SCHC 398: Asian American Culture in the Twenty-First Century Professor Seulghee Lee Fall 2023: Tuesday & Thursday, 2:50–4:05 Spring 2023: Tuesday & Thursday, 11:40–12:55 Course description: The pandemic era of 2020–2023 has brought into relief the paradoxical visibility of Asian Americans as victims of racist violence during a concurrent zeitgeist…

“I Speak ABC”: Asian American Ironic Consciousness in the Asian Renaissance Excerpted remarks for mine and Alvin Henry’s three-day seminar, “Asian Fun,” at ACLA 2022. It is clear as ever that even the possibility of a collective “we” in and of Asian America has been largely foreclosed by our intelligentsia…

Black Male Studies and Contemporary Black Art Delivered at the Columbia Museum of Art, December 9, 2021 In his landmark philosophical text, The Man-Not: Race, Class, Genre, and the Dilemmas of Black Manhood (2017), philosopher Tommy J. Curry argues that anti-Black misandry — the systemic and institutional victimization of Black men based on their raced maleness —…

On the passing of bell hooks (1952–2021) Published in The State, December 17, 2021 Iconic Black feminist author, teacher, and activist bell hooks has joined the ancestors. As scholars and teachers in Black Studies, we are grateful for her example: her pathbreaking scholarship, her incisive public-facing writings, her relentless political and cultural activism, and her deep commitment…

“So Who Are You to Tell Me It’s Not My Passion, Homie?” AfroAsian Alignment as Asian American Being Part 2 of 2 Excerpted remarks for Shirl Yang and Cheng-Chai Chiang’s panel, “Tries and Tribulations: The Difficulties of Trying Reciprocity,” at the Association for the Study of the Arts of the Present 12. Asian American being exists at the ontological axis between anti-Blackness and Blackness. It collides against each…

Asian American Being in/as the Year of the Ox Part 1 of 2 In memory of Dr. Rebecca Munson (1984–2021), whose contagious passion for poetry and thought endures For the first time in the history of popular culture in the United States, it is both possible and pleasurable to fill…

Asian Maleness and the Right to Opacity Remarks for my three-day seminar, “The Glissant Variations,” at ACLA 2021. Here is the Korean American actor Steven Yeun, during his recent media tour to promote the film Minari, describing a specifically Asian American phenomenology: Sometimes I wonder if the Asian American experience…

We must fight to survive anti-Asian violence in an anti-Black world Rest in power, Mr. Vicha Ratanapakdee. Your name has not been said enough. Certainly not by my specific cadre of Asian American — an identity you and I forever share — whose job it is, in part, to make…

“How you look, how you sound”: feeling our prospects for AfroAsian solidarity October 1, 2020 In the opening pages of her celebrated Minor Feelings: An Asian American Reckoning, Cathy Park Hong engages the age-old topic of racial self-hatred, making the astonishing claim that this subject has been underemphasized in discussing…