Aaari Audio Podcast Feed

Join the celebration! AAARIs annual fundraiser is attended by Asian and non-Asian academic, business, civic and community leaders, faculty, staff and students. At the gala, AAARI will be honoring distinguished CUNY alumni, leaders from the community, and student scholarship recipients. Proceeds from the gala go towards AAARIs academic publications and public programs such as lectures, annual conference, and student film festival.

Join us to celebrate the Asian American / Asian Research Institutes 24th anniversary as part of The City University of New York! AAARIs fundraising gala will convene over 200 supporters, community leaders, and advocates committed to uplifting and advancing the Asian American Pacific Islander community. In line with our mission, this years event will honor the remarkable achievements of Asian American women in public service who have paved the way for greater representation, policy innovation, and community empowerment for all.

Join pioneering LGBTQ+ activist Daniel C. Tsang for a special conversation reflecting on his 50 years of activism, including his groundbreaking 1975 article Gay Awareness in Bridge Magazine, one of the first to address LGBTQ+ issues in the Asian American community. Tsang will discuss the evolution of LGBTQ+ rights, his personal journey, and the ongoing challenges facing the community. Moderated by the Museum of Chinese in America's Chief Curator Herb Tam, the event will conclude with a Q and A session for audience engagement.

This panel discusses the "Localized History Project," which addresses the lack of Asian American, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander (AANHPI) history in New York State's Eurocentric, test-driven curriculum. The Project advocates for both a "content and pedagogical revolution" to shift who is perceived as a historian and knowledge creator. The Project is youth-driven, centering young people through Youth Action Boards in various regions of New York, who develop resources for an archive and classroom use. Utilizing oral history, semi-structured interviews, and surveys, the project explores how the absence of AANHPI history impacts youth and aims to create a "living history" that challenges traditional, colonial frameworks of history education. The ultimate goal is to provide a community archive of localized histories to fill educational gaps and inspire revolutionary change.Panel was part of the Association for Asian American Studies 2025 Annual Conference

In Decoding Ambedkar, Prof. Vivek Kumar re-examines Dr. B.R. Ambedkars vast intellectual contributions, challenging his reductive portrayal in Indian academia and media. It contrasts his domestic erasure with the significant global recognition of his ideas on society, politics, and justice. By analyzing his unique theories on the Hindu social order and his engagement with diverse thinkers, the book asserts Ambedkars crucial role as a pioneer in Indian sociology, demonstrating the capacity of Dalit intellectuals to develop profound theoretical frameworks.

Since 2004, the CUNY Asian American Film Festival (AAFF) has celebrated the creativity and vision of student filmmakers from across the City University of New York. With over $15,400 in cash prizes awarded to CUNY students from City College, Brooklyn College, Hunter College, Lehman College, College of Staten Island, Queens College, and New York City College of Technology, this is an incredible opportunity to showcase your work and gain recognition. The festival not only promotes the artistic talents of CUNY students but also fosters meaningful connections among peers from different campuses, providing a central platform to display your creative projects. Past participants have also had their films featured at the prestigious Asian American International Film Festival.

Join the Asian American / Asian Research Institute for a special AANHPI Heritage Month screening of the documentary Chinatown Rising, followed by Q and A with co-director Josh Chuck.

Much queer theory in America is based on white male experience and privilege, excluding people of color and severely limiting its relevance to third-world activism. Within the last three decades, chronicles from gay lesbian bisexual transgender intersex queer (GLBTIQ) communities within the South Asian diaspora in the United States have appeared, but the richness and contradictions that characterize these communities have been stifled. Too often, the limitations due to undertheorized South Asian American lesbian, bisexual, and transsexual historiescompounded by a queer canon overwrought with the East/West and tradition/modern equationsrender queer South Asian Americans as a monolithic homogeneous category with little or no agency.

Much queer theory in America is based on white male experience and privilege, excluding people of color and severely limiting its relevance to third-world activism. Within the last three decades, chronicles from gay lesbian bisexual transgender intersex queer (GLBTIQ) communities within the South Asian diaspora in the United States have appeared, but the richness and contradictions that characterize these communities have been stifled. Too often, the limitations due to undertheorized South Asian American lesbian, bisexual, and transsexual historiescompounded by a queer canon overwrought with the East/West and tradition/modern equationsrender queer South Asian Americans as a monolithic homogeneous category with little or no agency.

How does racism influence the formation and development of organizational life in a racialized community? In this paper, Prof. Simon Yamawaki Shachter extends on Du Boiss concept of double consciousness to explain community organizations roles and development. Combined with the concepts of oppositional consciousness from social movements and decoupling from organization theory, Prof. Yamawaki Shachter builds a processual model of organizational life for racialized communities. He shows how the model explains the development of 19th and early 20th century Chinese organizations in the U.S., and describes how the community formed an incomparably large, sophisticated, interconnected, and politically-active organizational field at such an early point in U.S. history. The organizations that developedbased in historical Chinese migrant organizations that responded to anti-Chinese racismlooked different from past and contemporary Chinese or U.S.-based organizational fields. This case and theoretical model show the ty

Join Densho and the Localized History Project for a virtual workshop exploring the histories and stories of young Japanese Americans impacted by wartime incarceration. The workshop will share histories of schooling and resistance during Japanese American incarceration, the enduring legacies of this history in New York State, and how Densho utilizes oral histories to preserve, share and pass on this history.

Cherry Lou Sys debut novel Love Cant Feed You (Dutton, 2024) is a heartfelt and poignant exploration of love, sacrifice, and survival in the face of adversity. It follows the journey of a young immigrant woman from the Philippines having to navigate the complexities of a challenging relationship while grappling with the harsh realities of her life. As she faces the emotional and practical struggles of balancing her dreams and personal desires with the needs of those she loves, the story offers a raw and intimate portrayal of the ways love can both uplift and burden us.

This presentation examines survey results from three screenings of The Cost of Living (2023, Sixty First Productions), a documentary highlighting the financial struggles of three families in Flushing. The film is part of the Undo Poverty: Flushing (UPF) collaboratives efforts to combat poverty and reduce stigma through a narrative change approach. The three separate screenings featured subtitles in Chinese, English, and Korean, respectively. UPF also organized community organizing training sessions for local residents during the 2024 grant cycle. The presenter will discuss key findings from the surveys, including community perceptions of poverty, primary concerns, and proposed solutions for addressing financial hardship in Flushing. The presentation will also assess the impact of the community organizing training sessions.

Migrant workers have long been called upon to sacrifice their own health to provide care in facilities and private homes throughout the United States. What draws them to such exploitative, low-wage work, and how do they care for themselves? In Caring for Caregivers: Filipina Migrant Workers and Community Building during Crisis (University of Washington Press, 2025), Valerie Francisco-Menchavez centers the perspectives of Filipino caregivers in the San Francisco Bay Area from 2013 to 2021, illuminating their transnational experiences and their strategies and practices to help each other navigate the crumbling U.S. healthcare system.

Co-editors Nicholas D. Hartlep, Terrell L. Strayhorn, and Fred A. Bonner II will present on Belonging in Higher Education: Perspectives and Lessons from Diverse Faculty (Routledge, 2024), a new book that illuminates autoethnographic stories of belonging in higher education in the United States. These narratives celebrate diverse experiences and offer unique and useful insights about how to foster what foreword author, Michael Eric Dyson, refers to as, deep belonging. This critical volume is essential reading for researchers, faculty, administrators, and graduate students in Education, Sociology, Psychology, Student Affairs, African American Studies, and Asian American Studies. Additionally, it offers crucial insights for individuals who are key stakeholders in foregrounding policy that centers belonging for diverse faculty.

Co-curator Prof. Jayne Cole Southard will present on the exhibition, Legacies: Asian American Art Movements in New York City (1969-2001), an expansive survey of rarely-seen artwork and archival material by artists that constitute and exceed Asian American, a label denoting a cultural and national identity invented in 1968. Utilizing an interdisciplinary and research-driven praxis, Legacies uncovers how artists of Asian descent have historically negotiated identity in America as a set of situated practices and institutional structures amidst transnational diasporas, racial phantasms, and political imaginaries.

This panel presentation introduces an ongoing project to recover and translate the Japanese-language writings of the Issei novelist and teacher Ginko Okazaki (pen-name of Masue Shinozaki Orimo, 1895-1973). Ginko was part of a cohort of highly educated Japanese women who emigrated to the United States in the 1920s. Alan K. Ota, nephew of Ginkos daughter, will present on how the study of Ginkos life and work may offer insights to aspiring artists, activists, and teachers as they confront new forms of oppression and ultranationalism in the 21st century. Andrew Way Leong (UC Berkeley) will present on the ongoing work involved in bringing Ginkos work to a contemporary English-language readership. Talk will feature a pre-recorded reading by Sophie Oda, great-granddaughter of Ginko Ozaki, of a short excerpt from Soil of Salinas.

Prof. Christine Balance, the 2024 CUNY Thomas Tam Visiting Professor at the CUNY Graduate Center, will present ongoing research and writing from her book project, Making Sense of Martial Law. In it, she studies what the diverse and contradictory poetics of Philippine martial law (1972-1986) perform and reveal about authoritarianism and cultural memory, as illustrated by both U.S.- and Philippines-based performances and productions. Making Sense of Martial Law also aims to illuminate important facets of the relationship between art and politics in dictatorships across the globe.

Join the Asian American / Asian Research Institute, and the Committee on Institutional Equity and Diversity (CIED) at the CUNY School of Professional Studies, for a screening of the documentary, But Youre Not Black (2020), directed by Danilelle Ayow. Following the screening will be a discussion with our guest scholar speaker Dr. Aleah N. Ranjitsingh (Brooklyn College), moderated by Dr. Yung-Yi Diana Pan (Brooklyn College).

Popular discourse around British Muslims has often been dominated by a focus on Muslim women and their sartorial choices, particularly the hijab and niqab. Dr. Fatima Rajina takes a different angle and focuses on Muslim men, examining how factors like the global war on terror influenced and changed their sartorial choices and use of language. Rajinas new book denaturalises the ubiquitous and deeply problematic security lens through which knowledge of Muslims has been produced in the past two decades.