Congratulations to 2024 Ethnic Studies Award Recipients

by Keith Miyake Announcements

On June 3, 2024, the Ethnic Studies Department held its annual awards and graduation ceremony. In addition to honoring our graduating undergraduate and graduate students, we had the pleasure of celebrating the 2023–24 award recipients.

Wilmer and Velma Johnson Ethnic Studies Undergraduate Award (Competitive scholarship granted to a rising Sophomore, Junior, or Senior Ethnic Studies Major)

  • Kayla Daniel
  • Blanca Salgado

Dosan Ahn Chang-Ho Award (Junior Ethnic Studies major with the highest overall GPA)

  • Blanca Salgado

Maurice Jackson Award (Graduating Ethnic Studies major with the highest overall GPA)

  • Martie Pablo

Ernesto Galarza Award (Junior Ethnic Studies major in recognition of service to the community)

  • Iris Villalpando

Katherine Saubel Award (Graduating senior who best promotes the preservation of cultural awareness)

  • Sanaa Johnson

Barnett Grier Award (Graduating senior who best promotes ethnic awareness)

  • Adrian Rosas Villagomez

Sister Rosa Marta Zarate Award (Graduating senior major in recognition of service to the community)

  • Cuauhtli Ramos

Outstanding Teaching Assistant Award

  • Jenni Martinez

Edna Bonacich Ethnic Studies Graduate Award (Competitive fellowship for new or continuing Ethnic Studies graduate students who have demonstrated a commitment to the promotion of equity in the workplace)

  • Eliana Buenrostro
  • Pedro Freire

Graduating MA Students

  • Carolina Apodaca-Morales
  • Michelle Rawlings
  • Kelvin Villalta

Graduating PhD Students

  • Guadalupe Arellanes Castro
  • Takahito Tanaka

In Recognition of Service to the Department and Celebrating Retirement

  • Cynthia (Cindy) Redfield

Reminder about Title IX Reporting

Reminder about Title IX Reporting

by Keith Miyake Announcements

The University encourages reporting of sexual violence and sexual harassment. The Title IX Office encourages people to file reports online via their secure portal i-Sight | UC Incident Reporting Form for Harassment and Discrimination.  Reports may be anonymous. When Title IX receives a report, professional staff assess it to decide whether they initiate an investigation or another form of complaint resolution. This assessment process is confidential.  More information about the policy and resources for students who have experienced sexual violence or harassment are available on the Title IX website Title IX, Equal Opportunity and Affirmative Action | (ucr.edu)

Young Oak Kim Center to launch traveling museum on America’s first Koreatown with Mellon Foundation Grant

Young Oak Kim Center to launch traveling museum on America’s first Koreatown with Mellon Foundation Grant

by Nimalan Rajasekar Announcements

UC Riverside has been awarded an $850,000 grant from the Mellon Foundation Humanities in Place to launch a traveling museum showcasing the history of America’s first Koreatown — Pachappa Camp. The museum will preserve and share the story of a community of Korean migrant workers in Riverside who contributed to the city’s citrus development, including Korea’s most influential independence activist, Dosan Ahn Chang Ho.

The traveling exhibition will be presented in collaboration with a consortium of Asian American and civil rights groups based in Riverside, as well as national Korean American community organizations in Washington, D.C., Chicago, San Francisco, and New York. It will highlight the contributions of Korean American labor and provide communities with an opportunity to learn, connect, and grow from this country’s rich narrative.

The three-year grant will allow the program to kick off in San Francisco beginning late 2024, led by Edward Chang, ethnic studies professor and founding director of the Young Oak Kim Center for Korean American Studies at UCR. Strategic counsel will be provided by Daryle Williams, dean of UCR’s College of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences and co-creator of Enslaved.org, who will provide strategic counsel for the overall project and also oversee the digital exhibition component.

Chang, who has been researching Korean American history for over 30 years, said that finding these critical slices of history and highlighting them at a national level is something he had not expected until 2016, when two visiting Korean graduate students helped him translate documents from old Korean to modern Korean language, that he understood the significance of Dosan Ahn Chang Ho’s presence in Riverside. He is particularly interested in sharing the history of Pachappa Camp with youth as a way to bring back history that has been intentionally omitted from textbooks.

More information can be found at the original article, “UCR to launch traveling museum on America’s first Koreatown with Mellon Foundation grant“.

Photo Credit: UCR/Sandra Baltazar Martínez

Desert X 2023: A contemporary art exhibition featuring the work of Professor Gerald Clarke.

Desert X 2023: A contemporary art exhibition featuring the work of Professor Gerald Clarke.

by Nimalan Rajasekar Announcements Events

Desert X is an international contemporary art exhibition that takes place in desert locations and features site-specific installations by acclaimed artists from around the world. The exhibition is produced by The Desert Biennial, a California-based not-for-profit organization with a mission to present public exhibitions of art that engage with the desert, the environment, and indigenous communities. Eleven artists from Europe, North America and South Asia will present poetic and immersive works that span sculpture, painting, writing, architecture, design, film, music, performance and choreography, education, and environmental activism in the exhibition curated by Artistic Director Neville Wakefield and Co-Curator Diana Campbell.

The exhibition examines social and environmental themes with a focus on the changes that give form to a world increasingly shaped by climate crisis, globalism, and the political and economic migrations that follow in their wake. In the exhibition, which builds on social and environmental themes explored in earlier editions, newly-commissioned works make visible, as instruments of self-awareness and devices of wonder, the forces that we exert on the world: how we design our environments, how we live, and the messages we send that reinforce systems that might or might not be beneficial for us. From the local to the global, from schools and roads to global trade routes that define the ebb and flow of goods and many things in-between, infrastructure has subsumed creative ways of being that are inconvenient to forces of power.

Desert X 2023 features the work of Professor Gerald Clarke, who presents a unique piece called Immersion. The installation takes the form of a traditional Cahuilla coiled basket or ‘chi-pat-mal’ scaled to become a giant game board. The goal of reaching the center can only be achieved by correctly answering questions relating to the traditions and histories of the Cahuilla Indians and other sovereign cultures. By gamifying history Clarke sublimates prejudice. At the same time, he reminds us how unattainable these same goals have become for those for whom such knowledge has been forcibly withdrawn.

The exhibition will be on display at sites across the Coachella Valley from March 4–May 7, 2023. Don’t miss this opportunity to see the work of Professor Gerald Clarke and other world-renowned artists. Visit desertx.org for more information.

Grade Withholding Statement in Support of the Academic Workers Strike

Grade Withholding Statement in Support of the Academic Workers Strike

by Keith Miyake Announcements

December 12, 2022

The faculty of the Ethnic Studies Department at the University of California, Riverside supports the academic student workers who remain on strike during this historic and unprecedented statewide action. These academic workers, scholars and teachers in their own right, are asking the university to make good on their requests for a living wage to support their communities and families in the state of California, a state with the historically highest costs of living. They deserve not only a living wage, but equitable coverage of other academic and living expenses. They are also entitled to workplace protections in which exercising their right to protest is not met with threats of police intimidation and violence.

We affirm the right of academic student workers to engage in strike activity, which may include picketing, cancellation of sections, and stopping grading. The ETST Senate faculty overwhelmingly expressed their support to stand with the striking workers and heed their call to withhold grade submissions until the strike ends. Additionally, we assert that it is the university’s responsibility to develop contingency plans to ensure that student degree completion, eligibility, financial aid, and good standing are not impeded by struck labor, including grade submission.

We encourage faculty in other departments at UCR and UC-wide to take a similar stand. Systemic changes within the UC system are long overdue, and we support an imminent future in which this is possible.

Edward Chang
Gerald Clarke
Adrián Félix
Emily Hue
Wesley Y. Leonard
Keith Miyake
Jennifer Nájera

Statement of Support for the UAW Academic Workers Strike

Statement of Support for the UAW Academic Workers Strike

by Keith Miyake Announcements

As faculty in the Department of Ethnic Studies we stand in solidarity with UAW graduate student workers and postdoctoral fellows who are on strike.

We recognize that the university could not fulfill its mission without the labor of its graduate student workers who perform key research, teach classes, grade papers, and provide invaluable support in teaching and mentorship for undergraduate students across the University of California.

Especially given the rapidly rising costs of living around UC communities, graduate student workers deserve a contract that secures a living wage, basic needs, as well as increased job security. We value their demands for a fair contract that is attuned to international workers’ rights and student parents’ rights as well as for greater disability and climate justice.

Ethnic Studies scholars and practitioners are particularly attuned to the critical role that organized labor has played for communities of color to access rights that might otherwise not have been available to them because of their race, gender, language, and/or immigration status. Labor rights have often been the precursor to other kinds of legal rights.

We affirm the right of student workers to engage in lawful strike activity, which may include picketing, cancellation of sections, and stopping grading. We will not engage in retaliation against graduate students based on their participation or non-participation in strike activities in all matters under our direct control, and we oppose unlawful retaliation measures against either striking students or faculty respecting the picket line.

We will respond to undergraduate concerns about the disruption of their education with compassion while affirming the right of graduate students to strike for adequate benefits and compensation. We urge the university to take all measures to protect international students, and we will take all measures in our power to protect our international student workers.

We urge the university to bargain in good faith with the union so that a just and adequate solution may be reached.

We hope that this strike starkly demonstrates to the university administration just how integral graduate student labor is to the UC system.

 

Edward Chang
Gerald Clarke
Adrián Félix
Alfonso Gonzales Toribio
Emily Hue
Wesley Y. Leonard
Alfredo Mirandé
Keith Miyake
Jennifer Nájera
Andrea Smith
Jasmin A. Young

Congratulations to the 2020-2021 Ethnic Studies Undergraduate Student Award Recipients!

Congratulations to the 2020-2021 Ethnic Studies Undergraduate Student Award Recipients!

by Emily Hue Announcements

Michelle Rawlings & Darielle Martin – Wilmer and Velma Johnson Ethnic Studies Undergraduate Award: Competitive scholarship presented annually to a student who best demonstrates their writing aptitude and familiarity with Ethnic Studies concepts

Madison Garcia – Katherine Saubel Award: Presented annually to the graduating senior who best promotes the preservation of cultural awareness

Bibiana Canales – Barnett Grier Award: Presented annually to the graduating senior who best promotes ethnic awareness

Christopher Valdez – Sister Rosa Marta Zarate Award: Presented annually to the graduating senior Ethnic Studies major in recognition of service to the community

Michelle Rawlings & Katianna Warren – Dosan Ahn Chang-Ho Award: Presented annually to the Junior Ethnic Studies major with the highest overall GPA

Manuel Zarate & Bibiana Canales – Sumi Harada Award: Presented annually to the graduating Ethnic Studies joint major with the highest overall GPA

Violetta Price & Alana Pitman -Maurice Jackson Award: Presented annually to the graduating Ethnic Studies major with the highest overall GPA

Naomi Waters – Ernesto Galarza Award: Presented annually to a junior Ethnic Studies major in recognition of service to the community

Spotlight on Prof. Ed Chang’s Research: Uncovering the History of America’s First Koreatown

Spotlight on Prof. Ed Chang’s Research: Uncovering the History of America’s First Koreatown

by Emily Hue Announcements

Jill Cowen at The New York Times highlighted Prof. Ed Chang’s groundbreaking research on Pachappa Camp, the first Koreatown in the U.S., which was located here in Riverside, CA. Excerpt below:

The biggest thing that set Pachappa Camp apart, however, was the fact that it was a distinctly Korean community — the first in the United States, predating the founding of Los Angeles’s Koreatown by the businessman Hi Duk Lee by more than half a century.

And while Ahn [Chang-Ho]’s life and legacy have been deeply studied, extensively documented and honored, his role in founding a Korean community in Riverside was virtually unknown until about five years ago, when Chang stumbled across a 1908 map issued by an insurance company. It had a caption labeling a Korean settlement in Riverside.

“I thought, ‘Korean settlement? In Riverside?’” he said.

Chang said it was known that Ahn spent some time in Riverside. He had seen an image of Ahn picking oranges there. And a 1913 episode known as the Hemet Valley Incident — which involved Korean fruit pickers Chang later determined had come from Riverside — has been widely cited as a pivotal moment for the Korean national identity.

But what Ahn was doing in the Inland Empire for more than five years before he moved his family to Los Angeles in 1913 was a puzzle. That puzzle turned into what Chang described as the most gratifying research of his career.

“People said it’s like destiny,” he said. “I’ve been teaching in Riverside for almost 30 years, and I didn’t know anything about it.”

As it turned out, Pachappa Camp was also a place where Ahn honed many of the democratic ideas that he brought back to Korea, which had been a monarchy and was occupied by Japan.

“I was able to trace the birth of whole democratic institutions to here in Riverside,” Chang said. “I was uncovering all of this and I was so shocked.”

With the help of graduate student interns from Korea who translated documents from older Korean, Chang last month published a book of his findings, “Pachappa Camp: The First Koreatown in the United States.”

 

Read the article here. Image above: University of Southern California, Korean American Digital Archive

Community Resources on Anti-Asian Violence

Community Resources on Anti-Asian Violence

by Emily Hue Announcements

Community Resources on Anti-Asian Violence, Curated by the UCRFTP Cops Off Campus Collective

This curated list of non-carceral statements, events, reporting, and resources speak to the longstanding and ongoing racialized misogyny, xenophobia, and fear of sex workers that have contributed to the countless acts of individual and state violence targeting Asian femmes, sex workers, elders, and others, and which contextualize the murders of spa workers in Atlanta on March 16, 2021. As we continue to have these important conversations, we hope the following resources provide guidance, analysis, support, and paths toward community-oriented action and collective healing.

Public Events

Statements/Sign-ons

Reportage and Perspectives

Additional Resources/Reading

 

Photo above: Demonstrators ake part in a rally to raise awareness of anti-Asian violence n Los Angeles. Photo : Ringo Chiu/AFP via Getty Images

New Report: Advancing Equity for Undocumented Students and Students from Mixed-Status Families at the University of California

New Report: Advancing Equity for Undocumented Students and Students from Mixed-Status Families at the University of California

by Emily Hue Announcements Events

A new report from the UC Collaborative to Promote Immigrant and Student Equity (UC PromISE), co-led by Ethnic Studies Prof. Jennifer Nájera, establishes that immigration policy is disrupting the educational experiences and wellbeing not only of undocumented students, but also those students who are citizens from mixed-status families.

Advancing Equity for Undocumented Students and Students from Mixed-Status Families at the University of California features data from a survey of 2,742 UC undergraduate students and compares the experiences of three groups: undocumented immigrant students, U.S. citizen students with undocumented parents, and U.S. citizen students with immigrant parents who are permanent residents or naturalized citizens. Drawing lessons from undocumented student programs at the UC, it identifies areas of improvement that can aid all universities in advancing equity for all students impacted by immigration policies.

Download the full report on the research website:
https://ucpromise.uci.edu/reports/undocumented-and-mixed-status-families/

You are also welcome to join host a virtual panel discussion of the report on Tuesday, February 16, 2021 at 12pm (PST).

Register here: https://uci.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_hU8bkETbQfqZNB4IL9GPHQ