AAAS Sections

Asian American Feminism

Chair: Kimberly McKee

The section on Asian American Feminisms serves as an intellectual and political space for scholars, students, staff, and community members to engage in explorations of Asian American Feminisms. Members of the section will sponsor informal discussions as well as formal panels, roundtables, and workshops at the AAAS annual conference to feature feminist scholarship and praxis within the academy and beyond.

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Asian Settler Colonialism

Chair: Katherine Achacoso

Our section is a network of scholars and community members who oppose the ongoing project of settler colonialism across the Americas, including in Turtle Island and Oceania. We advance a combination of critical scholarship and activism that maps the intersections between labor, settler colonialism, anti-blackness, environmental justice, and demilitarization. Our group affirms our ethical responsibility to place-based sovereignty movements that remind us of our relationship to land and others.

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CHALIS

Chair: Paul Lai and Eric Hung

Because Asian American materials can be marginalized, overlooked, and subsumed under more general collections in libraries, archives, museums, and galleries, the access to and retrieval of relevant materials can often prove daunting. In order to help make such collections more accessible, the Cultural Heritage, Archives, Library and Information Science (CHALIS) aims to increase dialogue across professions, institutions, and disciplines as a way to empower communities, scholars, and cultural workers in the field of Asian American Studies.

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Comfort Women

Chair: Jinah Kim

This section was created in order to discuss and share reasons behind the creation of the resolution to AAAS, to collect feedback on the resolution, to recruit more AAAS members to help strategize in making sure our resolution will be adopted by AAAS, and to create a community of Asian American Studies scholars who are interested in preserving and promoting the history of “Comfort Women.”

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Critical Adoption Studies

Chair: Kim Park Nelson

Critical Adoption Studies is an emergent area of study within and beyond Asian American Studies that underlines key questions at the core of Asian America Studies scholarship. Our work is concerned with the ways power and knowledge operate to define notions of identity, race, class, gender, sexuality, family, and nation as they relate to transnational adoption from Asia.

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Critical Mixed Race Studies

Chair: Anna Storti

The mission of the Critical Mixed Race Studies section of the AAAS is to emphasize how racial mixing is part of the Asian/American diaspora, history, community, and culture; and to bring visibility to the mixed race Asian American/Pacific Islander communities in our research, conferences, organizations, and creative projects. Section members interested in critical analyses of myriad topics that critique and broaden the field of Asian American Studies by pushing the boundaries between research, digital media, art, and advocacy.

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East of California

Chair: Jason Oliver Chang

East of California is a network of Asian Americanists focused on institutionalizing Asian American Studies outside California, developing regional-specific activities to support research, publications, and teaching at individual and programmatic levels.

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Filipinx and Filipinx American Studies

Chair: Rick Bonus

The purpose of the Filipinx and Filipinx American Studies section is to promote all kinds of scholarship, teaching, and service relevant to our fields in both their local and transnational contexts. Our section seeks to provide coherence among our scholars, teachers, and activists in the U.S. and elsewhere so our activities are enabled, organized, celebrated, and encouraged collaboratively and collectively.

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History

Chair: William Gow ([email protected]) and James Zarsadiaz ([email protected])

The History section will convene scholars trained in history or employing historical methods to foster discussions and organization regarding research projects, teaching approaches, and professional strategies and programs. The section will maintain an online directory of members to facilitate the development of conference panels and provide information about publication and presentation opportunities. Members will also develop strategies for mentoring junior faculty and broadening teaching with APA content to K-12 programs.

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Hmong

Chair: Aline Lo

The field of Hmong American studies has grown significantly during the last decade, with many of us leading certificates and programs dedicated to the field. Members of our section frequently attend AAAS; therefore, the annual AAAS meeting is the ideal place for us to gather to discuss the developments in Hmong American studies scholarship, especially its contributions to Asian American studies and various other disciplines and fields. It's a place to foster and develop mentoring relationships as folks from all levels of (non)academia attend.

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Queer Studies

Chair: Chris A. Eng

In their 1998 collection Q&A, David L. Eng and Alice Hom articulated the critical rubric of “queer Asian American Studies,” forcibly arguing that we must be “unwilling to bifurcate our identities into the racial and the sexual.” The Queer Studies Section of AAAS will serve to collectively contemplate and organize around the productive intimacies and frictions between queer/Asian/America. We aim to generate structures of support and mentorship for scholars working at the intersection of these fields.

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Religion

Chair: Girum Jung

The Religion section supports and develops the field of Religious Studies in Asian American Studies.

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