Asian American Studies Program

Spring Quarter Guest Speakers

Scott Kurashige Lunch Talk

The alarming rise in anti-Asian violence during the COVID-19 pandemic provoked a new wave of Asian American protests and media visibility. Amid this development, a new round of interethnic tensions also arose, largely in response to sensational accounts of Asian Americans being attacked in public by Black assailants followed by criticism of Asian American advocates embracing policing and criminalization in a manner that invoked anti-Black racism.

Drawing from his new book, American Peril: The Violent History of Anti-Asian Racism, Scott Kurashige will breakdown some of the most troubling incidents from the recent past and show how community organizers drew on a legacy of Black-Asian solidarity to offer non-carceral solutions that address the root causes of inequity and oppression.

Lunch and a copy of Scott Kurashige's new book, American Peril, will be provided at the event with an RSVP!

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We Were the Scenery Film Screening

Filmed on location in Vietnam, the Philippines, and Long Beach, CA, We Were the Scenery is a short documentary based on the experiences of Cathy Linh Che’s parents, two Vietnam War refugees who, while in a refugee camp in the Philippines, were utilized as background extras in Apocalypse Now.

Join us for a film screening and conversation with Cathy Linh Che (writer) and Jess X. Snow (cinematographer) about their Oscar-nominated short, and how film can serve as a powerful tool for telling stories about war, migration, and displacement. The event will also include a screening of Jess X. Snow’s short film Roots That Reach Towards the Sky and a reading from Cathy Linh Che’s National Book Award Finalist poetry collection, Becoming Ghost.

Film Screening: Tuesday, May 19th, 5-6:30pm @ Harris 108

Coffee Hour with Cathy Linh Che and Jess X. Snow: Tuesday, May 19th, 2:30-3:30pm @ Crowe 1-132

RSVP!