Spring 2021: AAST Open Class Series
This Spring, several AAST classes will be welcoming guest speakers into their classroom and selected AAST class sessions will be open to the UMD community. Below is a list of open classes.
Speaker: Ted Gong
Tuesday, February 23, 2021
1:00pm - 1:45pm
AAST201 Asian American History (Instructor: Dr. Terry Park)
Topic: "DC Chinatown: Past Views and Future Visions"— A talk about efforts to preserve Chinatown as a unique cultural destination.
Ted Gong is Executive Director of the 1882 Project Foundation and President of DC chapter of the Chinese American Citizens Alliance. Before retiring in 2012, Ted was a career diplomat in the U.S. Department of State where he served primarily in East Asia on policy and operational issues related to border management and security, migration and refugees, and consular affairs. He has degrees in History, Asian Studies, and National Strategic Studies form the University of California, University of Hawaii and the U.S. Army War College. Ted is also included in The Guardian‘s The Frederick Douglass 200, a list of two hundred people — abolitionists, diplomats, writers, feminists, and more — who best embody the spirit and work of Frederick Douglass.
Speaker: Duyen Trang
Thursday, February 25, 2021
3:30pm - 4:45pm
AAST394 Growing Up Asian American: The Asian Immigrant Family and the Second Generation (Instructor: Dr. Yeram Cheong)
Topic: Reciprocal Relationships Between Parenting and Child Adjustment in Asian American Households
*This event was originally scheduled for February 18, but has been rescheduled to February 25 due to the campus closure on 2/18. If you have previously registered, the Zoom meeting link will remain the same.
Duyen Trang is a fourth year student in the Developmental Psychology program at the University of California, Riverside. She completed her BA and MA from San Diego State University (SDSU). At SDSU, she studied sociocultural variables aiming to increase cultural competence in youth mental health services and reduce the unmet mental health need in ethnic minority families.
Duyen’s current interests focus on the salience of context as well as direct and interactive effects of different layers of context on children’s socioemotional and academic competence over time. She is also interested in the link between family relationships and parent-child (in)congruent reports of child adjustment outcomes.
Speaker: Agnes Varghese, M.A.
Thursday, March 4, 2021
3:30pm - 4:45pm
AAST394 Growing Up Asian American: The Asian Immigrant Family and the Second Generation (Instructor: Dr. Yeram Cheong)
Topic: From Science to Society: The Importance of Translating Research for a Broader Audience
Agnes Varghese, a fifth-year PhD Candidate in Developmental Psychology at the University of California, Riverside, seeks to translate science in an understandable manner to policymakers, content creators, and the general public. Currently, she serves as the Chair of External Affairs at the UCR Center for Science to Policy, a District Science Fellow in the Office of Assemblymember Eloise Reyes, and a Junior Fellow at the UCLA Center for Scholars and Storytellers. Agnes completed her undergraduate studies in psychology and broadcast journalism at the University of Maryland, College Park, and is excited to have the chance to speak to current students at the university. Go Terps!
Speaker: Darlene Kehaulani Butts
Tuesday, March 9, 2021
5:00pm - 7:30pm
AAST498Q Native Hawaiian Pacific Islander Studies (Instructor: Gem Daus)
Topic: Screening & discussion of Out of State, a film about two men who discovered their indigenous Hawaiian traditions in prison and now seek a fresh start as they complete their terms and return to Hawaii. Discussion with Darlene Kehaulani Butts, President, Ke Ali’i Maka’ainana Hawaiian Civic Club of WDC.
Aunty Kehau was born in Honolulu, and graduated from Leilehua High School. She completed a B.S degree in Economics at the University of Lowell, Lowell, MA and continued her Masters of Science studies at the University of Oklahoma and Johns Hopkins University. In 2002, she opened Makakoa Enterprises, Inc., a full-service catering enterprise specializing in Hawaiian cuisine. She is on the board of the Hawaiʻi State Society and the President of Ke Aliʻi Makaʻainana Hawaiian Civic Club of Washington, D.C. Kehau lives in Stafford, VA with her youngest daughter Desireé, her two moʻopuna, and Mr. Bailey, their 17-year-old chow.
Speaker: Grande Lum
Tuesday, April 5, 2021
5:00pm - 7:00pm
AAST498M Asian American Public Policy (Instructor: Phil Tajitsu Nash)
Topic: "Community Relations Service: Mediation and Public Policy"
Grande Lum is a Professor and Provost at Menlo College. Provost Lum enjoys writing, teaching, and working on issues that help people and communities work together in more constructive ways. Prior to joining Menlo, he was Director of the Divided Community Project (DCP) at the Ohio State University Moritz College of Law. Previously, Grande Lum was nominated by President Barack Obama and confirmed by the Senate in 2012 as the Director of the Community Relations Service (CRS), an agency within the Department of Justice. Before joining CRS, Grande Lum was a clinical professor at the University of California Hastings School of the Law, where he directed the Center for Negotiation and Dispute Resolution. He is the author of The Negotiation Fieldbook (McGraw-Hill 2nd Edition, 2010); Tear Down the Wall: Be Your Own Mediator in Conflict (Optimality, 2013); and the forthcoming Resolving Civil Rights Conflicts in the Community: The US Justice Department’s Community Relations Service (the University of Missouri, 2020. Co-authored with Bertram Levine).
Speaker: Keith Chow
Wednesday, April 14, 2021
6:45pm - 7:30pm
AAST498X Techno Orientalism (Instructor: Dr. Terry Park)
Topic: A special guest talk by Keith Chow of Nerds of Color, Shattered, and Secret Identities
Keith Chow is the editor-in-chief of the pop culture blog The Nerds of Color, a co-editor of the Asian American Comics Anthologies Secret Identities and Shattered, host of the podcasts Hard NOC Life, Southern Fried Asian, and DC TV Classics, and one of the founders of WICOMICON.
Speaker: Heejoo Park
Tuesday, April 20, 2021
3:30pm - 4:45pm
AAST394 Growing Up Asian American: The Asian Immigrant Family and the Second Generation (Instructor: Dr. Yeram Cheong)
Topic: We are not a virus: Racialized Contagion and Speculative Resistance in Ling Ma’s Severance.
Heejoo Park is a PhD candidate in English at the University of California – Riverside. She is currently working on her dissertation, which examines contemporary works of speculative fiction by Asian American and Latinx writers that complicate and expand our understandings of migration and migrant subjectivities.
Speaker: Filipinos for Guåhan
Tuesday, April 20, 2021
6:00pm - 7:30pm EST / 3:00pm - 4:30pm PDT
Wed, April 21, 8:00am - 9:30am CHST
AAST498Q Native Hawaiian Pacific Islander Studies (Instructor: Gem Daus)
Topic: Filipino solidarity work in Guåhan: How the movement came to be, and why it is critical for Filipinos in Guåhan to support our Chamoru brothers and sisters.
Speakers:
Tabitha Espina, Eastern Oregon University
Kristin Oberiano, Harvard University
Ruzelle Almonds, Guåhan-based Filmmaker
Tressa Diaz, University of Guam
Jamela Santos, clinical social worker
Filipinos for Guåhan is comprised of members who call Guåhan home, and who have ancestral roots in the Philippines. Filipinos for Guåhan stands in solidarity with the CHamoru people to nurture and safeguard Guåhan’s lands, air, oceans, and her people. We collaborate with Filipinos across Oceania and the Pacific who are dedicated to decolonization and justice for Indigenous peoples globally.
Speaker: Emily Chun
Wednesday, April 21, 2021
6:45pm - 7:30pm
AAST498X Techno Orientalism (Instructor: Dr. Terry Park)
Topic: Olfactory Otherness: Techno-Orientalist Embodiment in Installation Art Practices
Emily Chun recently completed her Master's in art history at Tufts, where she focused on the aesthetics of technologized embodiment in time-based installation art, drawing on various frameworks such as techno-Orientalism and biopolitics. She was involved in various curatorial projects at the Tufts University Art Galleries and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, and is currently based in NYC, working at an auction house and writing art reviews.