Keohane Distinguished Lecture: Let's Not Celebrate Asian Americans, Let's Fight for Them
Where: The Carolina Inn - Hill Ballroom
When: October 27, 7:30-8:30

National recognition and respect of Asian Americans is surging, whether in politics, media, the corporate sphere or elsewhere. And yet, racial violence against Asian Americans is rising as well. How can we make sense of this seeming contradiction? Rather than seeing these as opposing trends, it makes more sense to understand how they are connected. To combat anti-Asian violence, we need to get at the root of what’s behind it. Celebrating Asian Americans will not adequately meet that goal. This lecture is the first in a three-part series of lectures that will take place across this academic year.  

Join Pawan Dhingra, Aliki Perroti and Seth Frank ’55 Professor of U.S. Immigration Studies at Amherst College and the 2022-2023 Nannerl Keohane Distinguished Visiting Professor at UNC-Chapel Hill and Duke University, for the 2022 Keohane Distinguished Lecture at the Carolina Inn on October 27 at 7:30 p.m.

AADS Brown Bag: Minor Aesthetics
When: October 12, 12pm
Where: Pink Parlor, East Duke Building 
 

“Minor Aesthetics: Queer, Asian, Diasporic” is a Faculty Working Group sponsored by the John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute at Duke University. Co-convened by Dr. Anna Storti (GSF) and Dr. Yun Emily Wang (Music), we seek to create a space of provocation, beginning with the premise that artistic interventions via the sonic, the visual, and the tactile hold potential for deeper attention to the unseen, disavowed, and kinetic registers of racialized queer life. This potential, we wager, responds to calls from recent scholarship on race, sexuality, and aesthetics, which approach the study of sensation and materiality in ways unhooked from Western liberalism and US exceptionalism. Thinking across different methodological approaches, the conveners call forth an aesthetics-as-ethics, a craft of theorizing liberation from the vantage point of the aesthetic. Throughout 2022, we have sought to forge an intellectual hub for those working across aesthetic inquiry, queer studies, and Asian American and Diaspora Studies. This Brown Bag is part of a larger symposium -- register for the Minor Aesthetics Symposium here! 

 

[RESCHEDULED] AADS Brown Bag: Devouring the Inscrutable: Eating Asians and the Politics of Enfleshment
When: Friday, October 21, 12-1PM
Where: Pink Parlor, East Duke Building or on Zoom  
 

This talk juxtaposes and contextualizes the phenomenon of Asian “eating” content (such as popular Korean “eating broadcasts” or Mukbang videos, Asian diasporic food writing, and daily eating vlogs) alongside the historic figure of the “starving/hungry” Asian, a lingering trope from mid-twentieth century famine rhetoric and nutritional literature. By analyzing literary, visual, and performance archives, I argue that for Asian/American and diasporic subjects, food and eating become mediums through which bodies that are otherwise inscribed as mechanical, surplus, or inscrutable are able to find expressive modes for feelings of love, regret, forgiveness, and sympathy. As these affectively imbued biological processes of feeding, eating, and digesting come to mediate complex, intergenerational feelings, food and the Asiatic body have also been mobilized in the imperial American repertoire as a site of incongruity and terror. Thinking through the scalar and lingering affects of the stomach, this talk asks us to consider: how does Asiatic flesh travel and adhere through points of contact with its own biological processes–of weight-gain and loss, hunger and fullness, illness and aging? This is a hybrid event! Register to join on Zoom via this link. 
 

Minor Aesthetics Symposium
When: October 12 - October 13 
Where: East Duke Parlors
 

Join the Minor Aesthetics Faculty Working Group for a two-day symposium on queer, Asian, and diasporic art with events including a performance, artist talks, a research showcase, AADS Brown Bag, and a closing roundtable. The symposium features two artists-in-residence, Chanel Matsunami Govreau-a Brooklyn-based artist who explores the intersections of monstrous femininity, queerness, and Japanese-American identity-and Jae Quisol-a Charlotte-based artist who brings the force of history and cultural power to intentional songwriting and collaborative experimentation. The Minor Aesthetics Working Group is convened by Dr. Anna Storti (GSF) and Dr. Yun Emily Wang (Music), with support from GSF, Music, FHI, AADS, and the Duke Endowment. RSVP here and find the program and schedule here!

Halloween Yellowface: Racial Impersonation and Dressing Up
When: Thursday, October 20 3-4:30PM  
Where: Pink Parlor, East Duke

Are Halloween costumes merely for fun, or are they racist? Geisha costumes, Fu Manchu mustaches, and coned Chinese hats -- these and other markers of Asianness have been part of the Halloween culture in the U.S. for decades. Even in the year 2022, one can still purchase these items online, and many wear them for fun. Such dress-ups are often condemned as being racist and disrespectful, although it is unclear exactly what aspect of the racial impersonation is problematic. Drawing on the recently published book Made-Up Asians: Yellowface During the Exclusion Era, this talk provides a historical overview of racial impersonation in the U.S. and examines how it evolved as a form of middle-class amateur entertainment and social amusement. Using the term "private yellowface," Dr. Lee's talk focuses on the representation of East Asians by non-Asian performers and analyzes why it has persisted through U.S. history. Dr. Lee is a professor of Theater Studies, International Comparative Studies, and History, and is the Direction of the Asian American and Diaspora Studies program. 
 

New Day Film Festival
When: October 21, October 22 
Where: Rubenstein Arts Center

The New Day Film Festival feature film, "Far East, Deep South," sheds light on the history of Chinese immigrants in the American South and the discrimination they faced during the late 1800s to mid-1900s through the emotional journey of Charles Chiu and his family as they travel from California to Mississippi to find answers about Charles’ father, K.C. Lou. "Far East, Deep South" will be shown at 7pm on October 21st. New Day will also be showing "Cruisin' J-Town," a film about the roots of the popular jazz fusion band Hiroshima, on October 22nd at 2pm.