2022 CONFERENCE
2022 Theme: Sustainability & The Return To Roots
The Tri-CASC 2022 theme “Sustainability: The Return to Roots” reflects on the position of the APIS/A community in a time of racial reckoning and social transformation. This year’s focus on a “Return to Roots” aims to discuss the variety of experiences, practices, and ideologies fundamental to the APIS/A diaspora and determine whether or not they still serve our community and a vision of collective liberation. We intend to create a space that examines the responsibilities and narratives of the APIS/A community when stratified among marginalized groups with a focus on historical and present anti-Blackness. Additionally, we seek to understand modern APIS/A social action within an age of online performativity. By presenting a forum to discuss and reflect, we hope to cultivate new connections, reorient our thinking through relearning, and build solidarity.
Meet the 2022 Team
IMPORTANT INFORMATION
LAND ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
We want to take the time to recognize that this conference is taking place on the unceded land of the Lenape peoples and that the institutions of Swarthmore, Haverford, and Bryn Mawr Colleges, were founded upon the exclusion and erasure of many Indigenous peoples.
Furthermore, the privileges we have in organizing a conference such as this one and being able to learn in this space is predicated on the genocide of Indigenous peoples. The acknowledgement of the land we occupy is not only a statement to address past wrongdoings, but to understand that this continues to be stolen Lenape land and that those who have a rightful claim to it are here and still experiencing the injustices of settler colonialism.
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The struggles and experiences of Black and Indigenous peoples is unique, and the liberation of APIS/As and all oppressed peoples is predicated first and foremost on the liberation of Black and Indigenous folx. The society we live in today was built not only on the backs of chattel slaves but also quite literally on top of Indigenous communities. This work cannot be done with a single-issue mindset - achieving justice for APIS/A communities means following the lead of Black and Indigenous folx who have been doing the work and engaging in difficult conversations long before non-Indigenous and non-Black APIS/As entered this space. APIS/As must fight for their freedoms even when we cannot see a direct link to our own. We ask that you reflect on the genocide of Indigenous peoples, work of Black activists, and continued unique marginalization of these two groups as you interact with the programming of this conference and throughout your organizing work.
CONFERENCE AGENDA
Saturday, April 23rd
12:30PM - Zoom room for all conference attendees opens
1:05PM - 2:30PM Keynote Speaker: Abigail Lee
Workshop Round 1
Serial Experiments: Asian Americans, TV, and the University
Description: How does popular media construct narratives of Asian American students who are navigating the campus’s racial geographies? Although Asian Americans are a powerful presence on college campuses, few popular narratives center the experiences of Asian American college students. By looking at how the series Dear White People positions Asian and Black students in relationship to each other and their campus space, we can see this production working out what it means to be Black and Asian together on campus and the serial narrative possibilities of collusion against institutional power. This talk looks at narratives of student protest through the 1968 Third World Liberation Front student strike and the TV show Dear White People. Racist narratives are serial formations, and the seriality of race is reflected in the serial poetics of TV. Thus, looking at the ways in which TV alters and experiments with seriality can help us picture how to transform serial narratives of Asianness and Blackness in our culture, offering visions into how the seriality of race can be creatively challenged. This talk explores ways in which we can experiment with the serial plots of race through solidarity, refusal, and fugitive community-making.
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Abigail Lee – Ph.D. candidate at UNC-Chapel Hill, Fall 2022 Assistant Professor of Critical Race and Moving Image Studies at the University of South Florida, Scholar, Researcher
Workshop Round 1 (2:35PM - 4:05PM)
Revisiting Roots, Envisioning Routes
Description: What are the words, experiences, or objects that have taken root in our memories? In what ways do they reflect or complicate our sense of cultural and ethnic identity? How might we re-see those memories to navigate the routes that our present selves are traversing? In this workshop, participants will be invited to write and share a creative piece (poem, story, essay, or a combination of these!) that explores the relationship between memory and identity to practice writing as a means of re-vision.
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Visiting Assistant Professor of English at Haverford College, Author, Poet
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APAC, An Origin Story: How our collective anger started an organization
Description: Asian Pasifika Arts Collective is an organization that aims to amplify AAPI Voices in Baltimore and beyond through art. Since it was founded in 2018, it has produced and co-produced several live performance and theater productions, hosted workshops, collaborated with AAPI artists from around the world and partnered with organizations such as The Kennedy Center, Philadelphia Asian Performing Cori Dioquino (Asian Pasifika Arts Collective)Artists, Baltimore Museum of Art, Asian Arts & Culture Center, The Motor House of Baltimore, Strand Theater Company and the Filipino Kali Academy. In this workshop, Co-founder and current Co-executive Director Cori Dioquino shares how the collective anger of a small group of artists became the impetus to start a movement and found an organization and the lessons she's learned along the way regarding identity, implicit bias and community building.
Cori Dioquino (Asian Pasifika Arts Collective) — Filipino American actor, producer, arts integration educator, and acting coach based in Baltimore and NYC.
Filipinx movement artist, choreographer, teaching artist, and cultural worker
Embodied Spiritual Activism
Description: The lecture+yoga+reflection workshop will include a short dialogue and presentation on what it means to be grounded in spirit. Conversation will touch on:
1.) Spiritual activism versus spiritual bypassing by Asian Americans
2.) Channeling breath as our common denominator
3.) allyship from non AAPI folx
4.) rooting ourselves in identity and ancestry as a way to sustain grounding in Amerikkka.
5.) decentering histories to heal our body, mind, and spirit.
We will center ourselves with a breath practice utilizing our very own Eastern practices. Through yoga, we will give ourselves permission to be in collective movement with each other
Workshop Round 2 (4:20-5:05PM)
Colorism, Caste and Class: South Asians & Intra-community Oppression
Description:
- A look at the history of caste and colourism
- Mobility Privileges of Desis in USA
- How caste and the coolie diaspora intersect
- How to identify colourist oppression and what to do when confronted by it
Sangeetha Thanapal – Educator, Activist, Public Speaker, Author
Navigating Sex Work and Anti-Trafficking Narratives
Description: Sex work and massage work are at the intersection of just about every systemic complexity. This workshop will attempt to unravel some of the most pressing issues, including anti-trafficking's history with evangelicalism, the problem with carceral solutions, and the specific space that migrant Asian women occupy among these threads. This workshop will also discuss the work that Red Canary Song does on the ground, propose potential ways forward, and have Q&A time to brainstorm with attendees.
Esther Kao – Lead Organizer of Red Canary Song a grassroots collective advocating for rights of migrant sex workers, Consultant at the Sex Workers Project of the Urban Justice Center.
Closing Statements + Debrief (6:00PM - 6:30PM)
Saturday, April 23rd
12:30PM - Zoom room for all conference attendees opens
1:05PM - 2:30PM Keynote Speaker: Abigail Lee
Abigail Lee – Ph.D. candidate at UNC-Chapel Hill, Fall 2022 Assistant Professor of Critical Race and Moving Image Studies at the University of South Florida, Scholar, Researcher
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Serial Experiments: Asian Americans, TV, and the University
Description: How does popular media construct narratives of Asian American students who are navigating the campus’s racial geographies? Although Asian Americans are a powerful presence on college campuses, few popular narratives center the experiences of Asian American college students. By looking at how the series Dear White People positions Asian and Black students in relationship to each other and their campus space, we can see this production working out what it means to be Black and Asian together on campus and the serial narrative possibilities of collusion against institutional power. This talk looks at narratives of student protest through the 1968 Third World Liberation Front student strike and the TV show Dear White People. Racist narratives are serial formations, and the seriality of race is reflected in the serial poetics of TV. Thus, looking at the ways in which TV alters and experiments with seriality can help us picture how to transform serial narratives of Asianness and Blackness in our culture, offering visions into how the seriality of race can be creatively challenged. This talk explores ways in which we can experiment with the serial plots of race through solidarity, refusal, and fugitive community-making.
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Zoom Link: https://haverford.zoom.us/j/92007941484
Meeting ID: 920 0794 1484
Workshop Round 1 (2:35PM - 4:05PM)
Revisiting Roots, Envisioning Routes
Description: What are the words, experiences, or objects that have taken root in our memories? In what ways do they reflect or complicate our sense of cultural and ethnic identity? How might we re-see those memories to navigate the routes that our present selves are traversing? In this workshop, participants will be invited to write and share a creative piece (poem, story, essay, or a combination of these!) that explores the relationship between memory and identity to practice writing as a means of re-vision.
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Zoom Link: https://us04web.zoom.us/j/72882465627?pwd=t-Aiqgsh1zMSBDojybcgDA_V8fCdCM.1 Meeting ID: 728 8246 5627
Visiting Assistant Professor of English at Haverford College, Author, Poet
Cori Dioquino (Asian Pasifika Arts Collective) — Filipino American actor, producer, arts integration educator, and acting coach based in Baltimore and NYC.
APAC, An Origin Story: How our collective anger started an organization
Description: Asian Pasifika Arts Collective is an organization that aims to amplify AAPI Voices in Baltimore and beyond through art. Since it was founded in 2018, it has produced and co-produced several live performance and theater productions, hosted workshops, collaborated with AAPI artists from around the world and partnered with organizations such as The Kennedy Center, Philadelphia Asian Performing Cori Dioquino (Asian Pasifika Arts Collective)Artists, Baltimore Museum of Art, Asian Arts & Culture Center, The Motor House of Baltimore, Strand Theater Company and the Filipino Kali Academy. In this workshop, Co-founder and current Co-executive Director Cori Dioquino shares how the collective anger of a small group of artists became the impetus to start a movement and found an organization and the lessons she's learned along the way regarding identity, implicit bias and community building.
Zoom Link: https://haverford.zoom.us/j/95663850127
Meeting ID: 956 6385 0127
Filipinx movement artist, choreographer, teaching artist, and cultural worker
Embodied Spiritual Activism
Description: The lecture+yoga+reflection workshop will include a short dialogue and presentation on what it means to be grounded in spirit. Conversation will touch on:
1.) Spiritual activism versus spiritual bypassing by Asian Americans
2.) Channeling breath as our common denominator
3.) allyship from non AAPI folx
4.) rooting ourselves in identity and ancestry as a way to sustain grounding in Amerikkka.
5.) decentering histories to heal our body, mind, and spirit.
We will center ourselves with a breath practice utilizing our very own Eastern practices. Through yoga, we will give ourselves permission to be in collective movement with each other
Zoom Link: https://brynmawr-edu.zoom.us/j/94624328592
Meeting ID: 946 2432 8592
Workshop Round 2 (4:20-5:50PM)
Colorism, Caste and Class: South Asians & Intra-community Oppression
Description:
- A look at the history of caste and colourism
- Mobility Privileges of Desis in USA
- How caste and the coolie diaspora intersect
- How to identify colourist oppression and what to do when confronted by it
Zoom Link: https://brynmawr-edu.zoom.us/j/97255762538
Meeting ID: 972 5576 2538
Sangeetha Thanapal – Educator, Activist, Public Speaker, Author
Navigating Sex Work and Anti-Trafficking Narratives
Description: Sex work and massage work are at the intersection of just about every systemic complexity. This workshop will attempt to unravel some of the most pressing issues, including anti-trafficking's history with evangelicalism, the problem with carceral solutions, and the specific space that migrant Asian women occupy among these threads. This workshop will also discuss the work that Red Canary Song does on the ground, propose potential ways forward, and have Q&A time to brainstorm with attendees.
Zoom Link: https://haverford.zoom.us/j/91239759553
Meeting ID: 912 3975 9553
Esther Kao – Lead Organizer of Red Canary Song a grassroots collective advocating for rights of migrant sex workers, Consultant at the Sex Workers Project of the Urban Justice Center.
Closing Statements + Debrief (6:00PM - 6:30PM)
MEET OUR SPEAKERS
Abigail Lee
Keynote Speaker
Ph.D. candidate at UNC-Chapel Hill, Fall 2022 Assistant Professor of Critical Race and Moving Image Studies at the University of South Florida, Scholar, Researcher
Abigail Jinju Lee researches Asian American film, TV, and literature, centering Asian American feminist politics of solidarity. She is a Ph.D. candidate at UNC-Chapel Hill and will join the University of South Florida as an assistant professor of Critical Race and Moving Image Studies in the fall. She received her M.F.A. in poetry writing in 2016 from UNC-Greensboro. A prison-industrial-complex abolitionist, she currently lives, grows, and works for a better world in Durham, North Carolina on the land of the Occanechi Band of the Saponi Nation, the Sissipahaw, the Shakori, and the Eno.
Elizabeth Kim
Workshop Host
Visiting Assistant Professor of English at Haverford College, Author, Poet
Elizabeth Kim is a Visiting Assistant Professor of English at Haverford College, where she teaches Asian American literature, graphic novel, and poetry workshop courses. Her research explores multilingual and multi-media practice in experimental poetry by contemporary Asian American and Pacific Islander writers, examining the ways in which they enact formal hybridity through the combination of text and images as a means of negotiating national, cultural, racial, and ideological boundaries. Elizabeth earned her PhD in English Literature at Temple University and her MFA in Poetry from the Creative Writing Program at Rutgers University-Newark. Her poetry and prose have appeared in Platform Review, The Stillwater Review, The Waiting Room Reader, and American Book Review.
Anito Gavino
Workshop Host
Filipinx movement artist, choreographer, teaching artist, and cultural worker
Ani Gavino is a Filipinx movement artist, choreographer, teaching artist, and cultural worker whose life work centers on decolonial art activism through a research-to-movement performance practice. A native to the island of Panay, Philippines,
Anito immigrated to the United States in 2000, and danced professionally with Cleo Parker Robinson Dance Ensemble, Dallas Black Dance Theatre, Kun Yang- Lin/ Dancers, Ananya Dance Theater. Currently residing in Lenape lands, Gavino directs her project-based company Ani/MalayaWorks, a project-based dance theater company founded in 2014. She started the company as a way to teach her daughter, Malaya, about her native Philippine Islands and its many beautiful traditions. These processes are now shared with kapwa (community), an important element in Anito’s work. She utilizes dance, yoga, film, and literature as vessels for inscription, dialogue, and spiritual journeys with the Asian-American community at large. Her work has been generously supported by the MAPfund,National Performance Network, Leeway Foundation, Velocity Fund, Foundation for Contemporary Arts, and supported by Swarthmore College, Painted Bride, Barnes Foundation, Bronx Academy of Arts and Dance, Movement Research at the Judson Theater, Asian Arts Initiative, Philadelphia Asian Performing Artists, Philadelphia Asian American Film Festival and more. Annielille writes for a dance publication, thINKing Dance, an MFA in Dance graduate from Hollins University, and an adjunct professor at Rowan University. She also finished her 200 hour yoga certification from Studio 34 in West Philadelphia where you can find her teaching "Everyone is a dancer" yoga. More information on Gavino's work can be found on www.anigavino.com.
Cori Dioquino
Workshop Host
Filipino American actor, producer, arts integration educator, and acting coach based in Baltimore and NYC
She is a passionate advocate of stronger Filipino/a/x and Asian Pacific Indigenous (API) representation in American arts and entertainment. In 2018, Cori co-founded the Asian Pasifika Arts Collective, an organization which aims to “use art to advocate representation of Asian Americans and Pacific Indigenous Americans in everyday life while building cross-community relationships.” In 2020, she helped launch the national campaign Unapologetically Asian in response to the growing discrimination towards Asians and Asian Americans amid the coronavirus pandemic.
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As a certified arts integration specialist, Cori uses the arts to engage students as they learn core curriculum and empower them to share their stories and actively participate in social change. To learn more about her work in arts integration or as an acting coach, you can visit her acting studio website.
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Cori is a member of SAG-AFTRA and an Equity Member Candidate. As a trained actor, she has worked on stage and in film and television, most notably appearing on screen in Marvel/Netflix's hit series Daredevil and Season 2 of New Amsterdam. In her spare time, Cori practices Filipino indigenous Kali (Pekiti Tersia) and rock climbs. She is currently represented by Whole Artist Management in New York.
Sangeetha Thanapal
Workshop Host
Educator, Activist, Public Speaker, Author
Sangeetha Thanapal’s high school teacher told her mother to stop her from reading so much: it didn’t work. The reading turned into writing, which then turned into her whole life. Besides fantasy fiction, she also writes nonfiction on subjects ranging from racial justice to the politics of Southeast Asia. As an activist, she has engaged in anti-racism work in Singapore and Australia. She is the originator of the term ‘Chinese Privilege,’ which explicates institutionalized racism in Singapore. She has spoken and performed at the Melbourne Writer’s Festival, the Emerging Writer’s Festival and many more. She has recently returned from a stint as “Activist-In-Residence” at Massey University (NZ) and is doing diversity and inclusivity consulting with organizations all over the world. Her fiction and non-fiction work has been published in Djed Press, Fireside Fiction, Eureka Street, Wear Your Voice and many more. She is presently working on her first novel, We, The South, an epic fantasy adventure set in medieval India. She also has over 14k followers on Instagram, where she educates people on social justice issues across the world. When not absorbed in reading and writing, she likes to scroll Pinterest for home décor inspiration. You can find her everywhere as @kaliandkalki.
Esther Kao
Workshop Host
Lead Organizer of Red Canary Song a grassroots collective advocating for rights of migrant sex workers, Consultant at the Sex Workers Project of the Urban Justice Center.
Esther Kao is a Lead Organizer with Red Canary Song, a grassroots collective of Asian and migrant sex workers and allies doing massage worker outreach and labor organizing, and a Consultant at the Sex Workers Project of the Urban Justice Center. Along with coalition partners, she organized the launch and ongoing efforts on the Massage License Decriminalization Act and does public education on the intersection between sex worker rights and anti-trafficking. She has spoken at Stanford University, the University of Chicago, and Columbia University among others.
POST- CONFERENCE
INFORMATION
Thank you to those who were able to make it for our virtual conference, Sustainability: The Return to Roots! If you couldn't make it, or were wishing to rewatch different workshops, fret not! Below you will find recordings of the keynote and workshops with live transcription. Please contact us at tricasc@gmail.com if you have trouble viewing them. These were made available with the speakers' consent.
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Additionally, it would be helpful for the Tri-CASC planning team if those who attended our virtual 2022 conference take a moment to give us feedback! And if you have a spare minute, please also check out the post-conference resources that our speakers kindly shared with us!
Partnerships and Co-sponsorships
Tri-CASC 2022 Debrief
The 2022 Tri-College Asian Student Conference is made possible thanks to our numerous funders across the Bryn Mawr, Haverford, and Swarthmore Colleges.
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Intercultural Center - Swarthmore
President’s Office - Bryn Mawr
Pensby Center - Bryn Mawr
Dean’s Office - Bryn Mawr
Special Events Committee for Students - Haverford
Office of Multicultural Affairs - Haverford