By Center Press, on March 20th, 2013 
Amerasia Journal is pleased to announce the publication of “The State of Illness and Disability in Asian America,” our first issue entirely devoted to Disabilities Studies. This groundbreaking interdisciplinary project is spearheaded by Jennifer Ho (University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill) and James Kyung-Jin Lee (University of California, Irvine) and features leading scholars working in the fields of Asian American Studies and Disabilities Studies.
Issue 39:1 “The State of Illness and Disability in Asian America” covers a wide variety of topics examined from a broad range of perspectives, from compelling first-person accounts to innovative research articles. This special issue tackles illness and disability from the vantage points of poetics, ethics, and politics, presenting subjects that have been previously overlooked in Asian American Studies, including autism and representations of deafness, as well as re-examining more familiar matters, such as John Okada’s novel No-No Boy and the case of the “Siamese Twins” Chang and Eng Bunker. Yet no matter the topic and approach, what stands out about the contributions is the committed, urgent tone the authors use to convey their respective messages— be it a personal account of undergoing breast cancer treatments or a call to rethink the ableist figures of speech we use in politics.
The issue includes:
* Poetics: This section features creative and critical work, including a poem by literary scholar Floyd Cheung, as well as thought-provoking analyses of No-No Boy by Cynthia Wu and of the play Mother Tongue by Ellen Samuels. Crystal Parikh develops a theory of health and well-being as human rights through Asian American literary studies by her readings of Jhumpa Lahiri’s short stories.
* Ethics: In this section, first-person accounts of how to cope with illness and disability are combined with historical study and pedagogical experiences. Stephen Murphy-Shigematsu tells of his first-hand experience of providing hospice care, and Kristina Chew describes what she learned about her own adolescence through the life of her autistic son Charlie. Stevie Larson offers new insights on the value systems used to judge Chang and Eng Bunker. Asian American Studies faculty at California State University, Northridge provide an account of how disability impacts the way they teach and think about teaching.
* Politics: The final section of the special issue delves into the politics of illness and disability in Asian America, tackling them through theoretical knowledge and personal experience. Mel Chen scrutinizes common tropes used in politics and the able-bodied assumptions behind them, while Alice Wong looks back at her childhood to explain how she became a scholar and activist on disability issues. Jennifer Ho, through her personal account of battling breast cancer, powerfully articulates the limits of theory in the ill body.
Published by UCLA’s Asian American Studies Center since 1971, Amerasia Journal is regarded as the core journal in the field of Asian American Studies.
ORDERING INFORMATION: Copies of the issue can be ordered via phone, email, or mail. Each issue of Amerasia Journal costs $15.00 plus shipping/handling and applicable sales tax. Please contact the Center Press for detailed ordering information.
UCLA Asian American Studies Center Press
3230 Campbell Hall | Los Angeles, CA 90095-1546
Phone: 310-825-2968 | Email: aascpress@aasc.ucla.edu
Blog: http://www.amerasiajournal.org/blog/ | Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/AmerasiaJournal
Amerasia Journal is published three times a year: Spring, Summer/Fall, and Winter. Annual subscriptions for Amerasia Journal are $99.99 for individuals and $445.00 for libraries and other institutions. Instructors interested in this issue for classroom use should contact the above email address to request a review copy.
By Amerasia Journal blog, on March 19th, 2013 Amerasia Journal Special Issue Call for Papers
Asian American Cultural Politics Across Platforms
Guest Editors:
Professor Victor Bascara (UCLA) and Professor Lisa Nakamura (University of Michigan)
Publication Date:
Summer 2014
Due Date:
Paper submissions (up to 5,000 words) due July 1, 2013
This special issue focuses on the relationship between technology, new social movements, and Asian American cultural politics. One of the central early insights of cultural studies has been the recognition of cultural politics beyond aesthetic culture, narrowly understood. While literature has long been turned to for symptomatic readings, a growing body of recent work in Asian American cultural studies has read everything from visual art, new/old media, music, dance, and performance to legal and political discourse, the spectacle of bodies in protest, infrastructures of deindustrialized cities, and diasporic networks that have emerged under neoliberal globalization.
This special issue seeks papers of approximately 5,000 words in length that examine the diverse and platform-crossing manifestations of Asian American cultural politics. We especially welcome interdisciplinary and teachable writings that appreciate the significance of platform-crossing cultural production to adopt for courses ranging from literary studies to communications to performance to film and popular culture as well as Asian American Studies and Ethnic Studies. The deadline for submission is July 1, 2013.
Submission Guidelines:
The review process involves the following steps. The guest editors, in consultation with the Amerasia Journal editors and peer reviewers, make decisions on the final essays:
• Initial review of submitted papers by guest editors and Amerasia Journal editorial staff
• Papers approved by editors will undergo blind peer review
• Revision of accepted peer-reviewed papers and final submission
Please send papers and correspondence to Arnold Pan, Associate Editor, Amerasia Journal at arnoldpan@ucla.edu, by July 1, 2013.
By Amerasia Journal blog, on February 5th, 2013 UC Berkeley’s Center for Research on Social Change (formerly ISSC) is accepting nominations for the 2013 FOUNDATIONS FOR CHANGE: Thomas I. Yamashita Prize
The FOUNDATIONS FOR CHANGE: Thomas I. Yamashita Prize is awarded annually to an outstanding young social change activist/scholar in California. The award of $2,500 honors a person whose work transforms the existing social landscape and serves as a bridge between the academy and the community. An awardee helps to build the capacity of community-based organizations and social movements to confront pressing issues by applying her/his academic expertise. Simultaneously, she/he enriches academic scholarship by sharing the insights and knowledge produced from community engagement with the broader academic community.
NOTE: The award is not limited to students or scholars, but an honoree’s work should reflect a commitment to strengthening ties between the academy and communities. There is no age limit for this award, but the honoree should be in the early stages of his/her career as a social change activist/scholar.
Deadline: Thursday, February 14 @5pm.
2013 Nomination Process
The FOUNDATIONS FOR CHANGE: Thomas I. Yamashita Prize uses a nomination system, where someone other than the nominee identifies the nominee, their contributions, and the kinds of expertise they bring to understanding how change works. To download a nomination form, click here.
Nomination due date: Thursday, February 14, 2013, by 5pm
(The Prize will be announced within four to six weeks after the deadline date. An award ceremony will be held in the spring.)
Please send nomination forms and supporting materials to:
FOUNDATIONS FOR CHANGE: The Thomas I. Yamashita Prize
Center for Research on Social Change
Institute for the Study of Societal Issues
University of California
2420 Bowditch Street, MC 5670
Berkeley, CA 94720-5670
Deadline: Thursday, February 14 @5pm.
Read about other past recipients of the FOUNDATIONS FOR CHANGE: Thomas I. Yamashita Prize: Past Recipients
About Thomas I. Yamashita
Thomas Isao Yamashita was an undergraduate student in civil engineering at the University of California at Berkeley and a member of the class of 1942. He was one of the first Asian-Americans elected to two of the University of California’s honor societies—Winged Helmet and the Order of the Golden Bear. The internment of Americans of Japanese descent on the West Coast of the United States in 1942 made it impossible for him to graduate from Berkeley. He eventually received his engineering degree from the University of Nebraska. Even so, Tom supported and cherished the University of California at Berkeley and was a life member of the Alumni Association.
As a civil engineer, Tom spent the majority of his career in Hong Kong. His work did not involve building the structures that typify its landscape. His work is unseen, focusing on foundations, on solving the complex engineering problems that enable steel and glass towers to be built. His work made possible the transportation corridors that allowed the city to become a regional economic hub. Through his leadership, Tom developed new construction techniques that altered the practice of building. His work changed the city’s landscape. In this spirit of engineering the foundations of change, the FOUNDATIONS FOR CHANGE: Thomas I. Yamashita Prize is housed at the Institute for the Study of Social Change.
For more information about the Prize and nomination process, contact Dr. Christine Trost: (510) 643-7237, ctrost@berkeley.edu.
The Center for Research on Social Change (CRSC, formerly ISSC) is an interdisciplinary research center that is part of the Institute for the Study of Societal Issues (ISSI) at the University of California, Berkeley. CRSC researchers use a combination of qualitative and quantitative social science research methods to undertake empirical investigations into critical social issues facing the nation and to illuminate the lived experiences of people whose social locations are profoundly affected by broad processes of social change. A major focus of the Center is how immigration, globalization, economic restructuring, and development of new technologies have shaped and changed the structure and culture of various spheres within US society and societies throughout the world.
By Center Press, on January 24th, 2013 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
BY RUSSELL C. LEONG, UCLA
UCLA’s Asian American Studies Center Director and Amerasia Journal Editor Professor David Yoo announces the publication of Global Identities; Local Voices: Amerasia Journal at 40 Years, a two-volume book project that introduces almost half-a-century of work from Asian American scholars, writers, and researchers in Chinese translation to the Chinese-reading world. Through the power of translation, the pages of Amerasia Journal are now “freed” from the confines of the English language and can reach new audiences of scholars, students, and readers in Taiwan, in mainland China, and in the greater Chinese world on both sides of the Pacific.
According to Professor Yoo: “This volume is an excellent teaching tool for educators of Chinese in the U.S. and those who require historical, literary, and cultural materials about Asians in the U.S. This volume is a ‘must have’ for libraries and all institutions of learning who study Chinese and Asian Americans, comparative literature and diaspora studies, and the Chinese overseas.”
This volume features a range of scholars and literary writers who have contributed to the field of Asian American Studies, including Asian American pioneers, such as Him Mark Lai and Yuji Ichioka, as well as the work of leaders in the field such as Sauling C. Wong, Wu Bing, and Glenn Omatsu. The poems, letters, and essays of acclaimed writers Carlos Bulosan, Maxine Hong Kingston, Hisaye Yamamoto, Jessica Hagedorn, and Lawson Fusao Inada are also included alongside other essential works selected for this publication. The release of these books marks the first time many of the pieces have been made available in translation to Chinese-reading audiences.
Global Identities, Local Voices is a collaborative editorial and translation project between the Center and the Institute of European and American Studies, Academia Sinica Taiwan. The three co-editors are: Russell C. Leong, long-time editor of Amerasia Journal (1977-2010); Professor Emeritus Don T. Nakanishi, publisher and co-founder of the journal, and Professor Te-hsing Shan, head of the Chinese translation team. An excerpt of the first volume’s introduction, by Russell C. Leong and translated by Shan Te-hsing, follows this release. (See the Introduction in Chinese and the English version).
Published by UCLA’s Asian American Studies Center since 1971, Amerasia Journal is regarded as the core journal in the field of Asian American Studies.
PDF version of this release can be found here: UCLA’s Amerasia Journal in New Chinese Language Edition
ORDERING INFORMATION:
Global Identities, Local Voices: Amerasia Journal at 40 Years (Volume 1) is available for purchase. Each copy costs $24.95, plus $5 domestic shipping and applicable sales tax for California residents. Multiple book and international orders may be subject to additional charges. Copies can be obtained by ordering via phone, email or mail. Please contact the UCLA AASC Press for more detailed ordering information.
UCLA Asian American Studies Center Press
3230 Campbell Hall | Los Angeles, CA 90095-1546
Phone: 310-825-2968 | Email: aascpress@aasc.ucla.edu
Blog: http://www.amerasiajournal.org/blog/
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/AmerasiaJournal
By Center Press, on December 18th, 2012 For Immediate Release
The latest issue of Amerasia Journal, the flagship publication of the UCLA Asian American Studies Center, marks its first “open submissions” issue in recent years. Pushed by the growing breadth of Asian American Studies research, Amerasia Journal will present future open issues, in addition to its pioneering themed issues, and welcomes submissions throughout the year to be considered for publication.
The diversity and range of Asian American Studies can be found in the topics discussed in this issue, as well as the many different contributors who lend their research and voice for the continued development of the field. Topics range from Marilyn Alquizola and Lane Hirabayashi’s examination of Pilipino writer Carlos Bulosan’s FBI files to honoring early advocates of Asian American Studies, Alexander Saxton and Dick Jiro Kobashigawa.
The issue also features the inaugural Lucie Cheng Prize essay for outstanding graduate student research, awarded to Yuko Konno (History, University of Southern California), for her piece on the role of the local in Japanese migration patterns. The award is in honor of the late Professor Lucie Cheng, the first permanent director of the UCLA Asian American Studies Center (1972-1987) and pioneering scholar on transnationalism of Asian Americans.
Other highlights of this issue include:
* Articles on Japanese Americans, such as Tritia Toyota’s research on newer Japanese immigration to the United States and Courtney Goto’s exploration of gardening as a trans-generational Japanese American cultural practice;
* Allison Truitt’s study of the use of Vietnamese language instruction at one New Orleans charter school and its relation to the greater public school charterization movement; and
* An Amerasia Journal Forum on the impact of Jeremy Lin on Asian American Studies by leading voices on Asian American popular culture and sports: Hua Hsu, Konrad Ng, and Kathleen Yep.
Copies of the issue can be obtained by ordering via phone, email or mail. This issue of Amerasia Journal costs $15.00 plus shipping and handling and applicable sales tax. Please contact the UCLA AASC Press for more detailed ordering information.
UCLA Asian American Studies Center Press
3230 Campbell Hall, Los Angeles, CA 90095-1546
Phone: 310-825-2968
Email: aascpress@aasc.ucla.edu
Blog: http://www.amerasiajournal.org/blog/
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/AmerasiaJournal
Amerasia Journal is published three times a year: Spring, Summer/Fall, and Winter. Annual subscriptions for Amerasia Journal are $99.99 for individuals and $445.00 for libraries and other institutions. The annual subscription price includes access to the Amerasia Journal online database, with full-text versions of published issues dating back to 1971. Instructors interested in this issue for classroom use should contact the above email address to request a review copy.
The PDF version of this release can be downloaded here: Amerasia Journal 38:3 Press Release.
By Center Press, on December 18th, 2012 Last week contributors to Amerasia Journal 38:2 “Towards a Third Literature” gathered together in New York to read from and discuss the issue. This special program was co-sponsored by the UCLA Asian American Studies Center with the Asian American Research Institute – CUNY, Asian American Studies Program – Hunter College, and Brown University. The event was recorded live and can be viewed below.
Video streaming by Ustream
Panel Information: “From Chinese American to a Third American Literature”
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Prof. Evelyn Hu-Dehart will provide a keynote overview of how and why Asians entered the literary scene of Central and Latin America. Prof. Dehart will introduce Prof. Kathleen López, a Latin American expert who will provide commentary. (Talk in English and Spanish.)
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Prof. Kathleen López is Assistant Professor in the Department of Latino and Hispanic Caribbean Studies (LHCS) and the Department of History at Rutgers University. Her book, Chinese Cubans: A Transnational History, is forthcoming from the University of North Carolina Press (2013). Her research and teaching focus on the historical intersections between Asia and Latin America and the Caribbean, post-emancipation Caribbean societies, race and ethnicity in the Americas, and international migration.
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Prof. Russell Leong will introduce the special volume of Amerasia Journal. (Talk in English)
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Dr. Maan Lin, Associate Professor of Chinese and Spanish and Coordinator of the Chinese Program at Queensborough Community College, will talk about translating Kam Wen Siu’s “La primera espada del imperio.” (Talk in Chinese and Spanish.)
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Dr. Yibing Huang, Professor of Modern Chinese Literature at Connecticut College and past contributor to Amerasia Journal, will talk about Simon Ortiz in China, and bringing ethnic and minority writers for cross-literary exchanges in China. (Talk in Chinese and English.)
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Dr. Wen Jin, Assistant Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Columbia University, will talk about the future of racial and minority literary contacts from two nations. (Talk in Chinese and English.)
By Amerasia Journal blog, on December 12th, 2012 The UCLA Asian American Studies Center and Amerasia Journal are pleased to announce that Ms. Linh Nguyen, Department of Ethnic Studies, University of California, San Diego, is the recipient of 2012-2013 Lucie Cheng Prize for her essay, “Recalling the Refugee: Culture Clash and Melancholic Racial Formation in Daughter from Danang.” Ms. Nguyen was nominated by her advisor, Professor Yen Le Espiritu.
Ms. Nguyen is currently a Ph.D. student in Ethnic Studies, focusing on the field of Critical Refugee Studies. Her essay offers a critical reading of the documentary film, Daughter from Danang by interrogating the film’s subject, a transnational/multiracial adoptee named Heidi Bub, through the paradigm of the “refugee.” Nguyen’s interpretation of Daughter from Danang complicates the tendency to frame the documentary as a representation of “culture clash,” which, Ms. Nguyen suggests, essentializes American and Vietnamese cultural differences. Through her discussion of American involvement in Southeast Asia and its aftermath, Ms. Nguyen demonstrates how the place of Asian Americans in U.S. racial formations must be viewed in both national and global contexts.
The Lucie Cheng Prize recognizes exceptional graduate student essays in the interdisciplinary field of Asian American and Pacific Islander Studies. The winning article is published in Amerasia Journal, and $1,000 is awarded to the recipient. Last year’s winning essay appears in the current issue of Amerasia Journal (38:3, 2012).
The Lucie Cheng Prize honors the late Professor Lucie Cheng (1939-2010), a longtime faculty member at UCLA and the first permanent director of the UCLA Asian American Studies Center (1972-1987). Professor Cheng was a pioneering scholar who brought an early and enduring transnational focus to the study of Asian Americans and issues such as gender, labor, and immigration.
For more information about the Lucie Cheng prize, see: http://www.aasc.ucla.edu/ajprize/
By Center Press, on December 12th, 2012  The UCLA Asian American Studies Center is pleased to congratulate Jennifer Tseng on winning the 2012 Marick Press Poetry Prize! Her manuscript, Red Flower, White Flower, was selected by poet and writer Derick Burleson and is her second collection of poems. The prize is awarded annually, with the winner receiving $1000, along with the publication of the winning manuscript. Red Flower, White Flower will be released in September 2013.
Jennifer Tseng graduated from Asian American Studies Masters program in 1997, completing the first creative thesis in its history. She worked with UCLA professors David Wong Louie, Valerie Matsumoto and the late Paula Gunn Allen on a collection of poetry, fragments, and stories.
The Center interviewed Tseng in a 2003 issue of CrossCurrents about her experience with the Center and her writing and we are pleased to share that interview here on the Amerasia Journal blog.
Excerpt from Jennifer Tseng Interview in Crosscurrents 2003:
“….to create a poem is to create a world. I do so in order to engineer a logic of my own making, an arena in which records are set straight, confusions clarified, lost things found, strange doors opened. I like a poem to occupy that mysterious place between what is, and what can be, between present day world confinement and timeless world possibility.”
Congratulations, Jennifer!
By Amerasia Journal blog, on November 20th, 2012 Amerasia Journal Special Issue Call for Papers
Asian American Religions in a Globalized World
Guest Editors: Professor Khyati Y. Joshi (Farleigh Dickinson University) and Professor Sylvia Chan-Malik (Rutgers University)
Publication Date: Spring 2014
Due Dates: 400-word abstracts due on January 10, 2013; authors with selected abstracts will be notified shortly after, with an April 1, 2013 due date for completed essay submissions.
How does religion shape the existing and emergent terrains of Asian Pacific America? In our contemporary moment, as neoliberal policies of globalization and militarism converge with legacies of colonialism and racial violence, what role has religion played in the racial formation of Asian Pacific Americans in the U.S. and beyond? As dividing lines between the “religious” and the “secular” become increasingly blurred, how do processes of racialization affect what we understand as “religious” practices in APA communities, both domestically and transnationally? To investigate such questions, we seek critical essays, book reviews, and first-person accounts that engage the intersections of Asian Pacific America and Religion for a special issue of Amerasia Journal, scheduled for publication in Spring 2014.
Building upon “Racial Spirits” (1996), an earlier project exploring Asian American religions in Amerasia Journal, this special issue will look at how religion plays a central role in creating belonging and identity formation in Asian Pacific America, alongside how APA religions themselves are constructed and reproduced through lived experience and community formation. While broadly speaking, there is increasing interest in religion amongst scholars in Asian American Studies, much more inquiry is necessary to assess the salience of spirituality and religion in the everyday lives of Asian Pacific Americans, as well as how religion has been racialized, gendered, and sexualized in the post-9/11 era. We are particularly interested in how religion provides transnational sources of identification for APA communities, enabling and fostering affiliations that often span beyond the nation-state and challenge U.S.-based categories of racial and religious formation.
We seek scholarship engaging APA religions from a variety of methods and disciplines, and welcome intersectional analyses that account for and offer new frameworks for understanding the dynamic interplay between categories of race, gender, class, sexuality, and religion. In addition to scholarly essays, we encourage submissions of first-person narratives from community activists, theologians, and religious leaders. Stepping across theoretical and disciplinary boundaries is strongly encouraged.
The issue’s major foci will be on:
- Asian Pacific American Religious Histories and Communities, in particular those affected by post-9/11 racializing practices, e.g. Sikhs, Hindus, Muslims, etc.
- Lived Religion in the Asian Pacific American Experience
- Asian Pacific American Religious Communities and Social Justice
- Race and Sacred Spaces
- Interracial-Interreligious Intersections, i.e. Relationships between Asian Pacific American Religious Communities and other religious communities of color (i.e. Black/Chicano-Latino/Native American-Indigenous, etc.)
To submit, please send a 400-word abstract, along with a short biographical note, to Dr. Khyati Joshi, Dr. Sylvia Chan-Malik, and Dr. Arnold Pan at the addresses below by January 10, 2013. If selected for publication, final pieces will range from 3000-5000 words.
Submission Guidelines:
The editorial procedure involves a three-step process. The guest editors, in consultation with the Amerasia Journal editors and peer reviewers, make decisions on the final essays:
1. Approval of abstracts
2. Submission of papers solicited from accepted abstracts
3. Revision of accepted peer-reviewed papers and final submission
Please send correspondence regarding the special issue on religion and Asian American Studies to the following addresses. All correspondence should refer to “Amerasia Journal Religion Issue” in the subject line.
Professor Khyati Joshi: khyati@fdu.edu
Professor Sylvia Chan-Malik: s.chanmalik@rutgers.edu
Arnold Pan, Associate Editor, Amerasia Journal: arnoldpan@ucla.edu
By Center Press, on November 14th, 2012 For all of those who have been supporters of Amerasia Journal and the Asian American Studies Center for a long time, you know how invaluable the work and advocacy of Professor Emeritus Alexander Saxton was to Asian American Studies, especially here at UCLA.
This Friday, we hope you can join us and the History Department to remember and celebrate the memory of Alexander Saxton, who served on the Editorial Board of Amerasia Journal and as the former Acting Director and longtime Faculty Advisory Committee Chair of the AASC.
The event starts at 3pm and will take place in the UCLA Faculty Center. If you have any questions about the event, you can get more information by calling 310.825.4465 or emailing zoe@history.ucla.edu.
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Email Us! arnoldpan at ucla.edu
The UCLA Asian American Studies Center and Press
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