FINAL PROJECTS

Spring 2020

MEDIA


Afro-Asian Encounters Online

Instagram Story

Kevin Chen, Kushal Dev, Kiddest Sinke, and Minh Vu

AfroAsian Encounters Online is an interactive digital exhibit on Instagram that studies how COVID-19 is being narrativized in contemporary digital media platforms like TikTok, Twitter, and news platforms. Specifically, we were interested in how racialized panic and pathologies are codified into an aesthetics of satire within the genre of the soundbite (i.e., the 60-second TikTok, the 280-character Tweet, and the hook of a press headline). Through an Instagram exhibit format, we hoped to condense complex theories of COVID-19 racializations into visually compelling deliverables to be consumed by any audience.

Of Color, Episode 1: "Sit or Stand"

Podcast

Baji Tumendemberel

During a night of protest and solidarity, a call to action brings new life to an old question: who is a person of color? This podcast aims to understand interrogate this moment through first-hand accounts and academic theory in order to shed light on the racial structures that connect and divide us.

Afro-Asian Coalitions in the Robot Revolution: Character Racialization & Relationality in HBO's Westworld

Video

Mariko Rooks

This video presentation studies the coalitional politics and practices of Black and Asian characters in Seasons 1-2 of the HBO TV show Westworld in order to explore larger structures and hierarchies of racialization within the show. In doing so, this project also explores how race is more broadly used as an organizational framework in creating the show's dystopic universe. Through using simple, handwritten text in the style of "Draw My Life" YouTube videos and and Westworld stills, this video seeks to easily draw viewers into an introductory conversation about how "real life" race is used to design and organize fictional worlds and fantasies.

Women of Color Against the War

Poster Series

Vy Tran

I decided to make posters because I love seeing posters on campus. Some have actually changed my life. It was a poster on Cross Campus, sharpie ink blurred by rain, that said, "Decolonize yourself. Relearn your language." and made me take a sharp turn in my classes and start learning Vietnamese starting at L1. It's posters haphazardly stapled onto bulletin boards that showcase all the work being done on campus by artists-friends-who make me excited for a weekend that is sure to inspire. It's posters that say FREE NELSON and BELIEVE HER and SAVE ER&M over and over again that remind me of the work that still needs to be done. And so, I hope this Women of Color Against the War series (in the works) can do some mix of all these things that posters have done for me; that is, invite people to learn, engage, and remember that activism is not a solitary thing, but a big, collective, and ongoing project.

Afro-South Asian Relationality

Collage/Mind Map

Lakshmi Amin

This mind map traces Afro-South Asian relationality across key figures, movements, and systems over time. It includes definitions and notes, questions for consideration, and links to further reading, inviting the viewer to think critically about these broad ranging connections and, going forward, what a learned practice of Afro-South Asian solidarity can look like.

K-12 LESSON PLANS


Black Women and the Third World Women's Alliance

Lesson plan for 12th graders

Grace Ambrossi

Students often don't learn about black liberation and anti-racist struggle and alliance until late in their academic careers, if at all. Many students already understand systems of racism and white supremacy because they face them on a daily basis through their own personal experiences. The purpose of this lesson is to to give them some language around these experiences, to remind them that the struggle against racism and for liberation is a long one, that they are not alone in their experiences, and to encourage them to carry on the practice of imagining a different world that they are currently living in just as Third World Women were doing in their alliance together.

Unfiltered Past: Yuri Kochiyama's Legacy in American Social Movements

Lesson plan for 7th-12th graders

Tyler Miles

This lesson plan introduces the life and work of Japanese-American activist Yuri Kochiyama, an often-hidden figure who worked closely on civil rights issues from the 1940s onwards. The lesson plan is intended for 7th-12th grade students, but can be adjusted for all ages. All materials are online and free, so this can be done either in class or at home. 

Asian American History in the Delta: Lum v. Rice

Lesson plan for 9th graders

Carolyn Sacco

This project is a lesson on the Supreme Court case Lum v. Rice designed to introduce students to the shared histories of black and Asian people in the deep South. Hopefully, it will inspire reflection on how these communities continue to interact in a variety of ways in the present.

Race, Culture, and TikTok Hip-Hop

Asynchronous lesson for high schoolers and above

Isabella Zou

In response to contemporary concerns about cultural appropriation and who "owns" a cultural form, this self-guided lesson aims to help students understand the concept of polyculturalism by examining the way it plays out through the phenomenon of viral TikTok dances and its roots in hip hop and black social dance. Students are asked to apply the concept to their own lives as culture creators and consumers.

PAPERS


We Mark Your Memory

Book Review

Elliot Wailoo

This paper reviews the 2018 book We Mark Your Memory: Writings from the Descendants of Indenture, the first global anthology of its kind. Its publication marks 100 years since the British Empire abolished the system of indentured labor, which transported millions of workers from India to plantations across the world.

"Chinatown"

Cultural analysis

Juma Sei

"Chinatown" examines how Vijay Prashad's theory of polyculturalism comes to life when exploring Portland's streetwear hotbed; a culture centering the city's Old Town Chinatown neighborhood. More than anything, this piece is a reflection on how our contemporary realities are undeniably linked by past histories of interracial solidarity.

Wangechi Mutu's Water Woman and Ai Weiwei's Iron Tree Trunk

Art Analysis

Katherine Salinas

This project puts into conversation Wangechi Mutu's Water Woman and Ai Weiwei's Iron Tree Trunk, neighboring sculptures at The Contemporary Austin's Betty and Edward Marcus Sculpture Park at Laguna Gloria in Austin, TX. The bringing together of these two works, typically explored and understood independently from one another, reveals shared meanings and produces new, synthetic understandings of themes like relationality, memory, commodification, loss, and creation.

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