Title: “SEA Legacies: Commemorating 40 Years of Southeast Asian Diasporas”
The goals of the symposium are to commemorate the formation of Southeast Asian diasporic communities in the US over the past 40 years and to educate students and the community about Southeast Asian American heritages, experiences, and histories.
Events in no particular order:
A. Keynote: Dr. Viet Nguyen, Departments of English and American Studies and Ethnicity, USC
B. Panel: Vietnamese American Authors: Telling Diasporic Stories from Vietnam to the US
C. Panel: Southeast Asian Experiences
D. Panel: The Fall of Saigon: Political Background and Military Context
E. Roundtable: Alumni Experiences: Intergenerational Dialogue
F. Panel: CBOs & JOBs: Get to Know Local Community Organizations and Resources
G. Roundtable: Let’s Get Engaged! Students Share Opportunities for Campus and Community Involvement and Service.)
H. Panel: Preserving and Sharing Our Stories: The Role of Southeast Asian Oral History Projects and Archives
I. Digital Photo Exhibit: Vietnamese Americans: A Self-Portrait of a People
J. Exhibit: Letters from Vietnam
K. Film Series: Visual Stories of Diaspora: An Exploration of Southeast Asian History and Life through Films
L. Panel: Beyond the Fall of Saigon: Communism as Discourse in National, Community, and Identity Formations in the US and Vietnam
M. Panel: Global Perspectives on the Vietnam War
N. Panel: National Resource Center for Asian Languages and Vietnamese Literacy Development for Dual Language Immersion
O. Closing Performances: Southeast Asian American Expression and Performance
The SEA Legacies Symposium is generously sponsored by the College of Humanities and Social Sciences and by Dr. Craig K. Ihara.
The SEA Legacies Symposium is organized by faculty, students, and staff of Asian American Studies, Modern Languages and Literatures, History, American Studies, Political Science, Psychology, Sociology, Communications, Education, the HSS Office of Development, the CSUF Office of State and Community Relations, the Vietnamese Students Association, the Cambodian Students Association, and the Asian Pacific American Resource Center, and in collaboration with community partners.
Please contact Dr. Eliza Noh at [email protected] for more information.
Please don’t forget to share the eventbrite RSVP link with the campus and external community. All attendees, including speakers and yourselves, should register by Feb. 20th so that we can take a headcount for food:
If you’re writing an honours thesis, doing a research project/independent study, or even are just interested in meeting other linguists, why not check out a local linguistics conference or two!
(This year I am finally making the “go to conferences” post with lots of time in advance to get a project up and running: many undergrad conferences take place in December-April and have deadlines sometime in the fall or winter.)
I want to especially encourage undergraduate conference-going because I think grad students and so on are more likely to already hear about conferences and know people who are going to them (although depending on your advisor it may still be worth looking some up).
Even if you haven’t finished your project yet, you can get comments on a work in progress, or just come and watch things and meet people (but seriously, submit something if you can, it’s worth a try). For smaller conferences, registration is often just enough to cover food, and you can ask the organizers about staying with local students, so your expenses can be quite minimal. Sometimes you can even get travel funding from your own department, especially if you’re presenting (ask a prof, even if you don’t see it advertised anywhere). Audiences of fellow students are generally very positive and non-intimidating, so it’s a good way to get some practice talking about academic things, get a line on your CV or grad school application, and make some ling-friends.
I even remember a high school student who came to McCCLU one year just because they wanted to learn more about linguistics and meet people.
BothLinguist List and the LSA (Linguistic Society of America) maintain lists of international conferences organized by date, and I’m aware of a few undergrad-specific conferences (McCCLU - Montreal, TULCon - Toronto, GLEEFUL - Michigan, Harvard colloquium,Cornell colloquium). I’m not sure if they’re current, but I’ve also heard of OCLU in Ottawa, SCULC in southern California, and a rotating conference hosted by ULAB - Undergrad Linguistics Association of Britain. The current websites may not be live yet, but you can look them up from last year to get a sense of timing, and this gives you plenty of time to work on a project.
I think there are also many student-focussed conferences for both grad students and undergrads, although grad students can of course apply for the general conferences as well! (Heck, I went to one as an undergrad, and while I didn’t present, I met a couple undergrads there with posters.)
Edited to add, from comments: Arizona Linguistics Circle (which is soon, October 3-5!), Minnesota Undergraduate Linguistics Symposium, HULLS (Hunter Undergraduate Linguistics and Language Studies, in New York).
If one of these conferences isn’t convenient: try googling the name of your region or major cities/universities near you with the words student linguistics conference, and you may find something! Many smaller linguistics student conferences aren’t very well-advertised and may not make it onto major lists like LinguistList every year, so if you find evidence of a conference near you from a previous year, try contacting the previous organizer(s) or department to see if it’s happening again.
Can anyone contribute to a list of other undergrad or student-friendly linguistics conferences, especially in locations that aren’t already well-represented here?
I’ve expanded the list of conferences above based on more googling, and here’s some ideas for what to do if you don’t have a conference near you:
Attention conference coordinators: Unless your stated theme is “White people are the arbiters of what constitutes knowledge & expertise” there is absolutely no reason to have that many white presenters. None. NONE.
And the few POC presenters need to be presenting on something other than racism.
I want all healing conferences to literally “flip the script”. Most of the presenters should be other than cismen, and most of the presenters should be POC.
If your lineup isn’t like this, it tells me you do not take the dismantling of White Supremacy seriously & therefore the lens that you approach healing—especially healing from trauma—is morally bankrupt and cannot lead us to liberation.
It’s fucking 2020, fucking get with the goddamn program.
For a variety of reasons, this was an extremely busy semester, and I simply wasn’t able to keep up with my open tabs (I had several hundred open at one point!). An irrecoverable browser crash killed any possibility of ever doing even an omnibus record of what I’ve been reading and thinking about — but I do have a tiny number of highlights from the semester that I will link here just to close the…
Attention conference coordinators: Unless your stated theme is “White people are the arbiters of what constitutes knowledge & expertise” there is absolutely no reason to have that many white presenters. None. NONE.
And the few POC presenters need to be presenting on something other than racism.
I want all healing conferences to literally “flip the script”. Most of the presenters should be other than cismen, and most of the presenters should be POC.
If your lineup isn’t like this, it tells me you do not take the dismantling of White Supremacy seriously & therefore the lens that you approach healing—especially healing from trauma—is morally bankrupt and cannot lead us to liberation.
It’s fucking 2020, fucking get with the goddamn program.
Apologies again for my long delay in posting, but it’s been a terrible month of prepping papers for conferences and hustling to get my second qualifying paper in. I’m about to attend my first AAAL (American Association for Applied Linguists) meeting in Chicago this weekend, so I’ll be back to posting hopefully at the end of this month. Until then, here’s an interesting article about whether we live in the best time in history to learn languages, ever.
Just as the article mentions how young people learn new languages quickly, you’ll find that you can make this dish incredibly quickly! The kalamata olives pair very well with the spinach and red pepper flakes, and the way that it’s all done pretty much in one pot reminds me of the article’s mentioning that technology allows us to learn languages pretty much all on one digital space. Good Cooking!
There seems to be a major disconnect about what it means for a conference to have disability representation. I’ve seen a version of this happen a number of times:
A panel on diversity or social justice has no disability representation.
No panelist talked about disability as a justice/diversity issue, or even alluded to disability experience.
A disabled person points out the problem to the organizers.
The organizers say something to the effect of “Actually, one of the panelists has [some disability or other]”.
Organizers are sometimes genuinely confused about why this isn’t a solution, and I’m realizing that this is in part because “representation” means at least two different things:
Sometimes representation just means diversity of panelists, ie:
There need to be panelists who are disabled (and in many context, there need to be panelists who are *openly* disabled).
This is important in part because when there are no openly disabled people on a panel, this is often a sign of disability discrimination.
(Especially if there are no disabled people on *any* panels at a conference, or there are only disabled panelists on disability-focused panels.)
In some contexts, diversity of panelists is enough.
Sometimes representation means literally being a representative of a community or movement:
Sometimes it’s not enough to have diverse panelists. Sometimes it’s necessary to have panelists who can represent other disabled people by speaking on behalf of an organized disability community or movement.
In many contexts, there need to be panelists who can speak from a position of expertise about disability issues.
For instance, if the topic of the panel is intersectional activism or collaborating across movements, you need someone who can represent at least some part of the disability activist community.
Diversity of identity is not enough in this case, because having an identity is not the same as representing an organized advocacy community.
Being disabled does not in and of itself make someone a well-informed representative of the organized disability rights community.
Sometimes conferences forget that disability is a justice issue, and neglect to book anyone who can address disability as a justice issue, eg:
A conference holds a panel on intersectional advocacy called “Showing up for each other: Owning our privilege and leaving no one behind”.
The panel consists of an LGBTQ group, an anti-racist group, an economic justice group, and a feminist group.
None of the panelists are disability rights leaders.
None of the panelists talk about disability rights issues.
None of the panelists even talk about their own disability experiences.
On a panel about intersectionality and showing up for each other, disability issues are completely overlooked.
Even if one of the panelists happens to have a disability or medical condition, this is still a problem.
(Especially if the organization holding the conference has a consistent pattern of overlooking disability issues.)
In this case, something has gone badly wrong and the conference needs to make an immediate plan for making sure it doesn’t happen again.
Sometimes conferences forget that diversity still matters when the topic isn’t disability or general intersectionality:
Not all disabled activists are disability rights activists.
Some disabled activists are focused primarily on other issues.
Eg: Some disabled activists are leading LGBTQ rights projects; some disabled activists are leading anti-racist organizations.
If disabled activists presenting about disability are the only disabled presenters at your conference, something has probably gone wrong.
If there are no disabled people presenting on any other topics, it’s important to think about what they is and what could be done to fix that.
Sometimes conferences forget that the disability community is diverse:
Many disability rights activists are also marginalized in other ways.
Many disability rights activists are also women, gay, trans, black, poor, Jewish, Muslim, immigrants, several of these, or otherwise multiply marginalized.
Eg: If all of the disability rights activists presenting at a conference are straight white Christian men, something has probably gone wrong.
If the range of disabled presenters at a conference doesn’t reflect the diversity of the disability community, it’s important to think about why that is and what could be done to fix that.
Here’s an example of representation in both the diversity sense and the community representative sense:
There’s a writing conference or a comic conference or something.
Access needs are met in ways that make it possible for disabled people to go to the conference and present at the conference (without facing insurmountable or humiliating barriers).
General panels about diversity have disabled panelists knowledgable about disability issues.
Panels that are specifically about disability are lead by disabled panelists.
Many panels about topics *other than* disability have panelists with disabilities on them, in numbers that reflect the fact that disability is common.
Some disabled panelists on panels about topics unrelated to disability/diversity talk about disability and some don’t.
(Because not all disabled people are or want to be disability advocates.)
Tl;dr Representation on panels means at least two things. Sometimes it means a diverse range of panelists; sometimes it means panelists who literally represent a diverse range of communities. Scroll up for reasons this matters, and what problems can be caused when only one type of representation is considered.
This past week I had the exciting opportunity to attend the BlogHer Creators Summit. It was two days full of bad ass women, inspirational stories & journeys as well as advice that is applicable to me in both my professional and personal life.
This conference was for informing and inspiring female content creators who are looking to spread their content as well as their personal stories to their…
Upstairs at the convention center, a view of Vancouver Harbor Back from Vancouver, where TED hosted its first flagship conference since 2019, and what an event it was. We were greeted by anti-vaxxers who have it out for Bill Gates, one of this year’s speakers.
Nearly 2,000 participants took part from all over the world, dozens of speakers and performances enchanted, empowered and enlightened us,…
January 2022: LSA, LingComm Grants, and spectrograms
My monthly newsletter for January 2022: LSA, LingComm Grants, and spectrograms
I started the year at a rather surreal LSA 2022, the annual meeting of the Linguistic Society of America, which I’d hoped to attend in person in Washington DC but moved online at the last minute, along with what seemed to be most of the other attendees. It was nonetheless nice to see people virtually as well as help judge the Five Minute Linguist competition again.
The conference ‘Feeding the future: can we protect crops sustainably?’ was a tremendous success from the point of view of the technical content. The outcomes have been summarised in a series of articles here. How did such an event come about and what can we learn about putting on an event like this in a world of Covid?
This event was born from two parents. The first was a vision and the second was collaboration.
The vision began in the SCI AgrIsciences committee. We had organised a series of events in the previous few years, all linking to the general theme of challenges to overcome in food sustainability. Our events had dealt with the use of data, the challenge of climate changeandthe future of livestock production. Our intention was to build on this legacy using the International Year of Plant Health as inspiration and provide a comprehensive event, at the SCI headquarters in London, covering every element of crop protection and what it will look like in the future. We wanted to make a networking hub, a place to share ideas and make connections, where new lines of research and development would be sparked into life. Well, then came Covid…
2020 is the International Year of Plant Health.
From the start, we knew in the Agrisciences group that this was going to be too much for us alone. Our first collaboration was within the SCI, the Horticulture Group and the Food Group. Outside of the SCI, we wanted collaborators who are research-active, with wide capabilities and people who really care about the future of crop protection. Having discussed a few options, we approached the Institute of Agriculture and Food Research and Innovation, IAFRI and later Crop Health and Protection, CHAP.
By February 2020, we had our full team of organisers and about half of our agenda all arranged. By March we didn’t know what to do, delay or virtualise? The debate went back and forth for several weeks as we all got to grips with the true meaning of lockdown. When we chose to virtualise, suddenly we had to relearn all we knew about organising events. Both CHAP and SCI started running other events and building up their experience. With this experience came sound advice on what makes a good event: Don’t let it drag; Keep everything snappy; Make sure that your speakers are the very best; Firm and direct chairing. We created a whole new agenda, based around these ideas.
How do you replicate those chance meetings facilitated by face-to-face events?
That still left one problem: how do you reproduce those extra bits that you get in a real conference? Those times in the coffee queue when you happen across your future collaborator? Maybe your future business partner is looking at the same poster as you are? It is a bit like luck, but facilitated.
We resolved this conundrum with four informal parallel sessions. So we still had student posters but in the form of micro-presentations. We engineered discussions between students and senior members of our industry. We tried to recreate a commercial exhibition where you watched as top companies showed off their latest inventions. For those who would love to go on a field trip, we offered virtual guided tours of some of the research facilities operated by CHAP.
Can virtual conferences take the place of real ones? They are clearly not the same, as nothing beats looking directly into someone’s eyes. But on the plus side, they are cheaper to put on and present a lower barrier for delegates to get involved. I am looking forward to a post-Covid world when we can all meet again, but in the meantime we can put on engaging and exciting events that deliver a lot of learning and opportunity in a virtual space.
Feeding the Future was organised by:
James Garratt, SCI AgrIsciences
John Points, SCI Food
Liliya Serazetdinoza, SCI AgrIsciences
Robin Blake, SCI AgrIsciences
Bruce Knight, SCI AgrIsciences
Sebastian Eves-van den Acker, SCI Horticulture
Neil Boonham, IAFRI Newcastle University
Katherine Wotherspoon, IAFRI FERA
Darren Hassall, CHAP
Technical and administrative support was provided by:
Conference: ASLE (the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment) – Paradise on Fire Dates of Conference: June 26-30, 2019 Location: University of California, Davis Deadline for Submissions: December 15, 2018 at 11:59 pm (EST) via Submittable
Horror and science fiction have long featured the return of the prehistoric, the monstrous past coming back to intrude upon the present and…
This month I attended the Northwestern University Summer Writers’ Conference which ran August 9-11 at the downtown Chicago campus. The conference is a mix of sessions and panels on writing craft and the writing business, primarily geared towards fiction and creative non-fiction writers as well as poets. Here are some of my takeaways from the…
Ashley works at the Maryland State Library for the Blind and Physically Handicapped (MDLBPH). In case you’d like to know, she had been tweeting the ALA organizers about access for fellow attendees around her who were facing difficulties reaching the exhibits floor. This was shortly before it opened.
by Katrina Wood, one of our volunteer photographers at ALA Annual 2019!
Also your guy here is going to EPC2022 this end of the month so if any phdblr in sociology/demography is there hit me up with a dm/ask and we can chat!
Incidentally, it’s my first conference ever so if anyone has tips and tricks about making the most of conferences, let me know
