Dear colleagues,

Welcome back to the start of a new semester! I am writing to invite you to the inaugural Futures Initiative event of the year: Pedagogies of Dissent for Asian American Studies, which will take place on September 7th at 12-2pm, The Graduate Center, CUNY (365 Fifth Avenue), Room 9207. This is an informal, brownbag lunch discussion in our new Thursday Dialogues series.

“Pedagogies of Dissent for Asian American Studies,” featuring:

• Kandice Chuh, Professor of English and American Studies at the CUNY Graduate Center; President, American Studies Association 
• Frances Tran, Postdoctoral Fellow and the Interim Associate Director of the Futures Initiative at the CUNY Graduate Center & HASTAC@CUNY
• Dorothy Wang, Associate Professor in American Studies and Faculty Affiliate in English at Williams College; 2017-18 Visiting Scholar at the the CUNY Graduate Center on the ACLS Frederick Burkhardt Fellowship

(Learn more about our panelists here)

This roundtable discussion looks forward to this year’s American Studies Association Conference: Pedagogies of Dissent (Nov. 9-12; Chicago, IL), by exploring the frictions, possibilities, and complex entanglements between “pedagogy” and “dissent” for Asian American studies. How might thinking through this particular field illuminate ways of re-approaching Chandra Mohanty’s use of “pedagogies of dissent” to refer to ongoing endeavors to foster opposition and unruly modes of thinking and being as public cultures within the academy? What would creating such public cultures of dissent look like for Asian American studies? And how would we implement these pedagogies through our research and in the classroom? How do we teach dissent in inhospitable institutional spaces and against prevailing stereotypes, like that of the model minority? What obstacles would we confront and what possibilities might be opened up in the process?

These and more questions will be under discussion for the day and we encourage you to add your thoughts and insights to the dialogue by joining us for this informal brownbag lunch. No RSVP necessary.

Please share this event announcement and the attached flyer with anyone who might be interested in attending. I hope to see you there!

Warm regards,

Frances Tran, Ph.D.

Post-Doctoral Fellow & Interim Associate Director

The Futures Initiative, CUNY Graduate Center

ftran@gradcenter.cuny.edu