Scholars & Affiliates

Asian/Pacific/American Studies Program in the NYU Department of Social and Cultural Analysis

Since 1996, the Asian/Pacific/American Studies Program In the NYU Department of Social and Cultural Analysis, together with the A/P/A Institute at NYU, has been the home for students, faculty, staff, and alumni who sought to collaboratively explore the complex A/P/A experience — deciphering the present, reclaiming the past, and anticipating the future. Ten years later, in September 2005, the A/P/A Studies Program, together with NYU’s Programs in Africana Studies, American Studies, Gender & Sexuality Studies, Latino Studies, and Metropolitan Studies, came together to form a new, interdisciplinary, one-of-a-kind Department of Social & Cultural Analysis (SCA). A/P/A Studies offers a minor and major course of study, and boasts a growing list of accomplished faculty. While the Program and Institute have become separate entities since A/P/A Studies became part of the SCA Department, they still work closely together to collaborate on exciting conferences, events, and new research. Learn more about the A/P/A Studies Program in the Department of Social & Cultural Analysis. The Asian/Pacific/American Studies Research Guide is an NYU Libraries directory of books, special collections, and online resources related to A/P/A Studies.

Affiliated Faculty

• Paula Chakravartty
• Doris F. Chang
• Howie Chen
• Christine Choy
• Alina Das
• Dipti Desai
• Luis Francia
• Gayatri Gopinath
• Feng-Mei Heberer
• Dipti Khera
• Patricia Kim
• Heather Lee
• Robert Lee
• Thomas Looser
• David Ludden
• Agnes “Bing” Magtoto
• Nicholas Mirzoeff
• Vasuki Nesiah
• Mike Hoa Nguyen
• Elizabeth OuYang
• Crystal Parikh
• Sonya Posmentier
• Krishnendu Ray
• Sukhdev Sandhu
• Karen Shimakawa
• Pacharee Sudhinaraset
• Thuy Linh Tu
• Jini Kim Watson

A/P/A Institute Visiting Scholars 2023-24

The A/P/A Institute at NYU Visiting Scholar Program extends specified courtesy titles and privileges to scholars of distinction who visit the Asian/Pacific/American Institute at New York University in order to engage in research and scholarship, and in general scholarly and cultural interaction with New York University’s faculty and students. Learn more and apply here.

Nadia Q. Ahmad will translate into English a series of journalistic articles/op-eds about the Bangladeshi diaspora community, written by her late father for NYC Bangla-language newspapers in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s. She plans to write a personal essay and/or series of poems in response to his work, exploring the themes of loss, translation, and how these form cultural and political identity.

Ariel Urim Chung will conduct research on the portrayal of Asian food and femininity in US media for her ongoing oral history project and digital archive, The Kitchen Project.

Daniel H. Inouye will continue work on his manuscript Cosmopolitan Rights, a comparative narrative history of Japanese American social movements, political ideology, diplomacy, and legal history between the years 1900-1930.

May Jeong will work on The Life: Sex, Work, and Love in America, a book that examines the forces shaping sex work and the lives of its workers, and how these forces interact with race, gender, and class. Based on deeply reported life stories, The Life probes the injustices, indignities, and redemptions these workers experience and lays bare the intersections of immigration, sexuality, power, and labor.

E. Tammy Kim will continue work on a book-length creative nonfiction project about her mother, successful versus failed migrations, and the US-South Korea military alliance. Drawing on scholarship in Asian American studies and Korean history, her project will incorporate photographs, drawings, and personal ephemera.

ManSee Kong and Anna Ozbek will work on a short documentary film about artist-activist Tomie Arai, whose papers are housed at the NYU Fales Library. The film follows Arai’s influential art career and community organizing since the 1960s—from her involvement with Basement Workshop to her present-day work with the Chinatown Tenants Union and the Chinatown Art Brigade. 

Viola Lasmana will work on her book project Shadow Imaginations: Women’s Stories and Transpacific Archives in Post-1965 Indonesia, which examines the suppression of authors, filmmakers, queer women’s collectives, and activists in Indonesia in the wake of the militarized and genocidal New Order era. She will also engage in archival research at the NYU Tamiment Library & Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives, drawing from materials relating to interconnected transpacific histories in the region. 

Minh Nguyen will continue work on a series of writings on communitarian art and cultural production across Asia and its diasporas. “Communitarian” broadly refers to collective working modes, self-organized education, and engagements with state-official and countercultural socialist aesthetics. 

christina ong will continue working on a socio-historical analysis of the Basement Workshop. ong will co-curate Legacies, a comprehensive art and history exhibition about Asian American art movements on the East Coast. 

Jennifer Pranolo will research the connection between the emergence of Asian American new media art and critiques of representation. Simultaneously, she will work on an essay about the artist Ian Cheng, which will become part of a larger project on the history and aesthetics of simulation in contemporary art and computational culture.

Isabel Sandoval will complete additional research on upcoming dramatic features Tropical Gothic and a romantic/crime noir set in 1970s Manila. She will also work on an extended essay/book on cinema and her own filmmaking practice.

Jacinda Tran will conduct research on the visual production and consumption of Southeast Asian refugee camps in the aftermath of the so-called Vietnam War. Her first book project, Search and Destroy: Southeast Asia/ns through the Lens of US Visual Warfare, examines the development of visualization technologies during US intervention in Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam, and how they reverberate through processes of war and race-making.

Mark Tseng-Putterman will conduct oral history interviews and archival research on how New York’s Asian American communities engaged US Cold War foreign policy in their countries of ancestry during the 1970s-80s. This research will go toward the completion of his dissertation, “Diasporic Sovereignties: Asian American Internationalism and Cold War Empire,” which examines how transnational Cold War identifications shaped Chinese, Filipino, and Japanese American community formation at the crossroads of postwar racial inclusion and overseas empire.

Klavier Wang will examine the Asian CineVision Records held at the NYU Tamiment Library & Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives for her research project: “The Missing Noise – Guerrilla Art and Video by Asians in America in the 1970s-1980s.” 

Ida Yalzadeh will work on an article examining the legacy of Japanese American incarceration within the Iranian diasporic community in the United States. This article dovetails her current manuscript in progress on Iranian racial formation in the United States from 1953 to 2001.

View a list of previous Visiting Scholars. 

Asian/Pacific/American Studies Assistant Professor & Visiting Scholar Working Group

MISSION

A/P/A BRIDGE was created by Asian/Pacific/American (A/P/A) student leaders through the Asian/Pacific/American Institute at NYU to cultivate “A/P/A” as a political identity. The group serves to foster spaces for the discussion of race, identity, and politics; and develop community organizing and leadership skills through:

Community Building: Building intentional community by exploring the complexities and diversity of A/P/A as both a political and cultural identity
Education & Dialogue: Fostering open dialogue around race, culture, identity, and activism in efforts to educate ourselves and our communities
Leadership Development: Developing leadership skills and making connections with NYU and NYC organizations to work towards social change

APPLY

Applications to the 2023-24 A/P/A BRIDGE program are now closed. The next application cycle will be announced in Fall 2024.

HISTORY

In January 2011, three NYU A/P/A Studies majors appealed to the A/P/A Institute at NYU for support and guidance to develop an A/P/A leadership program for NYU undergraduate students. Since then, A/P/A BRIDGE was created and continues to support NYU undergraduates in their education around issues of race and racism, culture, identity, and more.

A/P/A Reads

Launched in Fall 2020, A/P/A Reads is a virtual book club for NYU students with an interest in Asian American and Pacific literature. Members meet monthly to discuss selected works, and engage in meaningful dialogue together. To join the group, please complete this form.

Graduate Scholars in A/P/A Archives

The Graduate Student Employee in Archives at the A/P/A Institute (A/P/A) works on collection building efforts while simultaneously pursuing a Master of Arts degree in the Archives and Public History Program in the History Department at New York University. As part of A/P/A’s ongoing commitment to documenting and preserving A/P/A history, the grad student will help to create and build access to A/P/A collections of the New York area. The student serves as a key resource connecting A/P/A’s network of scholars, researchers, activists, archivists, librarians, artists, curators, and community members with archives.

Daniella Occhineri, 2023-25
Daniella will help process potential incoming collections by surveying the inventories of local organizations and community members. She will also support the next phase of the A/P/A Voices: A COVID-19 Public Memory Project by preparing materials for transfer to NYU Special Collections.

Gracia Brown, 2021-22
Gracia’s research interests include the East Asian diaspora in the US and Latin America, Critical Mixed Race Studies, and art activism. As a Graduate Scholar in A/P/A Archives, Gracia will organize and digitize A/P/A Institute at NYU’s Basement Workshop Records and assist with the ongoing A/P/A Voices: A COVID-19 Public Memory Project. She is from San Francisco.

Pooja Desai, 2016-17
As the A/P/A Institute Graduate Archives Scholar, Pooja will continue work on cataloging, preserving, and digitizing the video portion of the Jack G. Shaheen Collection on Arabs in U.S. Film and Television for which she created a master inventory in summer 2016. She will also help to assess collections for potential donation to NYU and facilitate intake for new archival material.

Paul Tran, September-December 2015
Paul co-curated, with the Gay Asian Pacific Islander Men of New York (GAPIMNY), an exhibition to celebrate the organization’s 25th anniversary and to mark the donation of their records to the NYU Tamiment Library & Robert F. Wagner Archives.

Alexandra Giffen, 2013-15
As a Graduate Scholar in A/P/A Archives, Alexandra processed the Yun Gee Papers at the NYU Fales Library & Special Collections and began working on developing digital galleries of A/P/A collections at NYU.

Janice Liao, 2011-13
Inspired by her introduction to archival research during her undergraduate years at NYU, Janice pursued her interest in archives as the Graduate Scholar in A/P/A Archives from 2011-13. One of her major achievements during her first year was assisting with A/P/A Institute’s first NEH-funded Summer Institute, “Re-envisioning American Art History: Asian American Art, Research, and Teaching.” In her second year, she processed the Midori Shimanouchi Lederer Papers.

D. Daniel Kim, 2010-12
D. Daniel Kim worked on the Documentary Heritage Project and assisted in bringing the Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance and Asian American Arts Centre archives to the Tamiment Library & Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives.  Daniel co-curated the A/P/A traveling exhibit Marvels & Monsters: Unmasking Asian Images in U.S. Comics, 1942-1986 based on the William F. Wu Comic Book Collection housed at The Fales Library & Special Collections at NYU.

Amita Manghnani, 2009-11
As the Graduate Scholar in A/P/A Archives, Amita worked on the Documentary Heritage Archives Survey, identifying existing and potential archival collections relating to the history of A/P/A communities in New York City. She curated A is for Arab, a traveling exhibition featuring items from the Jack G. Shaheen Archive, and edited the accompanying publication.

Y.H. Nancy Ng Tam, 2008-10
At the A/P/A Institute, Ng Tam worked on the Documentary Heritage Project, which surveyed collections relating to the New York A/P/A community. She has also assisted on a range of projects relating to A/P/A Archives, including processing the George Yuzawa Papers, sorting of the Yoshio Kishi / Irene Yah Ling Sun Collection, and managing the active files of the East Coast Asian American Art Project.

Hillel Arnold, 2008-9
Joining A/P/A Institute as a second year graduate student in the Archives & Public History Program, Hillel Arnold served as a starting member of the Documentary Heritage Project team alongside I-Ting Emily Chu and Y.H. Nancy Ng Tam.  With extensive archives processing and surveying experience from Tamiment Library & Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives as well as the Woody Guthrie Archives, Arnold was instrumental in helping to jumpstart the DHP.

I-Ting Emily Chu, 2007-9
Emily’s research focus concentrates on Asian/Pacific/American women, activism, and archives. While at A/P/A Institute, Emily co-curated Art, Archives and Activism: Martin Wong’s Downtown Crossings, and was a member of the Documentary Heritage Project team that surveyed Asian American collections in New York.

Dylan Yeats, 2005-7
While at A/P/A Institute, Dylan co-curated The Archivist of the Yellow Peril and curated Persistent Light: Eugenia Sumiye Okoshi and George Mukai. He also worked on the Yoshio Kishi / Irene Yah Ling Sun archive collection and wrote the essay titled “Documenting Exclusion and the Logic of Difference” for the book Yellow Peril: Collecting Xenophobia published by A/P/A Institute, 2008.

A/P/A Alumni Group

The Asian/Pacific/American Studies Program and Asian/Pacific/American Institute at NYU were founded together in 1996 after a group of dedicated students, faculty, and staff lobbied the administration for a program and place they could call their own. Indeed, we would not be here today—offering an A/P/A Studies major and minor, hiring and supporting faculty and staff, providing public events and programming, and building a major research archive—had it not been for these students. We want to hear from you—whether you majored/minored in A/P/A Studies, took a class, attended an event, or want to get involved now. Please feel free to email us at apa.alum@nyu.edu or complete our alumni form.