Women of Color conference at Ann Arbor

This looks like an interesting conference. Despite the rapid institutionalization of ethnic studies, it seems like there’s still a lot of tension and dissension when it comes to issues of evaluating academic performance–for one, tenure issues–by scholars of color.

On the one hand, ethnic studies in general is coming under critique for becoming mainstreamed and losing its critical edge (e.g. George Lipsitz’s critique that “ethnic studies seem to be doing pretty well whereas ethnic peoples around the world are faring worse and worse” is a good example). On the other hand, the critique is somewhat premature when one considers that ethnic studies never gained the legitimacy given the more traditional and established, political-interest-free (? what?) disciplines such as history, political science, and what not. I guess in a situation like this, you need to do both however contradictory that may seem. Point out the complacency of institutional ethnic studies, but attend to and support the excellent scholarship that comes out of the field. Is that enough, though?

Conference on South Korea’s Education Exodus

This is way out of my field, but it does remind me of a sentence I read in the preface of a book written by a Korean anthropologist who had done fieldwork in the American South. He started the preface by saying how Koreans had to learn Japanese in the colonial period and how now they have to learn English.  The South Korean education exodus is a symptom of aggressive neoliberalization and an embrace of globalization as the conference description states below. But I think it also needs to be looked at within a larger and longer history of imperialism.

South Korea’s Education Exodus: Risks, Realities, and Challenges
March 27-28, 2008

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Conference Website: http://www.aasp.uiuc.edu/EducationExodus/index.html

E-mail: aasp@uiuc.edu

South Korean “early study abroad” students – namely those young people who exit South Korea for study prior to college – are literally changing the face of Korean diasporic communities across the U.S. and other English-speaking nations. Early study abroad is a rapidly escalating market in South Korea: a $550 million industry in the first quarter of 2004, doubling the 2002 figures. Remarkably, a recent South Korean survey revealed that if given the opportunity, 1 out of 4 parents would like to emigrate for their children’s education. The conference will ask large questions about South Korea’s particular globalization embrace, cosmopolitan desires, and education system; and about the changing face and social reality of Korean America with the arrival of these new immigrants. In doing so, the conference will take up both the macro-level context and consequences and the U.S. realities of this growing “immigrant” population.

Ruins . . .

As I was agonizing over whether I had sent in the wrong amount for my tax return and whether I was going to jail for tax fraud this morning, my sister informed me over IM that there was a fire on Namdaemun. I first thought she was referring to the Namdaemun market, which is a big market district in Seoul and often referred to as just Namdaemun, and asked after casualties. How many casualties? One, apparently. Not the market but the actual gate had been set on fire. The number one national treasure whose picture adorns history textbooks across grades is burnt to ashes.

Pictures fromhere

It’s  so sad . . . The gate has been around for 600 years. Think about all the historical turmoils it survived, including the Japanese colonial era and the Korean War. And now it’s dead . . . It’s heartbreaking. I wonder who did this and why . . . The police is said to be investigating the arson around those who have previous records of setting historical sites and properties on fire. They’re also looking into if the homeless around Seoul station, close to the burnt gate, are involved. Let’s hope there’s no abuse of police force during investigation and that this doesn’t lead into criminalzing the homeless.

There’s something really sad about seeing a historic monument in ruins. Koreans are mourning the loss of the gate with white chrysanthemums. The loss will be remembered.

Split Tongue

Big Hominid made an image for this blog, and I really like it. I think it captures the spirit of the blog well:)

It also reminds me of my, uh, dissertation. I’m working on bilingualism/bilingual subjects in Asian American literature and Latino literature in the postwar era, 1960s-1990s to be more precise. I first got interested in the topic because of the way bilingualism has been medicalized and pathologized in the U.S. People thought that bilingualism induced retardation (i.e. it messes up your cognitive development) and speech pathologies. It has to do mostly with the immigration history and the racialization of certain immigrant groups, because bilingualism, although it is not qualified, refers to immigrant bilingualism (as opposed to elite bilingualism).

So I’m interested in all aspects of language and psychology: language loyalties, language maintenance, language disavowal, loss of language, language “families”, the racialization and medicalization of bilingualism, translation, cultural brokering, etc.

Word on the street has that the noted scholar on Hemispheric studies, Kirsten Silva-Gruez is working on an exciting new book on the history of the Spanish language in the U.S. I think my interest in postwar bilingual education overlaps with part of what she’s doing. Another noted scholar on Asian American studies and comparative ethnic studies, Mae Ngai is also working on language, education, and assimilation in a somewhat different context. She came for a workshop today (paper available here: it is a draft and she asks that it not be circulated or cited). The title of the papers is “Brokering Inclusion,” and she looks at this one particular Chinese family in the late nineteenth century in California who were civil rights advocates and also engaged in some shady brokering business that made them take advantage of Chinese immigrants less acculturated than themselves. I love the way she challenges the standardized narrative of ethnic succession, which argues for greater inclusion for successive generations of immigrants, and tries to look at how exclusion and inclusion work together in this case. The implications of her argument, I think, go well beyond this paper.

The day didn’t start out so well, though. I broke a cup that I really like:(
Friends have told me that this happens when you embark on your dissertation, but I’ve been feeling pretty lonely lately. I don’t know why. So I end up hanging out with people more than I ever used to. While being bugged by the thought that I should be working . . . . And yes, I’m going to see the movie 4 months, 3 weeks, 2 days tomorrow.