Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month

AAPIHM 2022: Constellations

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10 yellow stars of varying sizes, some of which are connected by lines. All stars are enclosed inside a yellow crescent moon.

Each May, the Office of Pluralism and Leadership (OPAL) works with a student planning committee to host Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month (AAPIHM), a month of events that focuses on Asian American and Pacific Islander (AAPI) history, diversity, and experiences. Throughout this month, we hope to highlight stories from AAPI members who are less represented within the community, explore how one defines their own identities, and celebrate the unique beauty that comes from our experiences of culture and adversity. The AAPIHM student planning committee will be hosting a number of different programs throughout the month of May, focusing on this year's theme of Constellations

Our theme of Constellations explores the ways in which members of the AAPI community form connections with each other and with other marginalized communities. Stars in the sky are not always physically connected to one another but can still form bonds with each other to create constellations. Each line connecting the stars in a constellation represents the strength of the bonds and communities we form across time and space. These constellations go on to shine bright against the dark night sky, symbolizing our collective strength in the face of adversity. 

This year's theme calls on us to ruminate on the question–in the recent reckoning of anti-AAPI racism and violence–how does the AAPI community form constellations of co-resistance, solidarity, and collective care to reclaim and narrate our own histories and present.  In this month of celebration, we'd like to not only recognize the AAPI community, but also emphasize the power of constellations as a form of transnational and transcultural solidarity. We are always stronger together. We invite the campus community to  join us in this month of celebration, creating new constellations, and strengthening existing ones.

Calendar of Events

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2022 AAPIHM calendar

Click the image to view a high resolution version.

Minor Feelings: Reflections of America's Racial Consciousness 

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Cathy Park Hong at Dartmouth

Friday, May 13th | 5:30 pm | Zoom Webinar 
Registration link: www.dartgo.org/aapihmspeaker 

Join author Cathy Park Hong and AAPIHM Student Committee Coordinators, Deborah Jung '24 and Karen Zheng '22 for a moderated conversation followed by an audience Q&A!

Cathy Park Hong is an award-winning poet and essayist whose book, Minor Feelings, is a searching work that ruthlessly reckons with the American racial consciousness. Hong weaves together personal stories, historical context, and cultural criticism to ultimately create an emotional and impactful exploration of Asian American personhood. Minor Feelings is the 2020 recipient of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Autobiography. Hong is the author of several books of poetry, and is the recipient of notable awards such as the Windham-Campbell Prize. In her moving talks, she offers a fresh and honest perspective on race and Asian American identity, discusses how poetry and writing can be a means for understanding ourselves and our world, and comments on the ways politics and culture are influenced by art—and vice versa.

This event is co-sponsored by the Office of Pluralism and Leadership, Special Programs and Events Committee (SPEC), Dartmouth Geisel School of Medicine - Office of Diversity, Inclusion, and Community Engagement(DICE), Department of Geography, Department of Sociology, East Wheelock House, Program in Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Student Accessibility Services, and the Tuck School of Business. 

Under the Stars: AAPIHM Gala

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Under the Stars flyer. Text with a portion of Van Gogh's Starry Night as the background

Sunday, May 22nd | 5:30 pm | Hood Museum - Russo Atrium
RSVP at www.dartgo.org/aapihmgala 

The closing gala is the culminating event of Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month as well as the academic year. It is a celebration of graduating members of Dartmouth's Pan Asian Community and a recognition of others who have contributed through their service and achievements. This event is presented in collaboration with the Dartmouth Asian Pacific American Alumni Association (DAPAAA), with speeches from notable alumni who will join us in welcoming the graduating students into the AAPI alumni community. We hope to highlight each student as one of the important and unique stars that make up the Constellation of the AAPI and Dartmouth community.

This event is in collaboration with the Dartmouth Asian Pacific American Alumni Association (DAPAAA).

Pan Asian Community Awards

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PAC Awards

OPAL Pan Asian Student Advising invites you to join us in recognizing individuals and groups who have significantly contributed to the Pan Asian Community (PAC) at Dartmouth. Nominations are due by noon on Monday, May 9th.

For more information or to nominate, please visit www.dartgo.org/2022pacawards.

AAPIHM Student Planning Committee

  • Emilie Hong '25 
  • Deborah Jung '24
  • Caitlyn King '24
  • Akshay Kelshiker '24
  • Connie Lu '22 
  • Gabrielle Park '25 
  • Makara Poy '24 
  • Lily Ren '23 
  • Wenhan Sun '24
  • Karen Zheng '22 

AAPIHM Logo Designed By: Annie Qiu '24.

OPAL Staff Advisors: Jimmy Huynh and Kayanat Paracha

Sponsors

AAPIHM 2022 is made possible with support from:

  • Special Programs and Events Committee (SPEC)
  • Office of Pluralism and Leadership (OPAL)
  • African and African American Studies Program (AAAS)
  • Comparative Literature Program
  • Conferences and Events 
  • Dartmouth Asian Pacific American Alumni Association (DAPAAA)
  • Dartmouth College Student Affairs
  • Dartmouth Consortium of Studies in Race, Migration, and Sexuality
  • Department of English and Creative Writing
  • Department of Geography
  • Department of History
  • Department of Sociology
  • Department of Theater
  • East Wheelock House
  • First Generation Office
  • Geisel School of Medicine - Diversity, Inclusion, and Community Engagement (DICE)
  • Jewish Studies Program
  • Leslie Center for the Humanities
  • Nelson A. Rockefeller Center for Public Policy and the Social Sciences
  • Office of Communications 
  • Office of the President
  • Program in Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies
  • Student Accessibility Services
  • Student Wellness Center
  • South House
  • Tuck School of Business

For additional information or for accessibility needs, email Pan.Asian.Community@Dartmouth.edu.

Check out these additional events happening in May!

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Truong Tran poetry workshop

A POETRY WORKSHOP WITH TRUONG TRAN: THE WORK OF SILENCE/THE WORK OF SILENCING

Wednesday, May 4th | 4-6 pm | Rocky 106
Registration Link

Join us for a workshop with Truong Tran, author of book of the other: small in comparison (Kaya Press 2021), described by Bhanu Kapil as, "a deeply moving book of poetry that exists beyond the domain of a purely literary experience. Because: How do you survive what's not meant to be survivable? This is not a manual. It's a memory. It's a way through." 

What does it mean to do the work of silence? Of silencing? How do we write into and beyond silence?

In this workshop, Tran will discuss silence as a craft practice, the practice's failings within the academy as it relates to Black and Brown bodies, and, together, we will write poems that illuminate and interrogate the silences within our own lives. 

Presented by Departments of English and Creative Writing, Geography, and Asian Societies, Cultures, and Languages; Office of Pluralism and Leadership; Office of the Frank J. Guarini Associate Dean for International Studies and Interdisciplinary Programs; Race, Migration, and Sexuality Consortium; South House.

 


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Truong Tran poetry reading

TRUONG TRAN POETRY READING

Thursday, May 5th | 5:30-7:00 PM | Still North Books & Bar (3 Allen St)

Join us for a reading and celebration of poet and visual artist Truong Tran's BOOK OF THE OTHER (Kaya Press 2021), a collection of essays, prose, and anti poetry described as "documentation, a file on whiteness" (DouglasKearney), and "a deeply moving book of poetry that exists beyond the domain of a purely literary experience. Because: How do you survive what's not meant to be survivable? This is not a manual. It's a memory. It's a way through" (Bhanu Kapil).

Truong Tran was born in Saigon, Vietnam. He is the author of six previous collections of poetry, The Book of Perceptions, Placing the Accents, Dust and Conscience, Within The Margins, Four Letter Words and 100 words ( co-authored with Damon Potter.) He also authored the children's book, GoingHome Coming Home, and an artist monograph, I Meant To Say Please Past the Sugar. His poems and books have been translated into Spanish, French and Dutch. He is the recipient of The Poetry Center Prize, The Fund ForPoetry Grant, The California Arts Council Grant and numerous San FranciscoArts Commission Grants. 

Truong lives in San Francisco and currently teaches at Mills College,Oakland.

Presented by Dartmouth's Departments of English and Creative Writing, Geography,and Asian Societies, Cultures, and Languages; Office of Pluralism and Leadership;Office of the Frank J. Guarini Associate Dean for International Studies andInterdisciplinary Programs; Race, Migration, and Sexuality Consortium; South House.

 

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Mauka to Makai

MAUKA TO MAKAI

Sunday, May 8th | 11:00-3:00 pm | Gold Coast Lawn (Rain Location: Leede Arena) 

Celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Native American Program and five decades of Indigenous community on campus, we cannot wait to share our culture with you all. Over the course of the day, we will be having a hula exhibition by Hōkūpaʻa's members, serving homemade Hawaiian food including poke, ʻuala (sweet potato), chicken long rice, and poi, and a raffle for clothing and other items from vendors based in Hawaiʻi! We will also have live music played by local musicians from Hawaiʻi! 

This event is open to campus and we would love to see you there! 

We'd like to recognize our numerous sponsors for their generosity in supporting this event. We extend our sincerest mahalo to the Native American Program and the Department of Native American and Indigenous Studies (NAIS); the Special Programs and Events Committee (SPEC); the Department of Religion; the Department of Music; the Department of Latin American, Latin, and Caribbean Studies (LALACS); the Department of Middle-Eastern Studies; and the Department of Geography. Additionally, we'd like to warmly thank the Greek houses Chi Delta, Kappa Delta Epsilon, Sigma Nu, and Alpha Chi Alpha. Mahalo a nui loa!

 

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Seoul Food 2022

SEOUL FOOD

Saturday, May 14th | 12:00-3:00 pm | Collis Patio

The Korean Student Association is delighted to announce that we are working with Alpha Phi Alpha and Black Praxis to honor and remember the 1992 LA Riot. Seoul Food will celebrate the solidarity between African American and Korean American communities at Dartmouth.

 

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Asian American Writers on Generational Trauma

[NOT HERE]: ASIAN AMERICAN WRITERS ON GENERATIONAL TRAUMA 

Saturday, May 14th | 2:00 PM EST | Online event
Registration link: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/not-here-asian-american-writers-on-generational-trauma-tickets-299637342357

What does it mean to carry trauma from one generation to the next? How do we reconcile with historic, communal & personal traumas in our writing and in our lives? Five Asian American writers will share their writing & their experiences in conversation.

Joan Kwon Glass is the biracial, Korean American author of NIGHT SWIM, winner of the 2021 Diode Editions Book Contest, & is author of three chapbooks (Harbor Editions & Milk & Cake Press). Joan is a Brooklyn Poets mentor, poet laureate of Milford, CT & poetry co-editor of West Trestle Review. She is a proud Smith College graduate & has been a public school educator for 20 years. Her poems have appeared in Diode, Rattle, The Rupture, South Florida Poetry Journal & many others & have been nominated for the Pushcart Prize & Sundress Anthology Best of the Net. She grew up in Michigan & South Korea & lives in Connecticut with her family.

MT Vallarta is a poet and the 2021-2023 Guarini Dean's Pre-to-Postdoctoral Fellow in Asian American Studies at Dartmouth College. They are the author of What You Refuse to Remember (forthcoming Fall 2023, Small Harbor Editions) and the micro-chapbook, The Science of Flowers (Blanket Sea). A Kundiman Fellow and Pushcart Prize nominee, their work is published and forthcoming in Madwomen in the Attic, Breadcrumbs, Nat. Brut, Apogee Journal, and others. They received their Ph.D. in Ethnic Studies from the University of California, Riverside.

Seo-Young Chu is a Korean American scholar, poet, #MeToo activist, and associate professor of English at Queens College, CUNY. She is the author of Do Metaphors Dream of Literal Sleep? A Science-Fictional Theory of Representation, "Free Indirect Suicide," and "A Refuge for Jae-in Doe: Fugues in the Key of English Major."

Joshua Nguyen is the author of Come Clean (University of Wisconsin Press), winner of the 2021 Felix Pollak Prize in Poetry, and the chapbook, "American Lục Bát for My Mother" (Bull City Press, 2021). He is a Vietnamese-American writer, a collegiate national poetry slam champion (CUPSI), and a native Houstonian. He has received fellowships from Kundiman, Tin House, Sundress Academy For The Arts, and the Vermont Studio Center. He is the Wit Tea co-editor for The Offing Mag, the Kundiman South co-chair, a bubble tea connoisseur, and loves a good pun. He is a PhD student at The University of Mississippi, where he also received his MFA.

Ginger Ko is an Assistant Professor at Sam Houston State University's MFA program in Creative Writing, Editing, and Publishing. She is the author of Motherlover and Inherit. Her latest project is POWER ON, a book as interactive app, produced by The Operating System. You can find her online at www.gingerko.com.

 


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APIC Moveable Feast

A MOVEABLE FEAST

Tuesday, May 17th | 5-6 pm | Nearburg Forum - Black Family Visual Arts Center 
Registration Link: https://dartgo.org/apic-moveable-feast

Join the Dartmouth Asian and Pacific Islander Caucus (APIC) for our annual networking event! In this power-packed hour, we will move you around to different conversations while you feast on foods from different Asian cuisines. We hope this will be a space to create connections in a chill environment among API and API-supportive folks (undergrads, grad students, postdocs, and employees). 

This event is hosted by the Asian and Pacific Islander Caucus (APIC).

 


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DAPAAA event with Alexander Chee

A DISCUSSION WITH ALEXANDER CHEE

Tuesday, May 17th  | 8:00-9:00 pm  | Zoom
Registration link: dartgo.org/cheewebinar

The Dartmouth Asian Pacific American Alumni Association (DAPAAA) Book Club will celebrate AAPIHM by hosting a discussion with Dartmouth Professor Alexander Chee on his book, How to Write an Autobiographical Novel. Professor Chee was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in Nonfiction in 2021. 

This event is co-hosted with DGALA and moderated by DAPAAA board members Nalini Ramanathan '19 and Kimberly Sheu '07.

 

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AAPIHM at the Museum

AAPIHM IN THE MUSEUM

Thursday, May 26th | 3:30-5:00 pm | Hood Museum 

Join us at the Hood Museum for a pop-up exhibition for Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month! Drop-in to the museum's Bernstein Center for Object Study, where we'll be able to see select works currently not on view. Viewing experiences will be facilitated by the museum's Board of Advisors Mutual Learning Fellows, Nichelle Gaumont and Jayde Xu, who will be available for questions and conversations about AAPI culture and history in relation to art and cultural heritage objects. 

This event is hosted by the Hood Museum.

Past Events

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AAPIHM Kickoff

AAPIHM Bubble Tea Kickoff
Thursday, April 28th | 5:00 pm | Collis Patio

Join us to kick off AAPIHM with bubble tea or mango lassi! Come by Collis patio to learn about events that will be happening throughout May, pick up swag, and sign the AAPIHM banner!

This event is in collaboration with Dartmouth Asian Organization (DAO).

 


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Lei Day

Lei Day
Sunday, May 1st | 2:00 pm | Hood Museum - Russo Atrium

Lei Day is recognized on the islands of Hawai'i as a celebration of culture and aloha spirit. Traditionally, people on each island create and wear distinct leis. At Dartmouth, students will gather in the Russo Atrium to hear from Elizabeth Coleman '21, who is beginning an interactive exhibition of yarn leis. Elizabeth will guide attendees in making their own orchid and/or yarn leis. Snacks and drinks will be provided.

Elizabeth Coleman is a Native Hawaiian artist, sociologist, and lifelong learner. She grew up on the island of O'ahu in Hawai'i and recently graduated from Dartmouth College with the class of 2021. At Dartmouth, she majored in Studio Art and Sociology and minored in Native American Studies. Since graduating she works as a Studio Art Fellow in the Department of Studio Art and a Graduate Resident Fellow for the Office of Residential Life. Additionally, she is a co-Curatorial Fellow for the Class of 1960 Black Visual Arts Center Student Gallery. Within her artistic practice, she specializes in sculpture, digital media, and installations. Drawn to emotion and connection, her work yearns to interact evocatively with many diverse communities and explore her relationship with her culture, her womanhood and sexuality, the society we live in, and the land we inhabit. In July, she will begin a Masters of Science program in Multimedia, Photography, and Design at Syracuse University's Newhouse School of Public Communications.

This event is in collaboration between Hokupa'a, the NAP, Pride, AAPIHM, and OPAL.

 


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Dance with the Stars Workshop

Dance with the Stars Workshop
Saturday, May 7th  | 3:00-4:00 pm | HOP 014 Rehearsal Room

Join the AAPIHM for a cultural dance workshop! Aksheta Kanuganti '24 and Carolyn Yee '25 will be teaching basic techniques and choreography! Dances will range from beginner level Bollywood to Chinese Folk Dance! This workshop will be an opportunity to show students the different cultures across the Pan Asian community.

This event is in collaboration with the Dartmouth South Asian Student Association (SASA).

 


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AAPIHM 2022 faculty conversation

A Conversation with Asian and Asian American Faculty
Monday, May 9th | 6:30-8:00pm | Zoom

During this year's celebration of AAPIHM, we hope to highlight faculty members at Dartmouth who have done exceptional work for Asian American studies. Carolyn Choi, Najwa Mayer, and MT Vallarta will share their work to the Dartmouth community and lead discussions in which we hope to prompt new ways of thinking about Asian American studies and the AAPI experience. We hope to demonstrate the ways these individuals have used their work to reclaim and narrate our histories and present. Their work will also illustrate the constellations of transnational and transcultural solidarity. In addition, there will be time for open Q&A from attendees, prioritizing Dartmouth students. By allowing students to reflect, process, and explore these topics, we hope students will personally connect with the focus of Asian American studies and build relationships with professors. 

Learn more about our guest speakers!

Carolyn Choi is the Guarini Dean's Postdoctoral Fellow in Asian American Studies at Dartmouth College. Carolyn began working as a community organizer in Los Angeles' Koreatown before obtaining her Ph.D. in sociology at the University of Southern California. Her research interests include transnational Asia, migration, race, anti-colonial methodologies, and globalization. In addition to scholarship, Carolyn also writes children's books on intersectional feminism and is co-author of IntersectionAllies: We Make Room for All and Love without Bounds: An IntersectionAllies Book about Families. When she's back in LA, she teaches and spreads awareness about pansori, a form of traditional Korean music. 

Najwa Mayer is a Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and in the Leslie Center for the Humanities at Dartmouth, where she teaches courses in Asian American Studies. Her research areas include visual, literary, and cultural studies, critical race and ethnic studies, religious studies, and transnational feminist critique. Her research uses cultural texts and practices to study the gendered and sexual governance of race and religion in the United States and its empire in the 20th and 21st centuries, focusing on the long "war on terror." Her first book manuscript examines this century's global proliferation of and disparities within "Muslim American" popular cultures through the interrelations between racial, sexual, and secular politics, consumer markets, and social movements. As a current fellow with the Social Science Research Council's Religion in the Public Sphere program, she is investigating the contemporary racial governance of Muslims in the US through policing and property, as well as Muslim organizers and artists' anti-capitalist, anti-carceral critiques of systemic Islamophobia. She earned her PhD in American Studies at Yale University.  

MT Vallarta is the 2021-2023 Guarini Dean's Pre-to-Postdoctoral Fellow in Asian American Studies at Dartmouth College. They are a Ph.D. candidate in Ethnic Studies at the University of California, Riverside where they research feminist theory, queer theory, and contemporary Filipinx poetics. Their dissertation, Knowing, Feeling: Toward a Queer Filipinx Poetics, investigates the anti-imperialist tradition of queer Filipinx poetry, how this critical art practice incites and aggravates our capacity for transformative change and is fundamental to political mobilization. Their research has been published in The Velvet Light Trap, The Asian American Literary Review, VICE, and others. A Kundiman Fellow and Pushcart Prize nominee, MT is also a poet and their poetry collection, What You Refuse to Remember, won Harbor Edition's 2022 Laureate Prize and is forthcoming Fall 2023. They are also the author of the microchapbook, The Science of Flowers, with Blanket Sea Press.

This event is co-sponsored by the Dartmouth Asian American Student Collective (DAASC), Geisel School of Medicine, Nelson A. Rockefeller Center for Public Policy and the Social Sciences, South House and Tuck School of Business.