Episodes

  • Immigration Realities: Challenging Common Misperceptions

    Immigration Realities: Challenging Common Misperceptions
    Sep 19 2024
    Today’s book is: Immigration Realities: Challenging Common Misperceptions (Columbia UP, 2024), by Ernesto Castaneda and Carina Cione, which is a practical, evidence-based primer on immigrants and immigration. Each chapter debunks a frequently encountered claim and answers common questions. Presenting the latest findings and decades of interdisciplinary research in an accessible way, Dr. Castañeda and Carina Cione emphasize the expert consensus that immigration is vital to the United States and many other countries around the world. Featuring original insights from research conducted in El Paso, Texas, Immigration Realities considers a wide range of places, ethnic groups, and historical eras. It provides the key data and context to understand how immigration affects economies, crime rates, and social welfare systems, and it sheds light on contentious issues such as the safety of the U.S.-Mexico border and the consequences of Brexit. This book is an indispensable guide for all readers who want to counter false claims about immigration and are interested in what the research shows. Our guest is: Dr. Ernesto Castañeda, who is the director of the Immigration Lab and the Center for Latin American and Latino Studies at American University. His books include A Place to Call Home: Immigrant Exclusion and Urban Belonging in New York, Paris, and Barcelona (2018); Building Walls: Excluding Latin People in the United States (2019); and Reunited: Family Separation and Central American Youth Migration (2024). The Immigration Realities co-author is: Carina Cione, who is a sociologist and writer based out of Baltimore. Their work has been featured by the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, Trauma Care, El Paso News, and American University’s Center for Latin American & Latino Studies Working Paper Series. Our host is: Dr. Christina Gessler, who is the producer of the Academic Life podcast. Listeners may enjoy this playlist: We Are Not Dreamers: Undocumented Scholars Theorize Undocumented Life in the United States We Take Our Cities With Us Secret Harvests The Ungrateful Refugee The Translator's Daughter Where Is Home? Who Gets Believed: When the Truth Isn't Enough Welcome to Academic Life, the podcast for your academic journey—and beyond! You can support the show by posting, assigning and sharing episodes. Join us again to learn from more experts inside and outside the academy, and around the world. Missed any of the 225+ Academic Life episodes? Find them here. And thank you for listening! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/asian-american-studies
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    1 hr and 9 mins
  • Sharon M. Quinsaat, "Insurgent Communities: How Protests Create a Filipino Diaspora" (U Chicago Press, 2024)

    Sharon M. Quinsaat, "Insurgent Communities: How Protests Create a Filipino Diaspora" (U Chicago Press, 2024)
    Sep 9 2024
    When people migrate and settle in other countries, do they automatically form a diaspora? In Insurgent Communities: How Protests Create a Filipino Diaspora (U Chicago Press, 2024), Sharon M. Quinsaat explains the dynamic process through which a diaspora is strategically constructed. Quinsaat looks to Filipinos in the United States and the Netherlands—examining their resistance against the dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos, their mobilization for migrants’ rights, and the construction of a collective memory of the Marcos regime—to argue that diasporas emerge through political activism. Social movements provide an essential space for addressing migrants’ diverse experiences and relationships with their homeland and its history. A significant contribution to the interdisciplinary field of migration and social movements studies, Insurgent Communities illuminates how people develop collective identities in times of social upheaval. Michael O. Johnston, Ph.D. is a Assistant Professor of Sociology at William Penn University. He is the author of The Social Construction of a Cultural Spectacle: Floatzilla (Lexington Books, 2023) and Community Media Representations of Place and Identity at Tug Fest: Reconstructing the Mississippi River (Lexington Books, 2022). His general area of study is in the areas of social construction of experience, identity, and place. He is currently conducting research on the relationship between identity and place in the construction of neighborhood development. To learn more about Michael O. Johnston you can go to his website, Google Scholar, Twitter @ProfessorJohnst, or by email at johnstonmo@wmpenn.edu. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/asian-american-studies
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    58 mins
  • In the Garden Behind the Moon: A Memoir of Loss, Myth, and Memory

    In the Garden Behind the Moon: A Memoir of Loss, Myth, and Memory
    Sep 5 2024
    Alexandra Chan thinks she has life figured out until, in the Year of the Ram, the death of her father—her last parent—brings her to her knees, an event seemingly foretold in Chinese mythology. Today’s book is: In The Garden Behind the Moon: A Memoir of Loss, Myth, and Magic (Flashpoint Books, 2024), by Dr. Alexandra Chan, who is a left-brained archaeologist and successful tiger daughter. But she finds her logical approach to life fails her in the face of profound grief. Slowly, painfully, wondrously, she discovers that her father and ancestors have left threads of renewal in the artifacts and stories of their lives. Through a long-lost interview conducted by Roosevelt’s Federal Writers’ Project, a basket of war letters written from the Burmese jungle, a box of photographs, her world travels, and a deepening relationship to her art, this archaeologist makes her greatest discovery to date: the healing power of enchantment. In an epic story that travels from prerevolution China to the South under Jim Crow, from the Pacific theater of WWII to Iceland, and beyond, Alexandra Chan takes us on a journey to meaning in the wake of devastating loss, sharing the insights and tools that allow her to rebuild her life and resurrect her spirit. In the Garden Behind the Moon is a captivating family portrait and an urgent call to awaken to the magic and wonder of daily life. Our guest is: Dr. Alexandra A. Chan, who is a mom, archaeologist, photographer, painter and writer. She is the author of Slavery in the Age of Reason: Archaeology at a New England Farm, and In The Garden Behind the Moon: A Memoir of Loss, Myth, and Magic, as well as journal articles and book chapters about the archaeology of northern slavery, early African America, and questions of race, place, identity, and becoming. She lives with her husband, her two sons, and their menagerie of animals in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Our host is: Dr. Christina Gessler, who is the producer of the Academic Life podcast. She holds a PhD in history, which she uses to explore what stories we tell and what happens to those we never tell. Listeners may enjoy this memoir playlist: The Translator's Daughter We Take Our Cities With Us Whiskey Tender Secret Harvests The Things We Didn't Know Welcome to Academic Life, the podcast for your academic journey—and beyond! You can help support the show by posting, assigning or sharing episodes. Join us again to learn from more experts inside and outside the academy, and around the world. Missed any of the 200+ Academic Life episodes? Find them all here. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/asian-american-studies
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    1 hr and 3 mins
  • Sarah Miller-Davenport, "Gateway State: Hawai’i and the Cultural Transformation of American Empire" (Princeton UP, 2019)

    Sarah Miller-Davenport, "Gateway State: Hawai’i and the Cultural Transformation of American Empire" (Princeton UP, 2019)
    Sep 1 2024
    One of my talking points when hanging out with my fellow diplomatic historians is the painful absence of scholarship on Hawaii. Too many political histories treat Hawaii’s statehood as a kind of historical inevitability, an event that was bound to pass the moment the kingdom was annexed. As I would frequently pontificate, “nobody has unpacked the imperial history of the islands in sufficient detail, nor the fact that their political fate diverged sharply from a number of other possessions.” For better and for worse, Sarah Miller-Davenport has robbed me of this particular talking point by writing a new book on the process of Hawaiian statehood, American imperialism and its relationship to mainland politics and society shortly after statehood. Gateway State: Hawai’i and the Cultural Transformation of American Empire (Princeton University Press, 2019) takes a close look at some of the narratives that have grown up around the islands and unpacks them. She notes that the process of becoming a state was not a foregone conclusion and was in many ways predicated on Hawaii acting as a gatekeeper to Asia. She also notes that while the island’s racism was less fixed in certain ways than mainland racial norms, racism persisted in more subtle forms on the island. What emerges is a close look at how multiculturalism in service of egalitarianism can nevertheless be adapted to imperial norms. Zeb Larson is a recent graduate of The Ohio State University with a PhD in History. His research deals with the anti-apartheid movement in the United States. To suggest a recent title or to contact him, please send an e-mail to zeb.larson@gmail.com. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/asian-american-studies
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    59 mins
  • Tracy Pintchman, "Goddess Beyond Boundaries: Worshipping the Eternal Mother at a North American Hindu Temple" (Oxford UP, 2023)

    Tracy Pintchman, "Goddess Beyond Boundaries: Worshipping the Eternal Mother at a North American Hindu Temple" (Oxford UP, 2023)
    Aug 29 2024
    The Parashakthi Temple in Pontiac, Michigan serves as a site of worship for the Hindu goddess Karumariamman, whose origins are in South India. In her American home Karumariamman has assumed the status of Great Goddess, a tantric deity and wonder worker who communicates directly with devotees through dreams, visions, and miracles. Drawing on fifteen years of field work, Tracy Pintchman reveals how the Parashakthi Temple has become a site of theological and ritual innovation. A unique spiritual community, the temple does not simply reproduce Indian goddess traditions, but instead reimagines Hinduism and the Hindu Goddess in the American religious, cultural, and natural landscape. The congregation's faith is grounded in a vision of the Goddess as a breaker of boundaries, including those of race, ethnicity, religion, geography, history, and nationality. Like her congregants, Pintchman suggests, the goddess is emblematic of the qualities of a new immigrant; she embraces the opportunities her new home affords her and refashions herself, but she does not forget her roots, keeping one foot planted in her Indian homeland and another planted firmly in her new land, the United States. In Goddess Beyond Boundaries: Worshipping the Eternal Mother at a North American Hindu Temple (Oxford UP, 2023), Pintchman considers larger issues concerning the creativity of immigrant Hindu communities and the ways in which diaspora contexts facilitate the production of new forms of Hinduism that are made possible by globalization and modern technology. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/asian-american-studies
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    43 mins
  • Christopher B. Patterson and Tara Fickle, "Made in Asia/America: Why Video Games Were Never (Really) about Us" (Duke UP, 2024)

    Christopher B. Patterson and Tara Fickle, "Made in Asia/America: Why Video Games Were Never (Really) about Us" (Duke UP, 2024)
    Aug 24 2024
    Made in Asia/America: Why Video Games Were Never (Really) about Us (Duke UP, 2024) explores the key role video games play within the race makings of Asia/America. Its fourteen critical essays on games, ranging from Death Stranding to Animal Crossing, and five roundtables with twenty Asian/American game makers examine the historical entanglements of games, Asia, and America, and reveal the ways games offer new modes of imagining imperial violence, racial difference, and coalition. Shifting away from Eurocentric, white, masculinist takes on gaming, the contributors focus on minority and queer experiences, practices, and innovative scholarly methods to better account for the imperial circulation of games. Encouraging ambiguous and contextual ways of understanding games, the editors offer an “interactive” editorial method, a genre-expanding approach that encourages hybrid works of autotheory, queer of color theory, and conversation among game makers and scholars to generate divergent meanings of games, play, and “Asian America.” Rudolf Inderst is a professor of Game Design with a focus on Digital Game Studies at the IU International University of Applied Science, department lead for Games at Swiss culture magazine Titel kulturmagazin, editor of “DiGRA D-A-CH Game Studies Watchlist”, a weekly messenger newsletter about Game Culture and curator of @gamestudies at tiktok. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/asian-american-studies
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    41 mins
  • Race, Gender, and the 2024 Presidential Election Cycle

    Race, Gender, and the 2024 Presidential Election Cycle
    Aug 5 2024
    Vice President Kamala Harris is poised to become the Democratic Party’s nominee for president. The path to this nomination and the generation election has been a bit unusual—with President Joe Biden deciding not to pursue re-election but doing so after the primary season has concluded. Thus, there is a rather condensed election season, and Vice President Kamala Harris has worked to bring the Democratic Party together after she received President Biden’s endorsement after he withdrew from the race. Given the changing dynamics of the presidential race, we also find ourselves with an unexpected choice for the presidency, Kamala Harris, a former attorney general for California, a senator from California, a former prosecutor, and now the vice president of the United States. Harris is also bi-racial, of South Asian and Black heritage, and she will be the second woman nominated as the standard bearer for one of the two major political parties in the United States. I invited three experts on presidential politics, gender, and race in American politics to join me to discuss Kamala Harris’s historic and unique run for the presidency. Mary McHugh, Executive Director of Civic and Community Engagement, Stevens Service Learning Center at Merrimack College and member of the Political Science Department at Merrimack, Valeria Sinclair-Chapman, Deputy Director of the American Association for the Advancement of Science SEA Change Program, and professor of political science at Purdue University, and Linda Beail, Professor of Political Science at Point Loma Nazarene University and co-author of the 2012 book, Framing Sarah Palin: Pit Bulls, Puritans, and Politics, all joined the conversation to think about the presidential race, Kamala Harris, race, gender, masculinity, and partisan politics. We cover a lot of ground, including the presentation of masculinity at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee in July, how TikTok and viral memes may influence younger voters, and how Kamala Harris is trying to frame herself and how others are trying to frame her in the course of the abbreviated election cycle. We examine historical contexts for women ascending to office, and how that might be a component of the shifting candidates and how Americans think about elections. We also dive into some of the controversial comments about “crazy cat ladies” and concepts of motherhood, politics, and racial and gendered double binds. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/asian-american-studies
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    52 mins
  • Yiman Wang, "To Be an Actress: Labor and Performance in Anna May Wong's Cross-Media World" (U California Press, 2024)

    Yiman Wang, "To Be an Actress: Labor and Performance in Anna May Wong's Cross-Media World" (U California Press, 2024)
    Aug 4 2024
    Between 1919 and 1961, pioneering Chinese American actress Anna May Wong established an enduring legacy that encompassed cinema, theatre, radio, and American television. Born in Los Angeles, yet with her US citizenship scrutinised due to the Chinese Exclusion Act, Wong—a defiant misfit—innovated nuanced performances to subvert the racism and sexism that beset her life and career. In To Be an Actress: Labor and Performance in Anna May Wong's Cross-Media World (University of California Press, 2024), Dr. Yiman Wang marshals extraordinary archival research and a multifocal approach to illuminate a lifelong labour of performance, creating critical study of Wong's cross-media and transnational career. Viewing Wong as a performer and worker, not just a star, To Be an Actress adopts a feminist decolonial perspective to speculatively meet her as an interlocutor while inviting a reconsideration of racialized, gendered, and migratory labour as the bedrock of the entertainment industries. This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose new book focuses on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/asian-american-studies
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    1 hr