If you had the power to imagine the future of race, what would it look like? This is the central question that I sought to explore with students enrolled in my new advanced course this fall quarter, "Ethnofuturist Rhetorics: Imagining the Future of Race." Having just wrapped up the course, I wanted to take some time to reflect on the experience. Cross-listed in both the Program in Writing and Rhetoric and the Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity at Stanford, this course offered an in-depth study of ethnofuturism, a rhetorical movement to envision the future of race relations. I was inspired to teach this course because I have long been an admirer of speculative/science fiction, which has a unique ability to get me to reflect on present-day issues in ways that other genres cannot. Darko Suvin famously explained this phenomenon when he theorized in Metamorphoses of Science Fiction (1979) that science fiction produces “cognitive estrangement,” thus allowing us to notice the constructedness of our current reality and interrogate the status quo. I wanted to design a class where I could explore this phenomenon with my students. As a teacher and researcher who specializes in antiracist rhetoric and critical race studies, I sought to actively disrupt the traditional canon of science fiction, which tends to be written by, for, and about white/cis/hetero men. Too often, canonical science fiction erases people of color from the future or problematically whitens them to feed a post-racial fantasy. And there is a long history in the United States of using speculation about the future as a rhetorical tool to reinforce capitalist, white supremacist, fascist ideologies. In designing this course, I sought to decenter whiteness in speculative fiction and present ethnofuturist speculative rhetorics as an important corrective to the white popular imaginary’s insistence on characterizing people of color as frozen in time, technologically stunted, or pushed to the margins. We started the course by examining examples of speculative ethnofuturist rhetoric (such as films, stories, comics, visual artwork, music albums, and visual reality projects) produced by Black, Asian, Latinx, and Native rhetors, assessing how they envision the future consequences of existing racial systems and imagine alternative possibilities for societal race relations. I carefully designed my syllabus to showcase a variety of genres produced by authors of different racial identities, so that students could see how ethnofuturism serves as a powerful liberatory rhetorical framework for all communities impacted by white supremacy, as well as take inspiration from different genres when designing their own ethnofuturist texts later in the term. Despite their many differences, these texts all share a commitment to envisioning what it could mean for people of color not just to survive but also to thrive in the future. In the second part of the course, students followed in the footsteps of these ethnofuturist rhetors by selecting a racial justice issue that they wanted to learn more about and creating their own work of ethnofuturism designed to consider the future of this issue. Many chose to work in more conventional narrative forms by writing short stories and poetry collections. Others took on more unconventional forms, including a play, a virtual reality project, and a work of interactive fiction. I am so impressed with how these projects are able to do so much at once, including address a contemporary racial justice issue, effectively incorporate an ethnofuturist framework (like dystopia, magical realism, historical revisionism, alternative timelines, etc.), and appropriately engage the rhetorical conventions required of their chosen genre. In one project, a student sought to address the lack of mental health support for Black people suffering from racial trauma by creating a virtual reality experience that allows users to enter a wellness center where they can undergo healing not only by using contemporary therapeutic methods, but also by being transported into the past (where they can experience a personal history free of racial injury) and the future (where they can imagine what their future might look like without racial injury). Other final projects were similarly moving and compelling, with some offering dystopian visions (such as by imagining how technological advancements will only exacerbate the violent militarization of the U.S.-Mexico border) and others imagining utopias based on racial liberation (such as a future in which the prison industrial complex has been eradicated). It was especially exciting to be joined by two guest speakers this quarter. The first speaker was one of the authors represented on the course syllabus, Walidah Imarisha, an Afrofuturist writer/researcher and Assistant Professor in Black Studies at Oregon State University. She joined us via Zoom to talk about her research and writings, and the students greatly appreciated having the opportunity to ask her questions about her short story “Black Angel,” her craft, and the anthology of social justice-oriented speculative fiction called Octavia's Brood: Science Fiction Stories from Social Justice Movements that she co-edited with adrienne maree brown. She also offered some valuable advice to my students, who were embarking on creating their own ethnofuturist texts. For example, she reminded them that ethnofuturist writing (what she has termed "visionary fiction") is "fundamentally hopeful." In addition, she encouraged them to keep a central question in mind as they designed their visions: "How can we have the kind of society where everyone's needs are met?" The second speaker was Rev. Dr. Sakena De Young-Scaggs, the Senior Associate Dean for Religious and Spiritual Life and Pastor of Memorial Church here at Stanford, who completed her Ph.D. research on how Afrofuturism can be used as a framework for creating liminal spaces of Black joy. She joined us in person to present on her important research and lead the students in a lively conversation. It was inspiring to hear her speak about how the speculative Black arts can serve as a liberatory platform for "renewal and resistance" and support communal gatherings (such as comic book conventions and science fiction reading circles) to circulate "milieus of personal hope with a vision for a better future." It was a true honor to be able to teach this class to such a dedicated group of Stanford students. I am grateful to the Program in Writing and Rhetoric for making this teaching opportunity possible and for spotlighting the class in the program's latest newsletter. I hope I am able to offer this course many more times in the future!
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On Saturday April 1st, I had the great pleasure of participating in a roundtable discussion on "College Writing: What It Is and What It's Not" hosted by the San Jose Area Writing Project as part of their Super Saturdays series of pedagogy-building workshops for high school teachers. The goal of this event was to bring high school teachers and college instructors together to dispel myths about college writing and break down what actual college writing looks like (i.e. what skills are emphasized, what types of writing are expected, what work is actually assigned). I co-facilitated this discussion with Hillary Walker, an adjunct professor of African American Studies and Ethnic Studies at the College of Alameda and the Director of the Bay Area Writing Project at the Berkeley School of Education. We opened the conversation by first providing an overview of how we design and teach our college writing classes. I greatly enjoyed hearing how our teaching priorities converge (for example, we both center critical race studies in our classrooms and design curricula that prioritize student agency and individual progress). It was also useful and informative to learn how our pedagogy differs given our different institutional contexts and resources. We then opened up the conversation to the high school teachers in attendance, offering the following questions to guide us:
In the rich conversation that ensued, participants discussed these questions and raised additional questions relevant to their specific concerns. At one point, the conversation focused on whether teaching the novel in the English high school classroom is still a relevant practice, or whether it has become outdated given that many college writing programs de-prioritize literary analysis. At another point, the discussion centered on exploring the role of scaffolding activities in helping students grow as writers over time. A major highlight of the conversation was when we began discussing the important question of how we writing instructors can stop perpetuating white language supremacy, such as by implementing innovative curricular design and alternative evaluation methods. Everyone in attendance expressed a commitment to meeting this objective by honoring their students' diverse home languages and unique forms of expression. However, several participants also acknowledged that they face several constraints in achieving this goal. For example, they might be compelled by district-wide requirements to assign texts from the Western literary canon when designing their curricula. Or they might feel pressured to teach writing skills that are rewarded on college-entrance and college-readiness standardized tests (like the SAT and AP Literature exam). Or they might have limited time as instructors to evaluate forms of writing that deviate from non-traditional Western forms. It was highly encouraging to brainstorm strategies for overcoming these challenges so as to affirm the various language uses and habits of our diverse student bodies.
Overall, I am grateful to have had the opportunity to be in community with fellow writing educators and learn about the rewards and challenges that come with working in educational settings that differ from my own. It was inspiring to know that despite our differences, we all share a passion for helping students develop their unique voices. I'm thrilled to announce that today is the official publication date for Latino Literature: An Encyclopedia for Students (edited by Christina Soto van der Plas and Lacie Rae Buckwalter Cunningham, published by ABC-Clio), a new resource that provides an essential overview of the major literary works produced by Latinx authors alongside related thematic concepts. I contributed an entry to this encyclopedia in which I discuss the life and works of Los Angeles-based Chicano author/activist Luis Javier Rodriguez, whose memoir Always Running: La Vida Loca, Gang Days in L.A. (1993) was the focus of my first essay of literary criticism. If you would like to read more about how Rodriguez uses his writings (which include memoirs, poetry collections, and short stories) to reduce gang violence, build Chicanx community and identity, and support at-risk youth, click here to download the full copy of my entry.
This past week, I had the pleasure of attending and presenting at the 138th meeting of the Modern Language Association, which took place from June 5-8, 2023 in San Francisco. This annual gathering brought together thousands of teachers and scholars dedicated to the study of language and literature to share their ideas and research related to the presidential theme "Working Conditions." According to the conference organizers, this theme invited conversation about the following questions:
Throughout the convention, I participated in two sessions focused on exploring the various kinds of labor that I perform as a university writing instructor and literary scholar. First, I presented a talk entitled "Cultivating Antiracist Praxis in a First-Year English Writing Classroom" for a pedagogy-focused panel, "Teaching Identity and Anti-Racism in Global Modern Languages Classrooms." In this talk, I provided an overview of how I teach my first-year course, “Writing for Liberation: The Rhetoric of Antiracism," in the Program in Writing and Rhetoric at Stanford. I sought to answer the question of how instructors of English language and writing might cultivate a commitment to antiracist reading, writing, and research practices in undergraduate students through curricular content. I explained how I have designed my course with two critical goals in mind: first, to show students how white language supremacy dominates rhetorical production in U.S. society and second, to equip them with the critical frameworks necessary to challenge such white language supremacy in their own work as writers and researchers. I encountered an unusual situation when I arrived to deliver this talk. Given the historic Bay Area storms taking place at the time of the conference, none of my fellow panelists were able to attend. This meant that I was the sole presenter in front of an audience of over 30 educators and scholars. Due to this unexpected format change, I ended up delivering a stand-alone talk and leading a dynamic Q&A that lasted over an hour. The audience asked powerful questions about how to dig deeper into the work of building inclusive and antiracist writing pedagogy, and I ended up having one of my most memorable and fun conferencing experiences. Fortunately, my second panel, "(Auto)biographies of/as Work," was attended by all of the expected participants, including a scholar who was videoconferencing in from Turkey. Organized by the MLA Life Writing division and presided over by Laurie McNeill (University of British Columbia), this panel sought to consider how forms of autobiography capture, create, and/or critique experiences and conditions of work and labor, as well as how authors view the work of memoir. I delivered a talk titled "Testifying, Witnessing, and Mourning: Care-Based Labor in the AIDS Memoir," which presented research from a chapter of my current book manuscript. In this talk, I read Dr. Abraham Verghese's memoir My Own Country: A Doctor’s Story (1994) as a critical work of care-based literary labor that chronicles his work as an infectious disease specialist in the U.S. South during the 1980s AIDS crisis and seeks to challenge damaging fear-based approaches to managing this epidemic by modeling a contrasting approach rooted in empathy. I was joined by Rüstem Ertug Altinay (Kadir Has University), who presented on queer autobiographical Turkish literature, Deborah Cohler (San Francisco State University), who presented on memoirs written by military spouses, and Kimberly Hall (Wofford College), who presented on memoirs authored by women employees of Silicon Valley tech companies. Taken together, our talks painted a fascinating picture of the powerful work that autobiography can do to build community, expose damaging cultural practices, reclaim identity and agency, and deconstruct notions of what counts as "labor." In addition to delivering these presentations, I enjoyed attending many other riveting panels, reconnecting with former colleagues from UC Santa Barbara and Cal Poly, SLO, and visiting with my book editor. After kicking off the new year in such an invigorating way, I am excited to bring back what I learned into my research and teaching this winter quarter.
I am thrilled to announce that this week I began a new appointment as a Career-Track Lecturer in the Program in Writing and Rhetoric at Stanford University. I am grateful to be joining such an intellectually dynamic program with an inspiring mission to support the development of all Stanford undergraduate students into ethically minded and critically thoughtful writers and speakers. I'm especially excited about the course I'll be teaching during the 2020-21 academic year, Writing for Liberation: The Rhetoric of Antiracism. The most recent edition of the Program in Writing and Rhetoric's newsletter announces my addition to the program along with an incredible cohort of seven other Career-Track Lecturers. Check it out to read more!
Yesterday I participated in Cal Poly's 4th annual Inclusion Starts With Me Teach In, which is a day full of workshops, panels, and events related to diversity, inclusion, and social justice. Since coming to Cal Poly, I have participated in this event every year. (You can read about my experiences at the 3rd annual Teach In here and the 2nd annual Teach In here.) I served on a panel called "Perspectives from Cal Poly's Multiracial Community," which brought together members of the Cal Poly community who identify as multiracial or multiethnic. I was joined by Dr. Jennifer Teramoto Pedrotti (Associate Dean for Diversity and Curriculum in the College of Liberal Arts), Kari Mansager (Director of Diversity, Inclusion, and Outreach at University Housing), Alyiah Gonzales (English student), and Ashley Calloway (biochemistry student). We enjoyed a robust conversation that covered a variety of topics, such as how our racial identities shift depending on time, space, and context; what assumptions people often make about our racial identities; how our family impacts the development of our multiracial identities; and what resources we have used to help with the development of our multiracial identities. Update on 2/21/20: I'm delighted to share that our panel was featured in a Cal Poly News Report article about the Teach-In, which includes a quotation from me about the event.
For the past three weeks, I have had a severe case of laryngitis and have conducted all of my professional responsibilities, including teaching, holding office hours, and participating in meetings, in silence. This challenge has been deeply humbling and has made me highly aware of how much I depend on my voice. I thought I would take a moment to write about my endeavors over the past few weeks, particularly the experience of teaching in person without a voice. I developed a sore throat and cough on January 13th that led me to lose my voice for three weeks due to severe inflammation of the vocal cords. During my recovery, it was necessary for me to modify my teaching strategies so that I could still deliver my curriculum. During the week of January 20th, I canceled my classes and asked my students to participate in an online peer review activity, which involved giving and receiving feedback on their first paper drafts. When my voice had still not returned the following week, I knew I had to figure out a new way to hold classes. Starting the week of January 27th, I returned physically to the classroom and used a mixture of strategies to lead class without speaking. I'm pleased to share that these modifications were successful, and I have been able to keep my class on schedule, with no significant reduction to the material. Here is a brief catalogue of the techniques I used. Prepared Messages on PowerPoint Slides Before class, I decided on the key instructions and prompts I wanted to convey during class time and presented them in large text on PowerPoint slides. I used these PowerPoint messages to inform my students about the day's agenda, to explain instructions before new activities, and to provide transitions from one activity to the next. Here is the first slide from the PowerPoint I used on January 27th. Clapping
To get the attention of my students when they were engrossed in small group discussion, I would clap three times. When they heard me clap, they would clap three times in response. We would continue this back-and-forth until everyone was clapping and had quieted down, and then we would be able to resume as a large group. This strategy was highly effective in enabling me to get my students' attention and keep us on schedule as we moved from one activity to the next. Online Lectures and Videos During a typical class meeting, I usually spend some time providing a mini-lecture that offers historical context about a course text or explains some theoretical concepts to my students. Instead of delivering these lectures out loud, I posted written lectures on our course website. During class time, I asked students (through written directions on the PowerPoint) to access this written lecture material and read silently to themselves. Students could access the course website from a technological device (such as a smart phone, tablet, or laptop). If they did not have a device in class with them, they could pair up with a classmate to read together. My written lectures included text, images, and videos, so students could receive the information in a few different modalities. Typing on Empty Slides during Q&A and Discussion Whenever my students finished reviewing online lecture material, I displayed a blank PowerPoint slide on the projector and asked them if they had any questions. As students raised their hands and asked for clarification on specific concepts that had been introduced in the lecture material, I typed out my answers in a large font size so that the words were visible to all students. Although the pace of conversation was slower because I needed to type out all of my responses, we were still able to get through many robust Q&A sessions this way. Small Group Work At various moments during the class, I asked students to participate in a group activity or converse in small groups to explore a specific concept. I was able to indirectly lead discussion by preparing questions and prompts for my students to discuss in small groups. This allowed the students to take ownership over their learning by close reading passages together and collaboratively deepening their understanding of key concepts. As students discussed, they typed out their answers in a shared Google document, which we later reviewed as a large class while group representatives explained their answers and ideas. While I still much prefer to vocalize my ideas rather than type them out, the experience of teaching without a voice was challenging but thrilling. Many of my students told me that they really appreciated my efforts to provide quality instruction despite my laryngitis. I am pleased that I was able to conduct class effectively despite the new challenges I faced and that my students were able to stay engaged in learning. I feel affirmed that I am innovative and flexible as an educator and am capable of teaching under rather unusual circumstances. Yesterday I entered the classroom with a voice, though not fully healed, for the first time in weeks, and it was an incredible feeling to be greeted by my students with cheers and applause and to be able to converse with them once again. I'm very grateful to them for showing me so much patience over the last few weeks and to have had this unusual experience, which taught me a lot about my own pedagogical abilities and about my students' deep commitment to learning. Yesterday marked the end of another academic year at Cal Poly with a successful weekend of commencement activities. I enjoyed participating in several events to celebrate our graduating seniors. The first event was the College of Liberal Arts Student Awards Reception on the afternoon of Friday, June 14th, where one of my students, Natalie Truong, was named the Outstanding Graduating Senior in English. Since Natalie had identified me as a faculty member who made a significant impact on her academic experience at Cal Poly, I was invited to accompany her on stage as she received her award. Natalie has taken two of my classes over the past two years and completed her senior project under my supervision. In the fall, she will begin law school at UC Davis. I am so proud of her, and I know that she has a bright future ahead! Below are some pictures from the ceremony. The second event that I participated in was the Asian Pacific Islander Commencement, a ceremony to honor our graduating API students, which took place on the evening of Friday, June 14th. I was joined by other members of the Asian Pacific Islander Faculty and Staff Association (APIFSA) to support these students. The last event I participated in was the English Department's commencement ceremony, which took place on Sunday, June 16th. This was a bitter sweet ceremony, as it marked the last time I would see many of my graduating senior English students. As I said goodbye to my students, many of whom are going on to begin incredible careers and enroll in top-tier graduate programs, I was reminded of how much I value being an educator and having the opportunity to work so closely with the next generation of young minds. Here are a few pictures from the ceremony. This 2018-19 academic year, I have been serving as one of 22 faculty mentors in the BEACoN (Believe, Educate & Empower, Advocate, Collaborate, Nurture) Research and Mentorship Program, which pairs students from underrepresented backgrounds with faculty researchers to conduct research in their field of interest. The goal of this program is to teach underrepresented students about the process of conducting research while also giving faculty critical support to achieve their research goals.
In Fall 2018, I selected Mustafa Siddiqui, a second-year student in the comparative ethnic studies major, out of a competitive applicant pool to be my student research assistant. Throughout the winter and spring quarters, Mustafa has provided me with invaluable research support as I worked on several writing projects, including an article for an academic journal, a conference paper, and my current book manuscript. Mustafa has helped me by conducting literature searches to find relevant sources, reading selected sources and compiling annotated bibliographies, and reviewing drafts of my writing. Yesterday Mustafa and I attended the annual BEACoN Research Symposium, where we presented a poster summarizing our research. This event provided us with the opportunity not only to share our research, but also to learn about the many other exciting and inspiring projects being conducted by other faculty-student research pairs across campus. I was impressed to see that these projects reflect cutting-edge research from a variety of different disciplines, including architecture, biological sciences, civil and environmental engineering, communication studies, English, ethnic studies, industry management, history, kinesiology and public health, landscape architecture, marketing, physics, psychology and child development, education, and social sciences. I feel grateful to be a part of this inspiring community of faculty and student researchers. After months of planning and organizing, this week I hosted a day of programming commemorating Japanese American internment during World War II. Tuesday, February 19th marked the 77th anniversary of President Roosevelt's signing of Executive Order 9066, which authorized the forced incarceration of 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry. In honor of this Day of Remembrance, I organized a film screening of a 2017 film documentary about the internment experience, And Then They Came For Us (directed by Abby Ginzberg), on Wednesday, February 20th. I also invited to campus one of the people featured in the film, Dr. Satsuki Ina, who was born in the Tule Lake incarceration camp and is currently an activist and professor emeritus from California State University, Sacramento. The first event was a luncheon hosted by the Asian Pacific Islander Faculty and Staff Association (APIFSA), during which Satsuki gave a moving talk about intergenerational trauma caused by Japanese American internment, which was titled "Healing Community Trauma: Looking Beyond the Victim." As a former internee who was personally affected by internment and as a psychotherapist who specializes in the treatment of community-based historical trauma, Satsuki provided an expert perspective on this critical topic. Her talk, which took place as APIFSA members enjoyed delicious food catered by Oki Momo Asian Grill, inspired robust discussion during the Q&A session that followed. Here is a flyer of the event, followed by some photos taken during the event. The second event was a public film screening of the documentary film And Then They Came For Us, which attracted over 200 audience members. This film offers a moving account of Japanese American internment and brings the history of this egregious violation of civil liberties into the present day by making critical comparisons between the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II and the abuses of Muslim Americans during the War on Terror. After the film screening, I spoke with Satsuki about the film and its relevance for today's political climate. Then I opened up the conversation to the audience, several of whom were former internees and many of whom knew family or friends who had been incarcerated. During Q&A, Satsuki shared about her present-day activist efforts to protest the detention of migrant children at the border. The conversation was so rich that several people stayed to talk with Satsuki long after the official end of the event. Here is a flyer of the film screening, followed by some photos taken during the event. After a long day of programming, Satsuki and I headed to dinner with a few members of the APIFSA, where we enjoyed continuing the conversation over a delicious meal. Looking back over today's events, I can't help but feel inspired and moved. I am so grateful to have the support of the Cal Poly community, particularly the College of Liberal Arts, the English Department, the APIFSA, and the Kennedy Library, to put on programs that enrich our knowledge of the United States' racial history and that represent the experiences of underrepresented communities. I will never forget Satsuki's visit to our campus this week, which has helped stimulate important conversations within our community about the long history of violent detention in the United States and its continued legacy today.
Today I participated in three panels for Cal Poly's 3rd annual Inclusion Starts With Me Teach In, which is a day full of workshops, panels, and events related to diversity, inclusion, and social justice. After participating in the Teach In last year (you can click here to read about that experience), I was delighted to help support this program again this year. The first panel that I participated in was titled "The Social Construction of Race: Reflections from the Cal Poly Multiracial Community" and was co-organized by me and a colleague of mine, Maggie Bodemer, who is a lecturer in the history department. We were joined by Jennifer Teramoto Pedrotti (Associate Dean for Diversity & Curriculum in the College of Liberal Arts), Kari Mansager (Program Director of the Office of University Diversity and Inclusion), and Alyiah Gonzales (an English major and one of my students who also works in the Cross Cultural Centers). The panel was a huge success, prompting rich discussion about multiracial identity and the history of race as a socially constructed concept in the United States. I was happy to see that we attracted a large audience of several dozens of people. The second panel was titled "Crazy Rich Asians Discussion: Asian American Representation in Film and Popular culture" and organized by the leadership of the Asian Pacific Islander Faculty and Staff Association. I was joined on the panel by Jennifer Teramoto Pedrotti, Grace Yeh (Professor of Ethnic Studies), Lisa Kawamura (Lecturer of Communication Studies), and Nisa Morey (Lecturer of Chemistry). We filled the room with close to 200 audience members who were eager to talk about the representation of Asian Americans in Crazy Rich Asians. Below is a picture of us panelists in the middle of discussion. The last panel was titled "Cluster Hiring and Organizational Diversity: A Report from the First Year" and organized by Jennifer Teramoto Pedrotti. The panel brought together most of the faculty who were hired as part of the diversity cluster search put on by the College of Liberal Arts in 2017. I was joined on the panel by Farah Basel Al-Nakib (Assistant Professor of History), Jay Bettergarcia (Assistant Professor of Psychology and Child Development), Joan Meyers (Assistant Professor of Social Sciences), Emily Ryalls (Assistant Professor of Communication Studies), and Amber Williams (Assistant Professor of Psychology and Child Development). We had a great conversation about the success of cluster hiring and the sense of community we have formed as new assistant professors joining the Cal Poly community at the same time. This winter quarter at Cal Poly, I am teaching ENGL 346: Ethnic American Literature with a significant service-learning component. My students will partner with one of four local nonprofit organizations, the San Luis Obispo chapter of Literacy for Life, the El Camino Homeless Organization (ECHO), the Food Bank Coalition of San Luis Obispo County (SLO Food Bank), and the San Luis Obispo Noor Foundation, to create blog posts, newsletter articles, and other forms of written media that promote the important work that these organizations are doing in the community. The goal of this project is for students to engage in community work while applying rhetorical skills to promote social justice.
Today, representatives from each partner organization visited our class to talk about the services that these nonprofits provide. Students had an opportunity to ask questions and learn more about the various programs and efforts run by these organizations. After hearing from each representative, my students signed up to work with one of these organizations. By the end of class, all of my students were matched with the organization of their choice and excited to get started on their service-learning project. Below is a picture of me posing with the four representatives who visited our class. In Fall 2017, I was awarded a fellowship sponsored by two Cal Poly organizations, the Center for Service in Action and the Center for Teaching, Learning, and Technology, to design and teach a service learning course during the 2018-19 school year. I teamed up with Grace Yeh, a professor in the Ethnic Studies department, to re-design two of our courses that are most similar in content, my Ethnic American Literature course and her Global Origins of U.S. Cultures course. Since then, we have been hard at work envisioning our service learning projects and reaching out to different non-profit organizations in the San Luis Obispo community to learn about their services and propose a possible partnership.
This morning the Center for Service in Action put on a showcase to celebrate our efforts. All of the faculty fellows were asked to create a poster describing the vision for our course re-designs that we could display during the showcase. I found this exercise extremely useful for helping me to identify and articulate the central goals of my course re-design. The showcase was a success, attracting many visitors and giving all of us fellows an opportunity to see how each other's course re-designs are coming along. I am getting excited to put this service learning course into action, which will happen in Winter 2019, when I am next scheduled to teach Ethnic American Literature. Yesterday was a very exciting day at Cal Poly. All across campus, faculty, staff, and students participated in the 2nd annual Inclusion Starts With Me Teach In, which is a day of programming dedicated to topics related to diversity, inclusion, and social justice. The day's events culminated in a talk by the renowned author and scholar Viet Thanh Nguyen, who spoke about his Pulitzer Prize-winning debut novel, The Sympathizer (2015).
I contributed to the Teach In by co-facilitating a workshop on critical refugee studies with my colleague Maggie Bodemer, a lecturer in the history department who specializes in the history of Southeast Asia. We chose this topic to honor Nguyen’s presence on campus, since many of his recently published works explore the impact of the war in Vietnam on Southeast Asian refugee communities. The workshop was a great success, attracting several dozens of students and faculty and prompting robust discussion about the field of critical refugee studies, as well as the history and memory of the war in Vietnam. After facilitating this workshop, I had the incredible honor of meeting Nguyen during a small meet-and-greet with a few students and faculty members. I have long admired Nguyen’s work as one of the foremost scholars in the field of Asian American literary studies. I remember reading Nguyen’s first monograph, Race and Resistance: Literature and Politics in Asian America (2002), with great interest as a Ph.D. student. This past year, I was riveted as I read The Sympathizer, which recounts the history of the 1975 fall of Saigon and its aftermaths from the perspective of a communist spy in the South Vietnamese army. You can probably imagine how excited I was to meet the mastermind behind these great works in person! In anticipation of Nguyen's visit to our campus, I assigned the students in my Asian American literature course this quarter a couple of stories from Nguyen’s recently published short story collection, The Refugees (2017). My students were thrilled to learn that they would have the opportunity to meet the author of the stories they were reading this week. I am grateful that my students were able not only to read and discuss these wonderful literary works in my classroom, but also to hear directly from the author himself, who was able to enrich their understanding of the material by providing even more insights about his writings. Below is a flyer for Nguyen’s talk and some photos that were taken during the event. |
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