Faculty Awardees
Maggie (Mei Ki) Chan, Education, “Bridging Within: Cultural Socialization and Cross-Ethnic Friendships Among Asian American Adolescents to Improve School Practices”
Cross-group friendships benefit minoritized adolescents’ adjustment and positive intergroup attitudes, but adolescents tend to prefer same-race friendships more. For Asian American adolescents, “cross-group” can mean either cross-ethnic within-race (e.g., Chinese–Japanese) or cross-race (e.g., Chinese–White) friendships, and the perceived boundaries between in- and out-groups are especially complex in this diverse community. Little is known about how these different types of friendships develop among Asian American adolescents and how cultural socialization influences their formation, quality, and maintenance. Using a mixed-methods approach, this study will examine Asian American middle schoolers’ friendship networks and processes, focusing on how cross-ethnic and cross-race friendships emerge and persist, the cultural socialization that occurs within them, and how each relates to adjustment, well-being, and intergroup attitudes. The study will survey students about their friendship network composition and quality, the frequency and content of cultural socialization within same-ethnic, cross-ethnic, and cross-race friendships, experiences of discrimination, and behavioral and socioemotional outcomes. A subsample will participate in individual interviews to contextualize quantitative patterns. Findings will identify the contexts and practices that effectively promote cross-group friendships among Asian American adolescents and support healthier adjustment and more inclusive school environments. (Funding provided by AAPI Data Project.)
Julian Chun-Chung Chow and Khatharya Um, Social Welfare, “A Holistic Multigenerational Homecare and Cooperative Education Curriculum Development for Asian American and Pacific Islander Older Adults and Families”
This project addresses the pressing challenges faced by two vulnerable segments of the Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) communities in California: older adults and immigrant homecare workers. With AAPI individuals aged 65 and older being one of the fastest growing demographics, the need for culturally responsive homecare services is imperative, especially as many live alone and face language barriers. Concurrently, immigrant homecare workers, predominantly women, have experienced significant hardships due to the pandemic, compounded by low wages and limited workplace protections. To tackle these issues, this initiative plans to develop a holistic, culturally attuned, multigenerational, worker-owned cooperative education curriculum through a Community-Based Participatory Research (CBPR) approach. This curriculum aims to empower AAPI homecare workers while enhancing the quality of care for older adults. By incorporating the voices and insights of both groups, the project aspires to build cooperative models that promote economic security and intergenerational collaboration. Ultimately, the program aims not only to meet the immediate needs of the AAPI community but also to serve as a scalable model for other racial and ethnic minority groups across the nation. (Funding provided by AAPI Data Project.)
Atreyee Gupta, History of Art, “South Asian America: A Visual Chronicle”
Co-authored by Atreyee Gupta and Sugata Ray, “South Asian America: A Visual Chronicle” is a book project that explores the intertwined histories of South Asia and North America through one hundred artworks and visual documents spanning from the 1800s to the present. The project reveals how South Asian artists, artisans, travelers, and intellectuals have long shaped American art and visual culture, despite their marginal presence in existing scholarship. By situating South Asian American art within broader histories of empire, migration, and aesthetics, the book challenges the East Asia–centric orientation of Asian American art history and redefines “American art” as a transoceanic, transcultural formation. Ultimately, the project is to recover a vital yet overlooked narrative, offering a richly illustrated account that speaks to scholars and the public alike. The AARC Grant supports research centering on the pioneering printmaker and sculptor Krishna Reddy (1925–2018), whose transnational career—from Santiniketan to Paris and New York—embodied the global exchanges that underpin this study. Archival research in the Krishna Reddy Papers at New York University, along with complementary work at the Smithsonian and major New York museums, will illuminate Reddy’s pedagogical and artistic networks, linking his innovative color-viscosity techniques and biomorphic sculptures such as Demonstrators (1968) to the political ferment and aesthetic experimentation of the late twentieth century. The hope for this part of the project is to reimagine a vital visual archive of migration, aesthetics, and decolonization.
Hidetaka Hirota, History, “The American Dilemma: Foreign Labor and U.S. Immigration Policy, 1885-1924”
This project examines the history of the fundamental tension in U.S. history between nativism against foreigners and demand for their labor. Based on a study of the implementation against Japanese, Koreans, Indians, Mexicans, Canadians, and Europeans of the federal alien contract labor law, which prohibited the importation to the United States of foreign contract workers migrating under prearranged contracts with their employers, the project demonstrates how the tension over imported labor between the 1880s and the 1920s shaped U.S. immigration policy during its formative period. This project contributes to U.S. immigration and Asian American Studies scholarship by highlighting the roots of a defining feature of U.S. border control policy today, namely officials’ enormous discretionary power over the admission and expulsion of foreigners. My project shows how this feature originated from officials’ habits to interpret immigration laws as they saw fit to flexibly exclude immigrants at their discretion, in response to business owners’ repeated evasion of the alien contract labor law to secure foreign labor at the turn of the twentieth century. Moreover, this project illuminates unwritten racism in U.S. immigration policy. Much has been written on Chinese exclusion laws, which were expressly racist, but scholars have paid relatively scant attention to the experiences of non-Chinese Asian immigrants subjected to general immigration laws, which applied to all foreigners except the Chinese, such as the alien contract labor law. The project demonstrates how racism was practically integrated into the administration of technically color-blind general immigration laws at the discretion of local inspectors, who excluded the Japanese while admitting white immigrants.
Cathy Lu, Art Practice, “Passages (Chinatowns)”
Passages (Chinatowns) is a large-scale ceramic sculptural installation inspired by both historic and fantastical stories of underground tunnels beneath Chinatowns in the United States. The project also takes inspiration from the Chinese mythological creation goddess Nuwa, who has a snake-like body and is said to have sculpted humans from the yellow earth. By depicting Nuwa’s serpentine body in the form of these real and imagined underground Chinatown tunnels, I hope to speak to these overlooked histories of racial violence and resistance, and the deep networks Chinese diasporic communities have created to survive. These rumoured tunnels have been found to be mostly a few connected basements that may have been used to temporarily hide from racialized violence. Although in the1800s in Antioch, CA, Chinese residents did actually create underground tunnels in order to work around Sundown laws. These tunnels were a means of survival, a literal and figurative passage created in defiance of racist laws. I plan to visit Chinatown tunnels (existing and no longer existing) in the West Coast, East Coast, Mountain/Midwest regions, and the South. Through extended research on these tunnels, archival research, and interviews with members of different Chinatowns & Chinese diasporic communities, I plan to incorporate these findings into Passages (Chinatowns), either visually, or through oral stories, recorded sounds, incorporating different materials of meaning from these different sites, or in other ways not yet determined.
Christian Paiz, Ethnic Studies, “To have mirth: on the Filipino/a American grape workers who triggered the United Farm Worker (UFW) Movement in 1965”
The United Farm Worker (UFW) movement fought to improve agricultural working and living conditions in California and the U.S. West. UFW mantras, iconography, and even slogans (si se puede!) continue to adorn many public spaces in and out of the state. Yet, a key population in these efforts has been largely erased: the older generation of Filipino American men who migrated in the 1920s and weathered much of the hostility and promise in the twentieth century. This project includes two research trips to rural and agricultural southern California to provide lectures, primary sources, and additional scholarship on Filipino/a American grape workers in the UFW. These lectures will emphasize Filipino/a American worker agency and subjectivity, and they will connect the varied, but overlapping experiences of the UFW’s multi-racial membership. This account will stress the gendered nature of these workers’ demands, and the different spatial imaginaries powering their labor movement: for many, the UFW began in the Philippines in and through the previous generations’ fight against imperialism, as well as the freedom dreams that led to their migration to the United States. The lectures will emphasize that without this Filipina/o American history, our accounts of the UFW movement will be deeply flawed.
Stephanie Pau, Geography/ESPM, “Ecological memory of Japanese truck farmers at Point Reyes National Seashore”
Wilderness preservation pitted against working landscapes has been an enduring tension in conservation. At Point Reyes National Seashore, current debates among environmentalists, ranchers, and the National Park Service revolve around competing ideals of wilderness vs. heritage that define who and what belongs on the landscape. Yet both neglect the multiethnic histories, ecologies, and social relations that have structured Point Reyes and more broadly, California’s pastoral and agricultural landscapes. This work examines the lives and contributions of Japanese farmers and their families at Point Reyes from 1931 until they were forcibly removed and interned in 1942. By digitizing personal documents and photographs, transcribing oral histories, and conducting soil and vegetation analysis that trace ecological memory across the landscape, this project seeks to recover Asian American histories and labor overlooked in prevailing narratives about the Point Reyes landscape. By combining archival research with ecological fieldwork, this project will critically reinterpret Point Reyes’ history and environment, foregrounding the surviving influence of Issei and Nisei farmers whose labor and land practices more than 80 years ago have left a material legacy largely absent from ecological understanding or dominant conservation discourse.
Michele Wong, ISSI, “Navigating Gendered Racism in the STEM Workplace: Coping, Social Support, and Social Strain among Asian American Women”
Asian American women (AAW) occupy a distinct and often precarious position in the U.S. workforce, particularly within the STEM workplace that remain predominantly White and male. While there has been a renewed awareness of the harms of anti-Asian racism, less is known about how AAW cope with intersecting forms of oppressions, such as gendered racial microaggressions (GRM)—everyday experiences rooted in intersecting stereotypes of racial otherness and Asian femininity. Thus, this study investigates how AAW in STEM workplaces cope with GRM and how their experiences of social support and social strain shape psychological and occupational outcomes. This project will analyze qualitative responses on how AAW cope with GRM and quantitative survey data to examine the role of social support and social strain. The first aim explores how AAW in the STEM workplace cope with GRM encounters. The second and third aims test how social support and social strain moderate the relationships between GRM, psychological distress, and job-related burnout. By situating coping within the structural realities of racialized and gendered organizations, this project reframes AAW as active agents navigating complex social networks that can both buffer and reinforce oppression. Findings will contribute to intersectional scholarship on workplace equity and inform organizational interventions—such as mentorship programs and diversity initiatives—that cultivate meaningful social support while addressing relational strain within STEM environments. (Funding provided by AAPI Data Project.)
Student Awardees
Sabrina Avenido, undergraduate student, Ethnic Studies, “Utang na Loob: A Family Affair into Civic Engagement Education”
As Filipina/x/os have been immigrating to the United States since 1587, continuously shaping American life in fields ranging healthcare industry to the arts, Filipino Americans play a critical role in disrupting the Model Minority Myth and Perpetual Foreigner stereotypes that continue to challenge their identities as Asians in the diaspora. We notice shifts in how second generation Filipino Americans (SGFAs) have embodied resistance and persistence. As the children of Philippine immigrants, they mirror their families’ immigration story, sacrifice, and pursuit of the American Dream. Moreover, they also become a bridge between the U.S. and the motherland by helping their parents make sense of the new labor, health, economic, and political contexts in which they have now immersed themselves in. Filipino immigrant parents must arguably learn another language that shapes their realities in the diaspora— U.S. policy. Despite being away from home, Philippine cultural values remain prevalent transnationally, such as utang na loob, a debt of gratitude. This shapes how they move as a family unit politically. My research explores how SGFAs raised in the San Francisco Bay Area have internalized and exercised utang na loob as a form of resistance by taking care of their loved ones through civic engagement education of local, state, and/or federal policies that continue to impact their parents. By holding qualitative kwentuhan (talk-story) sessions, I hope to highlight the nuanced experiences of utang na loob in the family home with regards to U.S. civic engagement efforts amongst SGFAs with their Parents. (Funding provided by AAPI Data Project.)
Isabella Beroutsos, graduate student, History of Art, “The Camouflage Net Factory at Manzanar: An Art History”
My project analyzes the relationship between photography and material culture in Dorothea Lange’s World War II photographs of the camouflage net factory at the Manzanar incarceration camp. Operated by Japanese Americans, the factory produced nearly 40,000 nets, but it was controversial among inmates and shut down after six months. There is considerable scholarship on photography’s illustrative importance to our understanding of Japanese American incarceration. Building on and responding to this approach, I treat Lange’s photographs not as tools that illustrate a historical moment but as art objects in their own right, centering the Japanese American weavers. I observe the pictures in their modern context—a newly industrialized society, where photographers often took humans’ relationship to industry as their subject, and amidst a growing interest in visualizing traditionally women’s work (in this case, weaving textiles) as more women pursued professional opportunities. Conceptually, my research also contemplates the intersections of photography and material culture, two seemingly opposed disciplines. Compared to a tangible engagement with objects, how does an image of objects and their making uniquely affect our impressions and experience of materiality? Grounded in interdisciplinary questions, my research places Lange’s photographs in conversation with the design of Manzanar’s factory and present-day visitor experience; Japanese Americans’ drawings and vernacular objects in the archives at Manzanar and other public collections across California; and contemporary art and literature that retrospectively grapple with Japanese American incarceration. Ultimately, I seek to cultivate a new, connective scholarship of this critical moment in U.S. history and cultural memory.
Kristiana Chan, graduate student, Art Practice, “Littoral Canopies: Entangled Resilience and Material Pathways in California's Kelp Forests”
My research examines California’s kelp forests as resilient environments rebounding from the brink of critical decline, contextualizing their lifeforms as models of survival, balance, and regeneration, and connecting them to histories of trans-Pacific Asian divers and waterpeople. Many diasporic migrants who harvested kelp, mollusks, and other sea life brought their knowledge of the ocean to California, helping establish early fishing industries and coastal settlements. These practices were both sustenance and survival, maintaining ties to homelands through fishing, drying, and processing seafood to send back home. Considering how bodies have crossed the Pacific, my research involves accompanying a dive team to monitor and harvest kelp on the Northern California coast and developing ceramic glazes using the kelp forest’s contents as ingredients. I will use the form of the mollusk, a soft-bodied creature that evolved a robust protective mechanism, to explore the resilience of these communities in the face of racism and violence. Kelp, which can grow up to one foot a day, is known for its incredible resilience and regenerative properties. Our local kelp forests have begun to rebound from near collapse due to human-caused factors. What can we learn from these environments, their organisms, and the conservation efforts that have successfully de-escalated an ecological crisis? What emergent strategies exist in these evolving landscapes, and how might we employ them to ensure the resilience of our own communities?
Stacy Chen, graduate student, Public Health, “Health Policy and Management, Improving Preventive Care for Asian American Non-English Preference Populations: The Impact of State Medicaid Language Access Policies (with Comparative Latinx Analyses)”
In March 2025, a new executive order established English as the official language of the United States and revoked a longstanding federal directive promoting language access for individuals with limited English proficiency. Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) communities have the highest rates of limited English proficiency nationwide—nearly one in three Asian Americans and one in ten Pacific Islanders report difficulty communicating in English. This policy reversal threatens to widen health inequities for linguistically diverse communities that already face barriers to healthcare. Despite federal protections under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act and Section 1557 of the Affordable Care Act, almost half of primary-care practices and one-third of hospitals do not make interpreter or translation services available. This project evaluates how state-federal Medicaid reimbursement for language services affects preventive care access, care delays, and healthcare expenditures among limited English proficiency Asian American adults. Using linked nationally representative 2010-2024 data (Medical Expenditure Panel Survey and National Health Interview Survey), the study aims to causally estimate the impact of Medicaid language services reimbursement policies on preventive-care use, care delays, and healthcare expenditures among limited English proficient Asian American adults. Comparative analyses will examine heterogeneity across Asian American subgroups and Latinx limited English proficient populations. Findings will provide policy-relevant evidence on how Medicaid language-access reforms influence preventive care and spending among AAPI populations, informing ongoing federal and state efforts—including in California—to advance equitable, language-concordant healthcare. (Funding provided by AAPI Data Project.)
Lynn Choi, undergraduate student, Sociology, “Understanding Racial Triangulation Today: Qualitative Interviews of Asian American Parents of Asian American Youth”
Racial socialization is the process through which individuals, especially children, learn the social meanings of race and navigate racialized experiences, often through interactions with family, peers, institutions, media, and society as a whole. This process is not isolated and is also influenced by historical contexts, immigration policies, and dominant racial ideologies. While there is a great amount of literature on racial socialization among Black and White families in the United States, few have investigated this among Asian families. The little that exists suggests that Asian families often refrain from engaging with their children in discussions of race or racial inequity, focusing instead on cultural heritage. Drawing on racial triangulation theory, this project aims to understand how the positioning of Asian Americans in U.S. society serves to shape this reluctance to discuss race. Racial triangulation theory states that Asian Americans are both valorized as model minorities and stigmatized as perpetual foreigners in American society. I propose that parents who have internalized racial triangulation will not only demonstrate greater endorsement of the model minority myth and experiences with being a perpetual minority, but this will be reflected in their choice not to discuss certain racial topics and issues with their children. Using a qualitative interview design, I will conduct semi-structured interviews with Asian American parents. By examining how parental beliefs and silences about race and racial inequity with their children through a sociological lens, we can begin to understand how racial ideologies are being passed down generationally within Asian American families, which can allow for a more comprehensive understanding of how racial ideologies are reproduced or challenged within Asian American families and the broader U.S. racial hierarchy. (Funding provided by AAPI Data Project.)
Angelina Fu, undergraduate student, Asian American and Asian Diaspora Studies, “The School Gate as Infrastructure of Care: Asian American Women’s Affective and Translingual Labor at Multilingual Social Institutions”
This study investigates how immigrant women perform both linguistic and emotional translation in everyday spaces where racial capitalism and platformized bureaucracy feminize and privatize public communication work, rendering it invisible, unpaid, and multilingual. The field of study is Lincoln Elementary School in Oakland’s Chinatown, a space that functions as an ethnographic “contact zone” where multiple generations and languages (English, Cantonese, Mandarin, Toisanese) intersect, making it a site of daily translingual negotiation and window into the gendered political economy of affective labor that sustains racialized urban life. The school serves as a reflection of a broader, privatized infrastructure of care and communication, where immigrant women - often grandmothers - absorb the institutional costs of translation and coordination that spaces such as schools and clinics routinely offload. The project employs participatory ethnographic observation, semi-structured interviews, and oral histories with caregivers (grandmothers) and community organizers affiliated with the EBAYC afterschool program. Fieldwork takes place during pickup hours and community events, where I aim to document linguistic practices, gestures, and affective exchanges among grandparents, children, and teachers. Data collected will include fieldnotes, transcribed interviews, and audio recordings to document the nuanced and layered nature of translingual communication and emotional mediation. This study expects to reveal that immigrant women often shoulder the hidden labor of translation and emotional management that schools and public institutions often outsource to families, arguing that the structural inequalities embedded in racialized and bureaucratic systems of public communication exist. (Funding provided by AAPI Data Project.)
Victoria Keating, graduate student, Psychology, “The Impact of the Model Minority Myth on Parent-Child Conversations about Race and Racial Inequality Among Asian Families in the U.S.”
In 2020 and 2021, more than 30% of Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) parents reported that their child experienced a hate incident at school. Such experiences of racism have been linked to serious mental health challenges among AAPI youth, including anxiety and suicidality. Although parent-child discussions about race and racial inequity can help mitigate these effects, the frequency of such conversations in AAPI families remains low. Prior work suggests that traditional Asian values and limited familiarity with U.S. racial dynamics contribute to parental hesitancy. However, I find that even acculturated AAPI parents who are familiar with race relations may still be hesitant . In particular, parents who internalize the Model Minority Myth (MMM) were significantly less likely to report discussing race (=-0.59, p<0.05) and racial inequality (=-0.93, p<0.01) with their children than parents who reject the myth. This pattern likely reflects how MMM incorporates beliefs about Asian identity, race relations, and meritocracy. The proposed project will further investigate how belief in MMM shapes parents’ discussions with their children by examining how AAPI parents (N=400) respond when their children raise issues of race and inequity using vignettes, and whether levels of MMM endorsement predict differences in approach and reasoning. (Funding provided by AAPI Data Project.)
Alissa Leung, graduate student, Public Health, “Community Activism as Vehicle for Inter-Group Solidarity: Black and Asian American Collective Liberation”
I will examine the historical and contemporary relational racialization between Asian Americans and Black Americans in the East Bay, particularly how both racial groups have promoted inter-group solidarity via community activism. Inter-group solidarity, especially between Asian Americans and Black Americans, is relevant to public health discourse and research. It has only been recently (2021) that the Centers for Disease Control named racism as a public health crisis. My career goal as a public health practitioner is to refine my critical analysis skills and leverage it towards community-led interventions, grounded in theory. I am interested in contributing nuance to popular framings of health and wellbeing, which often lack critical contextualization. (Funding provided by AAPI Data Project.)
Mounika Parimi, graduate student, Public Health, “Connection and Care: Listening to Postpartum Experiences among Asian American Families through Ritual”
Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander (AANHPI) communities face significant yet understudied maternal health disparities, including postpartum and perinatal mental health challenges, elevated rates of severe maternal morbidity, cesarean delivery, and preterm birth. Despite these inequities, there remains a critical lack of research exploring Asian American birthing people’s experiences, limiting the development of culturally responsive interventions. This community-engaged project, in collaboration with the Asian Birth Collective (ABC), seeks to address this gap by centering the voices and lived experiences of Asian-identifying birth workers and parents. In partnership with ABC’s leadership, we will host a community conversation, bringing together 20–30 Asian-identifying birth workers and parents in the Bay Area to explore postpartum experiences, challenges, and culturally rooted care practices. The in-person event will intentionally combine dialogue and celebration, incorporating cultural foods, mind-body practices, childcare, and a ritual tea ceremony to foster inclusion and healing. Facilitated small and large group discussions will be guided by a structured conversation framework co-developed with ABC. Using a participatory documentation process, facilitator notes, and collaborative synthesis, the project will produce the following output: a visually engaging community resource for Asian American families and networks, including a practice brief with culturally informed recommendations for healthcare and public health practitioners and researchers. Findings will inform ABC’s development of a postpartum doula training program and contribute to broader efforts toward reproductive justice and culturally responsive maternal care for AANHPI communities. (Funding provided by AAPI Data Project.)
NAMI aka Evan Sakuma, graduate student, Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies, “Dolls of Paradise: Curating Trans & Māhū Nightlife as Research into Diaspora, Ecological Displacement, and Relational Care”
Dolls of Paradise is a performance-based research project that treats curated nightlife as a methodological site for producing knowledge about trans and māhū modes of being, resilience, and relationality in Pacific diasporas. Rather than staging this work within a major conference hotel alongside the Association for Asian American Studies conference in 2026, the project will instead be hosted locally in Honolulu in collaboration with Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander performers and community organizations. The central research question asks: What relationalities—between migration, gendered embodiment, ecological histories, and intergenerational care—become visible when researchers deliberately curate meaningful nightlife? Drawing on the bird of paradise as a metaphor for introduced beauty and displacement, and on my positionality in the Japanese diaspora in Hawaiʻi, this project centers trans Pacific artists as co-producers of knowledge. The one-night performance will function as field research: rehearsals, performer interviews, and audiovisual documentation will be gathered and analyzed to trace how nightlife practices produce memory, care, and forms of resistance that academic archives have often erased. Outcomes include (1) compensated artistic labor (honoraria for Native Hawaiian and trans/māhū performers), (2) a research dataset of video, photography, and community-produced artifacts (zines, posters, programs), and (3) scholarly writing and presentations that theorize nightlife as epistemology within Asian American and Pacific studies.
Rishika Shah, graduate student, Psychology, “Beyond the Model Minority: An Ecological Momentary Study of Cultural Stigma, Help-Seeking, and Coping Motives for Alcohol Use in Asian American Young Adults”
Asian Americans (AAs) experience unique yet understudied disparities in mental health and substance use outcomes. Although often excluded from disparities research due to the “model minority” myth, AAs report a 17.3% lifetime prevalence of psychiatric disorders yet are three times less likely to seek mental health treatment than White counterparts. Stigma, cultural norms around emotional expressivity, and acculturation barriers contribute to limited help-seeking and may promote maladaptive coping such as alcohol use. Despite biological deterrents (e.g., ALDH2 “flushing gene”) and cultural disapproval, rates of binge and heavy drinking are rising among AAs, particularly for coping motives. This study addresses a critical gap by examining how interpersonal problems, emotional distress, and stigma dynamically influence help-seeking and coping-motivated drinking in daily life. Using Ecological Momentary Assessment (EMA), 160 AA young adults (ages 18–30) across four subgroups (East, Southeast, South Asian, and Pacific Islander) will complete 14 days of EMA surveys assessing momentary distress, stigma, help-seeking, and alcohol use motives. Baseline measures will include interpersonal problems (IIP-C), stigma (Self-Stigma of Seeking Help), and alcohol use severity (AUDIT). Multilevel modeling will evaluate within- and between-person associations, and subgroup analyses will test cultural and acculturation differences. This study will be the first to capture real-time fluctuations in stigma, distress, and help-seeking that predict coping-motivated alcohol use among AAs. Findings will advance understanding of psychosocial mechanisms underlying health disparities and inform culturally responsive interventions that reduce stigma and promote adaptive coping within diverse AA communities. (Funding provided by AAPI Data Project.)
Chun Wang, graduate student, Anthropology, “Queering Chinatown: A Queer Asian Elder Story in the Midwest”
Queer Asian American elders remain largely invisible within youth-centered LGBTQ+ spaces and cis-heteronormative immigrant advocacy. This multimedia project centers Dr. Ada Cheng, who is a queerTaiwanese American elder, performer, and former tenured professor in Chicago. We seek to examine how storytelling and artmaking constitute the diverse epistemologies of Asian American activism. Combining oral history, community-based documentary, and archival research, I follow Cheng’s transnational activist and researcher life across Taiwan, Hong Kong, the Philippines, and the United States. In addition, this multimedia project will also accompany one of Ada’s most recent monologue performances, The Trouble with My Hair. In that performance, Ada is using her hair as a method to discuss caregiving and control. Through partnerships with the Coalition for a Better Chinese American Community and the Chinese American Museum of Chicago, the grant will support the production of an installation that elevates intergenerational and transnational dialogues of queer activism. Funding will support additional oral history sessions, travel for filming with Ada, and archival research on LGBTQ+ activism and conferences in the 1990s in Asia. The outcome of the product will include: (1) a 12–18 minute festival-ready short documentary and a version for installation, (2) a community screening toolkit, (3) a materialized archive for the Chinese American Museum of Chicago. The knowledge produced through the multimedia project will offer scalable practices for Midwest AAPI organizations to decenter cisheteronormative discourses. It will enrich intersectional scholarship on age, gender, sexuality, and immigration within AAPI research and examine the need for collaborative visual methods.
Victor Xie, graduate student, Ethnic Studies, “‘For Freedom’: Border-Crossing, Cold War Afterlives, and the Performance of Trauma among Chinese Asylum Seekers in Los Angeles County”
This research project is a preliminary ethnographic study of Chinese asylum seekers in Los Angeles County. Given the lack of literature on Chinese migrants who have crossed the US-Mexico border in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic, this project seeks to understand how Chinese asylum seekers understand their positionality to immigration laws through their performances of trauma and freedom in the asylum process. To be granted asylum, migrants must have credible fear and, in some cases, evidence of trauma. This conditionality is tied with the geopolitical context of historical tensions between the US and China since the Cold War and the imagined binaries between democracy and communism. Because Chinese nationals are among the most successful of all nationalities in being granted asylum, it is imperative to study the ways in which they are coerced into leveraging legible conceptions of trauma and freedom. Through partnering with community-based organizations and conducting participant interviews, this research will contribute to a more sincere understanding of Chinese asylum seekers’ subjectivities and material conditions under US immigration law, especially as such conditions have rapidly shown its precarity amidst increasing threats of deportation.
