Spring 2019 C.V. Starr Fund for A/P/A Research Awardees

Congratulations to the Spring 2019 C.V. Starr Fund for A/P/A Research Awardees!

Minju Bae (Visiting Scholar, A/P/A Institute at NYU) will travel to the 2019 Association for Asian American Studies Conference in Madison, Wisconsin and present her research on 1970s Asian/American labor organizing as part of a roundtable entitled, “How to Construct Narratives.”

Shalemar Coloma (undergraduate student, NYU Tisch School of the Arts ’19) will complete work on her film project, Heaven Sure Likes to Eat, which tells the story of Toni, a Filipina childcare worker, and Heaven, a manananggal (night crawling baby-eating demon). The film draws inspiration from Filipino folklore, and is a reclamation of Indigenous, pre-Hispanic tales from the Philippines.

Cynthia Gao (PhD candidate, NYU Graduate School of Arts & Science ’22) will present her paper, “Wraiths at the Perimeter: The Chinese Cultural Revolution and Asian American Memory,” at the 2019 Association for Asian American Studies Conference in Madison, Wisconsin. Gao looks at the 2016 historical fiction novel Do Not Say We Have Nothing, by Canadian-born author Madeleine Thien, to think through the kinds of affective investments Chinese North Americans might have in producing cultural knowledges about Maoist China.

Rachel Kuo (graduate student, NYU Steinhardt ’20) will work on a collaborative research project with 18 Million Rising (18MR) to investigate Asian American political formations in digital ecosystems. Kuo will also travel to the 2019 Association for Asian American Studies Conference in Madison, Wisconsin to present her paper “Asian American Political Formations in Digital Ecosystems,” and facilitate a workshop on “Building Asian American Feminist Movement.”

Nou Moua (graduate student, NYU Wagner School of Public Service ’21) will attend the 2019 Hmong National Development conference​ to conduct interviews for her podcast (in development) “Hmongumentary,” which explores Hmong identity and community.

Emily Park (undergraduate student, NYU Tisch School of the Arts ’19) will complete Your Shade of Blue, a short film about a queer Korean woman living with mental illness.

Emilia Sawada (PhD candidate, NYU Graduate School of Arts & Science ’21) will deliver a paper entitled, “Metaphors of Mestizaje: Transnational Feminist Futures in Radical Art” at the 2019 Asian American Studies Association conference in Madison, Wisconsin. Sawada’s paper focuses on the adaption of mestizaje discourses as instruments of transnational feminist activism in Asian American and Chicanx public art and performance. This work is part of her dissertation, which investigates the eugenic fantasies of Mexican revolutionary “mestizaje”—a racialist discourse that celebrates biological hybridity—in contemporary US Asian American, Asian, Latinx, and Mexican art.

The C.V. Starr Fund for Asian/Pacific/American Student Research is available by application to NYU students and scholars working on academic and/or community projects with particular emphasis on the New York metropolitan region. The goal of this Fund is to promote a convergence of theory and practice in A/P/A Studies and its related fields by providing financial support for research expenses and/or conference participation. Learn more and apply.