Ethnicity, Race, and Migration Seminar
This seminar brings together faculty, staff, and students at Boston College to kick start and sustain a campus-wide discussion on the study of ethnicity, race, and migration. We will be hosting two forums, one in the fall and one in the spring, to hear directly from students about their experiences on campus. We will also be meeting with experts from other schools to listen to how they organize academic discussions about this subject. The seminar culminates in a March public event.
There are many important ongoing efforts on campus to promote the study of ethnicity, race, and migration, which the seminar seeks to promote and build upon. These include the work being done in the African and African Diaspora Studies program, the development of 鈥淓ngaging Difference and Justice鈥� and 鈥淒ifference, Justice, and the Common Good鈥� courses encouraged by the University Core Renewal Committee, Courageous Conversations, the Forum on Racial Justice in America, and changes to the curriculum and hiring priorities in various departments (such as English, which has recently instituted a new requirement for the major labeled Race, Blackness, and Language).
Despite these efforts, no classes that focus exclusively on Indigenous issues are taught at 香蕉秀 and public events on campus that feature these issues are few and far between; while there is a Latin American Studies program that offers courses on the experiences of people and communities of Latin American ancestry in the United States, no program exists that guarantees such courses are taught and promoted; and the Asian American Studies program remains poorly resourced and mostly visible only when sensational events force Asian Americans into the headlines (and is often confused with the Asian Studies program). 香蕉秀 also lacks an interdisciplinary hub that can enable those interested in these areas to engage with each other, to build and maintain a sense of community, and to give students who want to be a part of such an intellectual community a place to go.
There is also a national and international context we cannot ignore. One immediate occasion for this seminar is the March 16, 2021 shooting of mostly Korean women in the Atlanta area, which we understand as part of an ongoing wave of anti-Asian violence that rose to its current heights with the start of the pandemic. Concern about such violence joins the urgent need to address patterns of police violence against people of color (and especially against African Americans and Indigenous peoples), mass incarceration and its racialized nature, the mistreatment of undocumented immigrants and asylum seekers, the banning of books and the restriction of intellectual freedom around issues of race in K-12 education鈥攁nd beyond鈥攊n many states, the violent suppression of Indigenous environmental movements across the Americas (including Idle No More in Canada and No DAPL in the US), and the environmental crises related to climate change that are most destructive of poor and nonwhite communities.
We feel that events like these call for a response from institutions of higher education, which must give students every possible opportunity to reflect on a global history of race-making, and of the ways in which this history shapes so many facets of our shared present, if the education they offer is to remain relevant to a life lived as men and women for others. The seminar seeks to model a reflective and discerning approach to topics of urgent importance to the school that is fitting for a Jesuit university and its commitment to the study of our humanity.
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Tuesday, October 25 | 6 PM | Murray Function Room at Yawkey | Light refreshments will be served.
Students are invited to share their experiences at 香蕉秀 with faculty and staff. Where have they encountered discussions about ethnicity, race, migration at 香蕉秀? How impactful have these discussions been? What opportunities to discuss these topics do you wish you had more of?
We will be meeting at several round tables, and everyone will be asked to move between them in timed intervals so that we can speak in small groups. This will allow us to hear from as many students as possible.
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Wednesday, 听November 30, 3:30-5:00 PM | Online via Zoom
This is an invitation-only event for members of the seminar as well as some student representatives to engage in a conversation with experts from other institutions about the work they are doing in their schools around topics of ethnicity, race, and migration. The two guests for this meeting are Esther Kim Lee and Steve Pitti.
Professor Kim Lee
听is the director of the Asian American and Diaspora Studies Program at Duke, as well as Professor in Theater Studies and International Comparatives Studies. She specializes in theatre history and dramatic criticism. She teaches and writes about Asian American theatre, Korean diaspora theatre, interculturalism, and globalization and theatre. She is the author of听A History of Asian American Theatre听(Cambridge University Press, 2006), which received the 2007 Award for Outstanding Book given by Association for Theatre in Higher Education, and听The Theatre of David Henry Hwang听(Bloomsbury Methuen Drama, 2015). She is the editor of听Seven Contemporary Plays from the Korean Diaspora in the Americas听(Duke University Press, 2012). From 2013 to 2014, she was the Chief Editor of听Theatre Survey, the flagship journal of the American Society for Theatre Research (ASTR), and served as ASTR鈥檚 Vice President for Publications from 2017 to 2019. Her new book,听Made-Up Asians: Yellowface During the Exclusion Era听is forthcoming from University of Michigan Press in summer 2022. She has also just published with Bloomsbury a four-volume collection,听Modern and Contemporary World Drama: Critical and Primary Sources, which challenges the prevailing Eurocentric reading of modern drama.
Professor Steve Pitti
听is the director of the Center for the Study of Race, Indigeneity and Transnational Migration at Yale, as well as Professor of English, American Studies, and Ethnicity, Race, and Migration. He is the author of听The Devil in Silicon Valley: Race, Mexican Americans, and Northern California听(2003),听American Latinos and the Making of the United States听(2012), and articles on Latinx history and historiography. He has provided expert reports on the history of racial animus for federal civil rights cases, and he is currently writing a book entitled听The World of C茅sar Ch谩vez. Appointed a Distinguished Lecturer by the Organization of American Historians and a Visiting Senior Fellow at the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, he has delivered the Am茅rico Paredes Distinguished Lecture at the University of Texas and keynoted the Latinos/as in Historic Preservation National Conference. He co-edits the 鈥淧olitics and Culture in Modern America鈥� series for the University of Pennsylvania Press and serves on the editorial board for the journal California History. At Yale he has organized or co-organized conferences and academic gatherings focusing on Mexican Music and Social Justice; Racism and the Radical Right in Europe and the United States; Japanese American Wartime Incarceration; and New Directions in Ethnic Studies.
The seminar is especially interested in the development of numerous programs and departments around the country that have sought to bring people from different ethnicities and races into conversation with each other.
If you are a 香蕉秀 student and interested in joining this meeting, please email Min Hyoung Song (songm@bc.edu).
Wednesday, May 3, 3:30-5:00 PM |听McGuinn 521
This is an invitation-only event to engage in a conversation with program directors from Boston-area schools. The two guests are Lorelle Semley and Denise Khor.
Lorelle Semley
is a member of the Africana Studies Program and History Department at Holy Cross, and will take on the role of director of the African and African Diaspora Studies Program at Boston College in the fall of 2023.听 She teaches over 4,000 years of African history from ancient Egypt to the latest news. By necessity, her courses are interdisciplinary, incorporating archaeology, anthropology, literature, film, and even You Tube videos. Her own research on modern West Africa, French imperialism, gender, and the Atlantic world also draws upon diverse source materials, far-flung archives, and multiple theoretical frameworks.
Denise Khor听
听is the associate director of the Asian American Studies Program at Northeastern University. She is a media historian working on early cinema history, film preservation, and Asian American film and media culture. She is the author of Transpacific Convergences: Race, Migration and Japanese American Film Culture before World War II (University of North Carolina Press, 2022), which explores the historical experiences of Japanese Americans at the cinema and traces an alternative network of film production, circulation, and exhibition.听
The seminar is especially interested in the development of numerous programs and departments around the country and in the Boston Area that have sought to bring people from different ethnicities and races into conversation with each other.
If you are a 香蕉秀 student and interested in joining this meeting, please email Min Hyoung Song (songm@bc.edu).
Min Hyoung Song
Min Hyoung Song is the Chair of the English Department and directs the Asian American Studies Program. He recently published the book听Climat Lyricism. His second book听The Children of 1965: On Writing, and Not Writing, as an Asian American听won the Association for Asian American Studies (AAAS) Prize in Literary Criticism, the Alpha Sigma Nu Award in Literature and Fine Arts, and was named Honorable Mention for the Association for the Study of the Arts in the Present (ASAP) Book Prize. In addition to publications in edited volumes and academic journals, his writings have also appeared online in the Los Angeles Review of Books, the Washington Post, the Chronicle of Higher Education, the Margins, and several other outlets.
Lynne Anderson
Lynne Christy Anderson is the Director of English Language Learning. Trained in Applied Linguistics, she teaches writing, literature, and oral language production courses to undergraduate and graduate students at 香蕉秀. The author of听Breaking Bread: Recipes and Stories from Immigrant Kitchens, Lynne is interested in the intersection between language, culture, identity, and food. She teaches narrative non-fiction writing workshops on the topic of food and culture, including a course abroad in Paris each spring for 香蕉秀鈥檚 Office of International Programs. Lynne is interested in the role of creative writing in the composition process of second language learners. Prior to teaching at the college level, she worked with immigrant communities and taught adult ESOL in the Boston Public Schools. She also developed cross-cultural food studies programs in Massachusetts and Rhode Island and worked in collaboration with Whole Foods Market in a program serving low-income Boston public middle school students.
Tara Pisani Gareau
Tara Pisani Gareau directs the Environmental Studies Program. Her research aims to apply ecological principles to restore ecological function and resiliency to agricultural landscapes, while minimizing environmental externalities. She is interested in understanding how farming systems can be more sustainable in light of climate change. Her areas of interest are in conservation biological control, arthropod community diversity, wild bee pollination services, and interactions between climate and agriculture. Her research projects include examining the effect of native plant hedgerows on biological control services in California, investigating the effects of tillage and cover crops on epigeal arthropod communities in Pennsylvania forage and feed systems, studying dragonflies and damselflies for their potential to regulate pest populations in the cranberry bog system, and assessing the impact of climate change on the sustainability of cranberry bogs in Massachusetts.
Christina Klein
Christina Klein directs the American Studies Program and Literature Core, and is a professor in the English Department. Her research focuses on Korean cinema and on America鈥檚 cultural encounters with Asia during the Cold War. She earned her B.A. in Film Studies from Wesleyan and her Ph.D. in American Studies from Yale. She teaches courses in American Studies methodology, Korean and contemporary Asian cinemas, Hollywood cinema, and American literature. She is the Director of the American Studies Program, Director of the Literature Core Program, and member of the Asian Studies Program steering committee. She is also a research associate at Harvard's Institute of Korean Studies.
Arissa Oh
Arissa Oh is a member of the Asian American Studies program and an associate professor in the History Department. Her current project examines the history of marriage migration and immigration fraud since the late 19th century. Her research and teaching interests include immigration, race, gender, and family in U.S. history, and transnational Asian-American history.
Prasannan Parthasarathi
Professor Parthasarathi is the Chair of the History Department. He joined the faculty in the fall of 1998. He teaches courses on modern South Asia, global history, and environmental history. He is now engaged in a study of environmental change, agriculture, and labor in nineteenth-century South India. His research has been supported by fellowships from the Dibner Institute, the American Council for Learned Societies, and the Radcliffe Institute. He serves on the editorial boards of a number of journals, among them International Labor and Working Class History, Textile History, and the Medieval History Journal. In 2020, he co-curated 鈥淚ndian Ocean Current: Six Artistic Narratives鈥� at the McMullen Museum of Art at Boston College.
Martin Summers
Martin Summers is the Director of the African and African Diaspora Studies Program and a professor in the History Department. He is a cultural historian of the nineteenth- and twentieth-century U.S., with particular research and teaching interests in race, gender, sexuality, and medicine. He regularly teaches courses on post-1865 US and African American history; gender and sexuality in African-American history; and medicine and public health in the African diaspora.
Wan Tang
Wan Sonya Tang is a member of the Asian American Studies Program and an Assistant Professor in the Department of Romance Languages and Literature. She coedited the volume听Televising Restoration Spain: History and Fiction in Twenty-First-Century Costume Dramas听(Palgrave Macmillan, 2018). More information about this project can听be found in the "香蕉秀 Faculty Publications Highlights" interview about Televising Restoration Spain.
Anthony Tran
Tony Tran is a member of the Asian American Studies Program, and is an Assistant Professor in the Communication Department. His teaching and research interests include global and transnational communication, Vietnamese diasporic cultures and identities (specifically Vietnamese Canadians in Vancouver), and digital technologies.听 He has authored and co-authored articles and book chapters on topics such as informal media distribution networks, Vietnamese American film directors operating in Vietnam, and applications of digital humanities techniques on Asian American pop culture.