So this is a "make-up" for missing an event...
I went to the IDAAS senior thesis presentations this afternoon. I was really glad to see that so many people attended! I really enjoyed Amanda Shortall's presentation, which included a short film that she made about her topic (she is a media studies major also...). Her thesis was about suicide in Chinese American women, and how it was such a "damning" thing for women to do in China. I thought it was really interesting. Another presentation by Meagan Tom on the Asian American community here at the 5C's was really enlightening for me. I am a peer mentor, and we work closely with the Asian American Sponsor program at Scripps that she mentioned. That's when I learned about the push for a 5C Asian American center. I assumed it was only a recent thing, and was surpirsed to learn through her talk that it is actually somehting that has been presented since the 1990s! This may be naive of me to say, but I have never really felt a huge sense of Asian American community action here at the 5Cs. Its probably because I am not Asian American, thus I am not privy to information among the inner circles of these organizations. However, I was surprised to learn that there was/is such a wanting for the AASC. Last year I felt like I heard things about it for about a week, and that was it. As Meagan mentioned in her presentation, its difficult becuase of the cycling of student population at the colleges. I think, though, that if this desire were publicized more to the Asian American community as well as the other college communities/organizations, there might be more support and action towards making this goal a reality.
Overall, I thought all the presentations were great and really interesting! Some touched on topics we have discussed in class such as identity, racism and power, agency, etc. The topics were varied, but I think there was something mentioned that almost everyone could understand or find interest in at some point during the talks.
-- Ashley
posted by Ashley @ 6:28 PM
3 Comments:
I also had a chance to attend the senior thesis presentation today. It was wonderful to see the seniors present their work that they have been working on for more than a semester. It was a good way to close the year's work, and in a way, it was sad to realize that these people who have been committed to their work and to the Claremont community will be graduating soon.
I enjoyed all of the presentations, but one that I especially liked was the one presented by Sophia Cheng. She discussed how "Atomik Aztex" by Sesshu Foster and "Tropic of Orange" by Karen Tei Yamashita can and should be read as Asian American literature. She showed an example of the writing style used by Sesshu Foster, and it reminded of some of the books that we read in this class (Perhaps I will include these books on my summer reading list...). Also, I really liked the way she presented.
Overall, though, I thought all of the thesis presentations were interesting, and they inspired me to be more involved with Asian American studies.
I also urge people to go to other senior thesis presentations. You will be surprised how much you can learn from the works of other students!
Helena, like you, I also thought Sophia's thesis was brilliant. Looking at Asian-American literature and transnationalism in an economic and class-based context, and with respect to U.S.-Mexico relations, is revolutionary in the field of Asian-American studies, and especially in the Los Angeles area, is probably more relevant. I had talked to her a bit about this before, and we were discussing the idea that, esp. in LA, within factories and organizations and community groups, a lot of Asian-Americans and Mexican-Americans work side by side and usually for economic issues. And also, the recent immigration reform issues and the May 1 movement and protests were largely seen as U.S.-Mexico border issue, but also applies heavily to Asian-American immigrant communities too. I thought Sophia's expansion of the Asian-American literature "canon" was great and refrshing, and superbly impressive.
I also agree, I enjoyed Sophia's the most because it brought something new. She really explored and broke the idea of what "Asian American literature" should be to open up the field to include more concepts that aren't necessarily considered to be "Asian American issues." When hearing her presentation, it reminded me of how much in class we have been doing the same thing. We have been reading works like Dictee, Dogeaters, etc. that do not read like the canonical novels that are considered to be "great" but yet still say so much through how it is written and what is included and what isn't. overall, i really enjoyed the presentations. I just felt like Sophia's really captured an aspect of our class when discussing why these two books, which aren't considered as AA lit, should be because of the content.
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