Speech addresses Asian-American studies

Despite tornado warnings and a rain-soaked afternoon, several students, faculty, and staff members assembled in the Neal-Marshall Black Culture Center Friday to kick off the first string of events in a new colloquium series.\nThe series entitled "New Paradigms in Asian American Studies" was designed by the Asian American Studies Committee to establish an AAS program at IU.\nProfessor Gary Okihiro traveled from New York City to speak to the crowd about the history of Asians in the United States and their relationship with African-Americans.\nOkihiro, a professor of international and public affairs at Columbia University, also serves as the director of the Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race.\nBefore Okihiro took the podium, a brief burst of cheers and applause filled the room as Kumble Subbaswamy, dean of the school of arts and sciences, mentioned that an AAS program will be established.\n"Hopefully this can become a reality by the end of the year," Subbaswamy said, as the sound of applause reverberated off the walls in the Grand Hall.\nOkihiro's lecture, "Is Yellow Black or White? Revisited," reflected on his 1994 book Margins and Mainstreams, in which he reconsidered racial and cultural aspects of African and Asian Americans.\nHe emphasized that both groups have faced a wide spectrum of discrimination, as both groups struggled for freedom and were used as cheap labor. \nOkihiro explained that despite the common denominator, both groups clashed with each other in the early 90s, and many goods from Asian countries were boycotted.\nIn addition to Margins and Mainstreams, Okihiro has written two recent books, Common Ground: Reimagining American History, and The Columbia Guide to Asian American History, both published in 2001.\nOkihiro lauded the idea to establish an AAS program at IU, and believes it will serve a particular educational purpose.\n"Race is fiction; we make it up; it's socially constructed," Okihiro said. "But this is a large part of our history, and it's not sufficient to just learn about whites and Europeans or African-Americans to study the U.S. Asians definitely add another dimension to understanding race, and I'm very pleased to learn about the current initiative."\nThe AAS Committee began developing and working toward an AAS program in 2000 after attending a Big Ten Conference and leaving with an "idea, but not a plan," said Melanie Castillo-Cullather, director of the Asian Culture Center.\n"The AAS colloquium is like a window to the future of this new academic field," Castillo-Cullather said.\n\"Students will have an opportunity to participate in a discussion, sample future classes, and shape the future direction of this program. There is a growing interest and thirst for knowledge about the study of Asian American experience, culture, and history among students in many campuses."\nCastillo-Cullather also mentioned the positive response from students and faculty indicates the strong interest for an AAS program at IU.\nUpon the establishment of the program, the AAS Committee plans to design classes about Asian- American experiences, including Asian-American cuisine and foodways, Asian-American literature, and Asian-American history, among others.\nIn addition to Friday's lecture, the Colloquium Series will continue next month with a panel discussion, and subsequently in November with a lecture at the Mathers Museum.\nTwo other events in the series are planned for the spring.\nIndermohan Virk, coordinator of the AAS Committee and visiting lecturer in the sociology department, said he believes students should attend the lectures in this series in order to explore the complexities of race and ethnicity in the U.S. \n"The foundation of an Asian-American Studies program would signify recognition of the increasing intellectual place of AAS in the academy, and its growing vitality as a separate field of study," Virk said. "In the increasingly multi-racial, multi-ethnic society that we live in today, it is essential for us to consider our history beyond a simplistic black-white lens"