Indigenous Rights, and centrally, self-determination over Ainu ancestors themselves.

ann-elise lewallen is an engaged anthropologist and Indigenous rights advocate. Her research focuses on aid diplomacy, environmental politics and indigenous sovereignty in contemporary Japan and Asia. In her 2016 book, The Fabric of Indigeneity: Ainu Identity, Gender, and Settler Colonialism in Japan (SAR and UNM Press), lewallen engages with Indigenous Ainu women’s production of textile-based clothwork, arguing that it serves as an idiom of resistance against ongoing Japanese settler colonialism. In her current research, lewallen invokes an environmental justice framework to understand how Indigenous communities use embodied practices and Traditional Ecological Knowledge to shape energy development in Japan and India.

To RSVP, please visit https://www.usfca.edu/event/2021-02-10-1730/ainu-indigenous-modernity-japan-bringing-our-ancestors-home