Event – Asian American Heritage Observance – Opening Event
Date – Tuesday, Oct 11, 2016
Time – 6 pm
Place – Gentry 131
Keynote Speaker – JANELLE WONG, Director Asian American Studies Program and Resource Center, Professor of American Studies, University of Maryland
Talk Title - Race and the Future of Asian American Politics
Bio - Janelle Wong is Director of the Asian American Studies Program at the University of Maryland, where she is also Professor of American Studies. From 2001-2012, Wong was in the Departments of Political Science and American Studies and Ethnicity at the University of Southern California. She received her PhD in 2001 from the Department of Political Science at Yale University. Wong is author of Democracy’s Promise: Immigrants and American Civic Institutions (2006, University of Michigan Press) and co-author of two books on Asian American politics. The most recent is Asian American Political Participation: Emerging Constituents and their Political Identities (2011, Russell Sage Foundation), based on the first national, multilingual, multiethnic survey of Asian Americans. She is a co-Principal Investigator on the 2016 National Asian American Survey, a nation-wide survey of Asian American political and social attitudes. Her current research is on growing numbers of Latino and Asian American evangelicals and their role in U.S. politics.
Wong's advocacy work has focused on support for affirmative action and other Asian American issues. She has served as a guest commentator on The Melissa Harris-Perry Show and NBC News and her opinion writing has been featured in national and local news media. She also was co-author of an amicus brief (“Brief of Political Science and Law Professors as Amici Curiae in Support of Respondents”) in the Shelby County vs. Holder voting rights case (2013). Wong grew up in Yuba City, CA and attended UCLA as an undergraduate.
Following the keynote there will be a Panel Discussion, moderated by Cathy Schlund-Vials, Director of UConn’s Asian & Asian American Studies Institute and Professor of English and Asian/Asian American Studies, with CT Senator Tony Hwang, CT Senate hopeful Arlene Avery, Gaurav Patel and Fred Lee, UConn Professor, Political Science.
For more information, contact: Prof. Cathy Schlund-Vials at cathy.schlund-vials@uconn.edu