Event Title: Uprooting and Seeding: Intergenerational Experiences of Living as Asians and Asian-Americans
Join us for a discussion of Minari and Asian American representation!
Dear AAAFSC Members, Allies, and Students:
Please join us on May 3 from 4-5pm, for our final AAAFSC event of the semester; while we will be closing out the semester, we’ll also be celebrating the beginning of AAPI heritage month.
At this event, we’ll be discussing representations of Asian Americans in popular culture, with a particular focus on the recent, award-winning film, Minari. Minari is currently streaming on a variety of platforms. However, if you are unable to watch the film before the event, please consider joining us anyway.
We are hoping to close out this semester by creating a space for an open, free-flowing discussion. We want this meeting to be a space that will allow us to reflect on our ethnic heritage and racial identity as a way to reclaim our strength and resilience and to resist systems of oppression and hate. We also hope to share with each other the complexities of Asian American lives and our day-to-day experiences.
While allies are warmly welcomed to this event, we ask that if you choose to attend, you are mindful of taking a step back and making space for our Asian and Asian American members to discuss and share their experiences first.
We hope to see you there!
Many thanks,
The AAAFSC board: Tamara Bhalla (chair), Aditya Desai (member at large), Soonhee Lee (member at large), Shuyan Sun, (member at large),Christopher Tong (member at large), Fan Yang (secretary)
p.s. There is no required reading or even viewing for the event, but here are a few articles that might be helpful to situating our discussion:
‘Minari’ wins best foreign-language film, but not without controversy. The New York Times, Feb 28, 2021 by Maya Salam and Robert Ito
‘Minari’ is about immigrants who speak Korean. That doesn’t make it ‘foreign.’ Viet Thanh Nguyen, Dec 24, 2020
My “Minari”: On Asian American Immigrant Cinema, LA Review of Books, February 10, 2021 by Hanna Amaris Roh
ONLINE MEETING INFO:
Join us for a discussion of Minari and Asian American representation! Hosted by Tamara Bhalla https://umbc.webex.com/umbc/j.php?MTID=m388f28dae1487b4b8ce67632b9cffbae Monday, May 3, 2021 4:00 pm | 1 hour | (UTC-04:00) Eastern Time (US & Canada) Meeting number: 120 311 5132 Password: MpK6jZMgq22 Join by video system Dial 1203115132@umbc.webex.com You can also dial 173.243.2.68 and enter your meeting number. Join by phone +1-202-860-2110 United States Toll (Washington D.C.) Access code: 120 311 5132
Decriminalizing (and Re-Humanizing) the ‘Squeegee Kid’
Sydney Fryer
Mentor: Dena Aufseeser, Geography and Environmental Systems
Squeegee Kids are young people between the ages of 10-25 that clean windshields in Baltimore city for a small fee. Their informal but infamous work has been seen as entrepreneurial, hazardous, or criminal over the years. This project uses discourse analysis to analyze and understand the dangerous rhetoric often used to describe these young people and the historical racism that has led to this rhetoric. It also seeks to allow these young people a chance to redefine themselves through a series of interviews. This is all in the hope that, through a more humanizing approach to understanding these ‘Squeegee Kids’, their work, and the reason for it, there can be a more humane discussion around their place in Baltimore city.
This work was funded, in part, through an Undergraduate Research Award from the UMBC Division of Undergraduate Academic Affairs.
https://umbc.voicethread.com/myvoice/thread/17403608
Visit URCAD now through Sunday:
URCAD.umbc.edu
]]>“Flexing” Anything But Muscles: An Analysis Of Social Media Trends And Conspicuous Consumption
Fatimah Shaalan
Mentor: Liz Stanwyck, Mathematics and Statistics
In this era, there is an ever-growing importance for both consumers and brands to understand social media’s influence on conspicuous consumption. Conspicuous consumption often comes in the form of purchasing luxury goods to elevate social-class status or represent a social identity. Today’s internet-users are constantly being bombarded with advertisements. Internet trends pertaining to products and brands often serve as unintentional advertisements driven by consumers. Such advertisements are likely to increase conspicuous consumption. I discuss previous research to better understand how users perceive online advertisements and how brands approach online advertising. These formal online advertisements tend to occur from “social media influencers” or directly on websites. Then I discuss results of a regression analysis of the influence of popular culture on randomly selected companies from Twitter “trending topics”.
URCAD.umbc.edu
Now through Sunday!
]]>How are power dynamics and the safety of actors navigated in a healthy way when performing intimate scenes? Caitlyn Hooper analyzes the impact of intimacy direction in theater and its impact on power dynamics. The 22nd volume of the UMBC Review: Journal of Undergraduate Research premieres today! Download your electronic copy here:
https://ur.umbc.edu/umbc-review/
And be sure to check out Caitlyn's URCAD presentation on this topic, now through Sunday, April 25th: URCAD.umbc.edu
]]>We were struck by the powerful message that I3B, our campus friends and partners, shared earlier this week. In the wake of yesterday’s verdict of accountability coupled by yet another incident of police brutality that took the life of a young Black girl, we sit with the sanctity of I3B’s invitation to take ”a moment to pause and breathe.”
We affirm I3B’s intentions and will not be offering a community healing space at this time, but will support their efforts to be available to UMBC community members needing spaces to connect with others. Many of our community members may be feeling a wide range of emotions with yesterday’s verdict. The burden and impacts of racial trauma from police brutality and white supremacy have deep roots that cannot be healed in the case of one verdict. With this in our heart and mind, Women’s Center professional staff are holding open office care and support hours next week. Community members are always invited to reach out to us to set up meetings to connect outside of these designated times by emailing womenscenter@umbc.edu or calling 410-455-2714. Additionally, we invite self-identified Women of Color to join us at the upcoming Women of Color Collective meetingthis Friday at 1:30pm.
Open Office Care and Support Hours:
Jess: Friday, April 23rd, 11am-12pm at https://umbc.webex.com/meet/jessm
Amelia: Wednesday, April 28th, 11am-2pm https://umbc.webex.com/meet/meman1
Bri: Thursday, April 29th, 12-2:pm at meet.google.com/wga-pjuf-act
A verdict was reached. We pause. We breathe. And, our work continues. We must continue to actively call out, disrupt and change the ways racism and oppression shows up in our spaces and communities to include our campus. During this time, we invite aspiring allies (including ourselves) to recommit to practices of anti-racism and disrupting anti-Blackness. We’re re-sharing the blog post (Learning to be anti-racist: Calling IN white people and non-Black people of color) that our assistant director, Amelia, wrote last summer as a reminder and call to action to our white community members as well as non-Black people of color. We’re also re-sharing our Black Lives Matter Endlessly post from last summer as a reminder to stay present to the power of truth-telling. We must turn towards the radical truth of our privileges and our complicity and our responsibility.
There is work yet to be done and we commit, as ever, to being in it with you.
With Solidarity and Hope,
The Women’s Center staff
To access I3B’s full message, visit their myUMBC page.
By Tom Penniston, original post here.
UMBC has been particularly well positioned throughout this time, supporting both Blackboard Collaborate Ultra and WebEx as synchronous platforms. But with this wealth of opportunity, one is at times left wondering what platform to adopt and for what use cases. The response to these concerns require some nuance: It depends on what one is attempting to undertake and how much time one is willing to spend preparing their learning spaces to promote learner interactions.
Professor Jamie Gurganus, the undergraduate program coordinator and faculty member, Director for the Center for Integrated Research, Teaching and Learning (CIRTL), as well as Associate Director of Engineering Education Initiatives at COEIT, has been using WebEx as her platform of choice for teaching her mechanical engineering students, or “Mechies.” She’s developed an exceptionally well thought out approach to incorporate live instruction, lab participation, and peer-to-peer group learning.https://umbc.webex.com/umbc/j.php?MTID=m257179aef1261f8debe3c7c9909ef97a
Wednesday, Apr 21, 2021
12:00 pm | 1 hour | (UTC-04:00) Eastern Time (US & Canada)
Meeting number: 120 790 6323
Password: URCAD2021
You can see Klaudine's keynote here:
https://urcad.umbc.edu/guest-speaker-klaudine-wakasa/
Read Klaudine's bio here:
https://urcad.umbc.edu/speaker/
URCAD.umbc.edu
’08 B.S. Financial Economics, Minor: Gender and Women's Studies, UMBC
’10 M.Sc. Gender Development and Globalisation, London School of Economics
Klaudine is a Strategy Advisor who has spent her professional career working with government, multilateral/bilateral organisations, and private sectors across the African continent – first as an Advisor within KPMG’s International Development Advisory Service; later as a Strategy Consultant with Dalberg Global Development Advisors; and currently as the Regional lead for the Government of Canada’s effort to build Clean Technology ecosystems in Africa, and for the United Kingdom’s goal of mainstreaming a ‘Green Economy’ approach into its work in Africa.
Africa has an opportunity to lay solid foundations for future Green Economies. Klaudine’s interest is in understanding which approaches and interventions African countries can adopt. Her expertise has been best applied when working in roles that allow her to engage in mutually beneficial conversations between Africa and the world. Klaudine’s work has contributed to projects for organisations such as the African Development Bank, the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa, USAID, the MasterCard Foundation, The Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria and The Department for International Development (DFID), just to name a few.
At UMBC, Klaudine earned her undergraduate degree in Financial Economics with a minor in Gender and Women’s Studies, and a Certificate in Accounting (2008). She was a Judicial Board Justice, Resident Assistant, Classic Upward Bound Tutor/Counselor, UMBC Ambassador, Peer Tutor, Conversation Partner, a member of Omicron Delta Epsilon Honor Society, a member of the National Society of Collegiate Scholars, and an active member of the Africa Students Association. Klaudine credits UMBC for nurturing her diverse interest in interdisciplinary thinking and particularly her tutelage under Dr. Jodi Kelber-Kaye, which influenced her worldview, even to this day. In 2010, Klaudine completed her M.Sc. in Development and Globalisation at the London School of Economics, Gender Institute.