Event
Wednesday Night with ASAM Alumni: Ji-Yeon Yuh, Grad'99; Ellen Somekawa, Grd'99; and Scott Kurashige, CAS'91
Ji-Yeon Yuh is the founding faculty member of the Asian American Studies Program at Northwestern University, where she teaches Asian American history, Asian diasporas, race and gender, and oral history. Her book, Beyond the Shadow of Camptown: Korean Military Brides in America, was the first substantive work to examine the consequences for Korean women of U.S. militarism in Korea. She is a longtime advocate for Korea peace and reunification and currently serves on the boards of Women Cross DMZ and the Korea Policy Institute.
Ellen Somekawa became the Executive Director of the Folk Arts-Cultural Treasures Charter School in 2014. For 18 years prior to joining the FACTS staff, Ellen was the Executive Director of Asian Americans United, one of FACTS’s founding organizations. At AAU, she helped nurture the creation and growth of the Chinatown Mid-Autumn Festival, engaged youth as changemakers in their communities, and worked on campaigns such as the Justice for Heng Lim and the No Casino in Chinatown Campaigns, and the 2009 boycott of South Philadelphia High protesting the lack of institutional response to anti-Asian attacks on Asian immigrant students.
Scott Kurashige is Chair and Professor of Comparative Race and Ethnic Studies at Texas Christian University. His areas of focus include comparative and relational studies of race and ethnicity, Asian American studies, African American studies, U.S. politics; urban studies, and more. He is the co-author of Exiled to Motown: A History of Japanese Americans in Detroit (Detroit Japanese American Citizens League, 2015) and The Next American Revolution: Sustainable Activism for the Twenty-First Century, co-authored with Grace Lee Boggs (University of California Press, 2011). He is the President, President-Elect, and Past-President of the American Studies Association (2018-21) among many other awards and accomplishments.
This Spring 2022 semester commemorates 25 years of Asian American Studies at Penn. Join us every Wednesday evening to learn about our history through the personal experiences of our ASAM alums in our new speaker series, Wednesday Nights with ASAM Alumni. Covering a different period each week, we will kick off the chronological series in January 2022 with a close-up look back at Penn and Asian American life in 1996. The series will culminate in May 2022 with a look ahead at 2023. These informal conversations among ASAM friends will be led by the ASAM UAB and will not only be informative but will offer lively memories and shared experiences of undergraduate and graduate life firsthand. A new part of history and new alums each week!
Wednesdays at 7:00 pm EST