The first monologue Daniel Dae Kim ever performed was by David Henry Hwang.He had to do one for his college summer program at the National Theater Institute in Connecticut. Kim chose a scene from “FOB,” Hwang’s play about the assimilation struggles of a Chinese American. So, it’s fitting that 35 years later Hwang — the first Asian American to win the Tony Award for best play — would be the one to bring Kim into the Tony spotlight.For a long time, Hwang felt the only way to get a play with Asian characters made was to set it… read more about Esther Kim Lee on Bringing Asian Americans Into the Theater »
Eight faculty in Duke University’s Trinity College of Arts & Sciences have been honored with named professorships, effective July 1.These endowed positions recognize leadership and commitment to excellence in scholarship and research. Their recipients are outstanding teachers, mentors and researchers whose contributions are invaluable to the College of Arts & Sciences, as well as their students and colleagues.“Trinity is defined by the strength of its faculty, and we are extraordinarily fortunate to count these… read more about Eight Trinity College of Arts & Sciences Faculty Honored With Named Professorships »
How can we learn to heal from systemic violence in ways that are not suppressive, but expressive? This is the fundamental question that Lenora Lee posed in her talk titled Stories in Motion: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Dance Making on February 28 in the Pink Parlor in the East Duke building. Professor Jingqui Guan, Assistant Professor of the Practice of Dance invited Lee, the Artistic Director of Lenora Lee Dance, to discuss how she combines dance, history, and community as an artist.In her talk, Lee… read more about Stories in Motion: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Dance Making »
Congratulations to Susan Thananopavarn, Lecturing Fellow of Thompson Writing Program and a core faculty member for Duke's program in Asian American and Diaspora Studies, for winning the Circle for Asian American Literature Studies’ 2023-2024 Academic Essay Prize. The CAALS Essay Prize was established in 2013 as an annual award to recognize the best paper on Asian American literature and culture presented at a CAALS-sponsored conference or panel. Since then, the award has expanded to encompass essays presented by… read more about Susan Thananopavarn Awarded Circle for Asian American Literature Studies’ 2023-2024 Academic Essay Prize »
Duke’s 2024 Asian American Diaspora Program Fall Symposium, held on October 26th, was centered around the theme “Feeling Asian America,” delving into the pain, pleasure, joy, guilt and rage which create what we understand as “Asian America.” Spanning talks, discussions, a workshop and a drag show, the symposium interrogated the quotidian and the structural fabric of racialized contemporaries.David Eng, who is the Richard L. Fisher Professor of English and Faculty Director of the Program in Asian American Studies… read more about Feeling Asian American, From Netflix to Drag »
This election year, there have been a lot of conversations in Asian American circles that begin and end with representation. They seem, as Dr. Jessica Namakkal pointed out, a diversion from the massive destruction being wrought on a global scale right now. Her AADS brown bag talk on October 4th, “Red, White, Blue, and Brown?: South Asian America Beyond Electoral Politics,” provided some touchstones for thinking about the ‘politics of diaspora’ within configurations of historical and contemporary state violence. Dr.… read more about Red, White, Blue, and Brown? South Asian America Beyond Electoral Politics »
It’s been almost 140 years since October 22, 1884, when an 8-year-old named Mamie Tape walked to her first day of school at Spring Valley Elementary, one of the best public schools in California, in one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in San Francisco. The night before, Mamie’s father, Joseph Tape, had tried to enroll her at Spring Valley, but his petition was denied by the San Francisco school board. The board insisted that Mamie – and “Mongolian child[ren]” like her – didn’t have the right to go to school because their… read more about Born or Naturalized in the USA: Citizenship in the Period of Chinese Exclusion »
Anna Storti, assistant professor of Gender, Sexuality & Feminist Studies recently published "Racist Intimacies; or, The Femme Alter Ego and Her Retribution" through Duke University Press. Cultural depictions of Asian/white miscegenation have long been a source of fascination for scholars within Asian American and sexuality studies. Such a long-standing interest has not only provided key insights into the Orientalist structure of racialized sexuality, but it has also kept our sights set, perhaps too set, on… read more about New Article from Anna Storti Researches Racist Intimacies »
The Institute for Citizens & Scholars has named 20 new Career Enhancement Fellows for the 2024–25 academic year, including Assistant Professor of Gender, Sexuality & Feminist Studies Anna Storti and Assistant Professor of Music Sophia Enriquez.The Career Enhancement Fellowship, funded by the Mellon Foundation and administered by Citizens & Scholars, seeks to increase the presence of outstanding junior faculty committed to campus diversity and innovative research in the humanities and humanistic social sciences.… read more about Two Trinity Faculty Named 2024 Career Enhancement Fellows »
On April 11th, 2024, David Eng presented a talk titled “Racial Rage, Racial Guilt: The Uses of Anger in Asian America” at Duke University. David Eng is the Richard L. Fisher Professor of English and the Faculty Director of the Program in Asian American Studies at University of Pennsylvania. By examining the Netflix-series Beef, Eng boldly asked the audience to consider emotions (anger, ego, resentment, etc) as part of an Asian American structural position and itself as the energy necessary for social change.… read more about Racial Rage, Racial Guilt: The Uses of Anger in Asian America »
In the Spring of 2024, the Asian American Diaspora Studies (AADS) program finally acquired a permanent space in Friedl 120 as part of the larger goal to institutionalize and strengthen AADS at Duke. Esther Lee, the current Director of AADS and a Frances Hill Fox Professor of Theater Studies, spearheaded the effort. The process for securing a permanent space for AADS has been “long and challenging,” Dr. Lee remarked in an interview. One issue was the confusion around AADS’s mission. Initially AADS was in… read more about AADS Reaches a Key Milestone with a Permanent Home for the Program »
Mejdulene B. Shomali is a Queer Palestinian poet and Associate Professor in Gender, Women’s and Sexuality Studies at the University of Maryland in Baltimore County. As part of the last installment of the Spring AADS Speaker Series on March 1, 2024, Shomali presented “Sahq: Queer Femme Futures.” Named after the last chapter of her recently published 2023 book, Between Banat, “Sahq: Queer Femme Futures,” seeks to study literature, film and art by and for Arab women to locate queer Arab women and imagine… read more about Sahq: Queer Femme Futures »
Chris Suh is an Assistant Professor of History at Emory University and drew from his recent book, The Allure of Empire: American Encounters with Asians in the Age of Transpacific Expansion and Exclusion (Oxford University Press, 2023), during his talk for the Spring 2024 AADS Speaker Series on February 23. Suh began by asking to reconsider the way the United States government chose to exclude different Asian immigrants beyond the conventional understanding of exclusion laws being implemented based on the… read more about The Allure of Empire: American Encounters with Asians in the Age of Transpacific Expansion and Exclusion »
Vivian Huang is an Assistant Professor of Communication Studies at San Francisco State University, specializing in race and performance studies. Their work has been recognized by the Mellon Emerging Faculty Leaders Award, the Hellman Foundation, and the Association of Asian American Studies. On Feb 16, Huang began the second installment of the AADS Speaker Series, a series that brings attention to new directions in Asian American Studies. Huang presented a talk titled “Inscrutability of Sociality and Queer… read more about The Inscrutability of Sociality and Queer Forms of Asian American Inscrutability »
Moon-Ho Jung, Ph.D. is a Professor of History and the Harry Bridges Endowed Chair in Labor Studies at the University of Washington. In 2022, he published Menace to Empire which seeks to reconsider Asians within the American nation-state. On February 2nd, as part of the AADS speaker series which elevates critical scholars in Asian American Studies in invited talks, Jung came to East Campus to pose an intervention to the studies as a whole, and largely, to the racialization of Asian/Americans. In this… read more about Why Asian American Studies Needs To Be a Menace to the Empire: Dr. Moon-Ho Jung Challenges American Liberal Democracy »
The course of Esther Kim Lee’s scholarship was set by a book that didn’t exist. When she accepted the 2023 Distinguished Scholar Award from the American Society for Theatre Research (ASTR) on November 11, Duke's Frances Hill Fox Professor of Theater Studies, International Comparative Studies and History recounted an experience from her days as a graduate student at The Ohio State University in the 1990s. While working on her dissertation, Lee searched the library for books about the history of Asian American theater. To… read more about Esther Kim Lee Wins American Society for Theatre Research’s Distinguished Scholar Award »
Asian Americans, Takeo Rivera posits, cannot escape the model minority figure. Rivera puts forth two pathways through which Asian/American people define their relationship to model minority – and, by extension, form the contours of an uneasy racial identity. The first group he outlines is characterized by a pleasurable attachment to the model minority positionality, embracing the stereotype and rising through U.S. capitalist hierarchies into American-Dream-esque success. The second group takes a stance of self-punishing… read more about Model Minority Masochism: Guest Speaker on the Inescapable Model Minority Figure »
Over a year ago, Naoko Shibusawa, associate professor of History and American Studies at Brown University, published an article entitled “Where is the Reciprocity? Notes on Solidarity from the Field” in the Journal of Asian American Studies. The article put forth a call for racial solidarity across academic disciplines and insisted upon the centrality of Asian American Studies (or even Asian America more broadly) to a full understanding of the United States. Shibusawa drew upon scholarship, anecdotes, and analysis of… read more about Guest Talk Challenges the Entanglement of Deference Politics, White Liberalism and Racialized Power Dynamics in Academia »
The American Studies Association — the oldest and largest scholarly association devoted to the interdisciplinary study of U.S. cultures and histories — announced the recipients of their 2023 awards and prizes. Postdoctoral Associate in Asian American and Diaspora Studies Athia Choudhury received an honorable mention for her dissertation “Gut Cultures: Fat Matter(s) in Genealogies of Health, Nation, and Empire.” In the dissertation, Choudhury conceptualizes the emergence of “health” as a vital dimension to U.S. and Third… read more about Athia Choudhury Receives Honorable Mention From the American Studies Association »
The Medical Humanities and Asian American Studies symposium on September 22, 2023 highlighted a growing field picking at the ways that Asian/American bodies and ideologies are bound up with medical spaces, health, and well-being more generally. It began with a panel, chaired by Emily Rogers (Duke), entitled “Toxicity, Militarism, and Diaspora.” Rachel Lee (UCLA), Cynthia Wu (Indiana U), and Thuy Linh Nguyen Tu (NYU) gave brief talks about the entanglements between war, chemical toxins, and Asian bodies. Lee uses oral… read more about Symposium Highlights Growing Research into Asian American Well-Being »
This past summer, the Supreme Court ruled that affirmative action violates the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment, catalyzing a broad spectrum of conversations about the role that race plays (or should play) in college admissions. Dr. Cheung-Miaw’s brown bag talk last week, entitled “Asian Americans and Affirmative Action: An Activist History,” took on Jameson’s maxim to “always historicize!” pushing against conversations positing affirmative action in a vacuum and gesturing at the complex role that Asian/… read more about Brown Bag Talk on Affirmative Action Addresses Complex Role of Asian American Students »
Happy 5th Anniversary to AADS!! Welcome to the academic year 2023-24, a significant milestone for AADS as we proudly commemorate our 5-year journey as a program. Back in 2018, the inception of AADS was a response to decades of impassioned student activism and resounding calls for the inclusion of Asian American Studies at Duke. This remarkable journey has been made possible by the community of unwavering support, brought together by the collective efforts of students, faculty, staff, and alumni. I am profoundly grateful to… read more about A Letter from the Director: Fall 2023 »
Note: This statement does not reflect admission practices at Duke and draws largely from Prof. Calvin Cheung-Miaw’s research on the history of Asian American Studies. The faculty of the Asian American and Diaspora Studies program disagrees with the recent Supreme Court decision regarding affirmative action. Based on our scholarship and our experience as educators, we unequivocally support race-conscious admissions and believe that affirmative action is an important tool in remedying racial… read more about Statement on Affirmative Action »
