February 17, 2006 – Inter-Disciplining Asia-Pacific-America: A Symposium on Knowledge, Politics, and the University

Friday, February 17 / 9:30AM – 6PM / Bay Tree Conference Room D

Under the transnationalization of intellectual inquiry and the concurrent challenge to the disciplines, Asia-Pacific-America—a field of intellectual inquiry that emerged from the concrete struggles of civil rights movements and U.S. imperialist adventures in the Asia/Pacific region—is experiencing great institutional change. With the turn to transnational studies, the field of Asian-Pacific-American Studies, structured under the ethnic studies model, requires some critical reflection on its own field imaginary, disciplinary politics, and knowledge formation.
This symposium is an attempt to think about these intersecting issues of knowledge, politics, and the university in the interdisciplinary formation of Asia-Pacific-America. As one of only two UC campuses that does not have an Asian American and/or Pacific Island Studies program, the Santa Cruz campus, with its increasing Asian American and Pacific Islander student population, is in dire need of such discussion. With the participation of scholars and activists from other UC campuses and San Francisco State University, institutions that inaugurated Asian American studies programs in the late 1960s and the early 1970s, we hope this symposium will contribute not only to the theoretical debates on Asian-Pacific-American Studies in the age of interdisciplinarity and globalization, but will also serve the UC Santa Cruz community as it deliberates on its intellectual future.


SCHEDULE

9:30 AM–10 AM OPENING REMARKS
Rob Wilson Literature, UC Santa Cruz

10 AM–12 PM PANEL I
The Transnational Turn: Globalization and Inter-Disciplinarity

Moderator: Rob Wilson, Literature, UC Santa Cruz

Madeline Hsu, Ethnic Studies, SFSU
Transnationalism and Asian American Studies as a Migration-Centered Project

Neferti Tadiar, History of Consciousness, UC Santa Cruz
Cultural Nationalism, Regionalism, and Transnationalism: The Filipino American Community

Vilashini Cooppan, Literature, UC Santa Cruz
Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Transnationalism: Imagining Asian/America

1:30 PM–3:30 PM PANEL II
Structuring Asian-Pacific-American Studies: Past, Present, and Futur
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Moderator: Deborah Woo, Community Studies, UC Santa Cruz

Isao Fujimoto, Founder of Asian American Studies, UC Davis
Community Activisms Then and Now

Don T. Nakanishi, Director, Asian American Studies Center, UCLA
Coming of Age: Asian American Studies at UCLA, 1969-2004

Sau-ling Wong, Ethnic Studies, UC Berkeley
Asian American Literary Studies and Its Internationalization

4–6 PM ROUNDTABLE
Envisioning Asian-Pacific-American Studies at UC Santa Cruz

Moderator:Karen Tei Yamashita, Literature/Creative Writing, UC Santa Cruz

Nancy Kim, Director of Asian American/Pacific Islander Resource Center, UC Santa Cruz

Ashley Uyeda, Pilipino Historical Dialogue Undergraduate Group, UC Santa Cruz

Deborah Woo, Community Studies, UC Santa Cruz

Alice Yang Murray, History, UC Santa Cruz

Co-sponsored by the Asia-Pacific-America Research Cluster and the Asian American/Pacific Islander Resource Center

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