JUST ADDED: NEW FALL AAS COURSE

Preserving Community through Cultural Performance:

From the Pilipino Culture Night Experience

Fall 2011

TR, 12:30 pm to 1:45 pm

Dodd 167

Instructor: Dom Magwili

This course will explore through discussion, criticism, play readings and film/video analysis the unique and necessary function of preserving the community through cultural performance techniques and approaches.  Through the experience of Pilipino Culture Night (PCN), the course will pursue the deeper implications of discovering historic/established community culture as well as creating and developing something new.  The class seeks to outline the cultural night phenomenon and structure.  It will also describe the step-by-step creation and development of a cultural night performance, from the development of theme through rehearsal and final show.  The class will include the construction and in-class performance of an original cultural night.

UPDATE:

Works in Progress:

Asian American Studies Graduate Symposium

Date/Time: Friday, May 13, 2011 - 9:30am to 2:30 pm

Location: UCLA Campus - Public Affairs - Room 5391

Event Info:

Organized by the Asian American Studies Graduate Students Association, this event is an opportunity to foster dialogue and critical engagement on select themes presented by the 2011 and 2012 Asian American Studies Masters students. The panelists will present their current thesis research and encourage meaningful conversations spanning across an array of disciplines and departments (ethnic studies, public health, education, activism, cultural studies and gender/sexuality studies, etc). In addition, the symposium hopes to establish interconnections between undergraduate students and graduate research in Asian American and Ethnic studies.

Registration: The program is free and open to all.  Refreshments provided!

Schedule

Check-in, Refreshments 9:30 am

Welcome and Introductions 9:45 am

     Panel 1- In/visibility, Anti-Violence & Decolonizing Methodologies 10-11:15 am

Break/Refreshments 11:15-11:30 am

Panel 2 – Identity Politics, Social Networks and Mediascapes 11:30-12:45 pm

Break/Refreshments 12:45-1 pm

Panel 3 - Culture as Resistance: From Hip-Hop, Youth Activism to Food Diaspora 1-2:15 pm

Closing Remarks 2:15-2:30 pm

Asian Pacific Alumni of UCLA scholarships - DEADLINE  Saturday, April 30th!!!

Scholarships will be awarded for 2011 in the following categories:

Community Service Scholarships (Undergraduate and Graduate students eligible)   

APA-UCLA Excellence in Community Service Scholarship (Undergrad)                                                                                                 2 awards at $3,000

APA-UCLA Excellence in Community Service Scholarship (Graduate)                                                                                                 2 awards at $3,000 

Daewon & Chongja Kwon UCLA Korean Alumni Association Award (Undergrad and Graduate)                                                          2 awards at $2,500    

Business Scholarships (Undergraduate only)

APA-UCLA Sam Law Excellence in Student Leadership Scholarship                                                                                           1 award at $2,000                     

Business Scholarships (Undergraduate and MBA students only)

Sho Iino Accounting Scholarship                                                                                                                                                        1 award at $2,500  

For questions, please contact:
Dana Heatherton, Scholarship Committee Chair at apa.scholarships@gmail.com or Viet Bui at viet.tuan.bui@gmail.com

 APPLICATION DEADLINE — Saturday, April 30, 2011

Applications are available:

 Online                                                                              

http://bit.ly/apascholarship2011

Friday, April 29, 2011

5:00 PM - 9:00 PM

Asian Pacific American Legal Center

1145 Wilshire Boulevard

Los Angeles, CA

Free and open to the public but RSVP requested. Call (310) 514-9139 or email linda@philippineexpressionsbookshop.com.  Also visit Friends of Philippine Expressions Bookshop on Facebook.

A gathering of authors, book lovers and members of the community to launch new books written by Fil Am authors. The program includes authors’ talks, readings and book signing. Traditionally being held on the eve of the LA Times Festival of Books.

-Lolan Buhain Sevilla and Roseli Ilano, Co-editors. Walang Hiya: Literature taking risks toward liberatory practice

-James Daos. Ants on the Rainbow .. You’ll Never Know. A book for children

-Lorna Ignacio Dumapias, Editor. Filipino American Experience: The Making of a Historic Cultural Monument

-Lilia Lopez-Rahman. For the Sake of Louise: A Mother’s Triumph over Domestic Abuse

-Cecilia Manguerra Brainard. Vigan and Other Stories; Co-author, Angelica’s Daughters, a Dugtungan novel

-Veronica Montes, Co-author. Angelica’s Daughters, a Dugtungan novel

-Virgil J. Mayor Apostol. Way of the Ancient Healer: Sacred Teachings from the Philippine Ancestral Traditions

-Lane Wilcken. Filipino Tattoos: Ancient to Modern

-R. Zamora Linmark. Leche: A Novel

Sponsored by Philippine Expressions Bookshop.

I received this in my email from change.org (=

_________________________________________________________

Victory! I’m happy to announce that as of Friday, April 8, 2011, UCLA’s Islamic Studies program is now accepting applicants. Here’s a letter from UCLA student Ilona Gerbakher, who led this petition on Change.org:

Dear Change.org:

A funny thing happened to me on Friday: I learned that a group of students, using only the power of the internet, a few posters and a single loudspeaker can affect a huge, seemingly faceless bureaucracy for the better. On Friday I found out that the UCLA Islamic Studies program, one of the oldest and most prestigious such programs in the country, would officially be re-opening for admissions in the fall of 2011.

This program was being dismantled, or in bureaucrat-speak “put on hold” for various reasons, some of which included institutional apathy and administrative mismanagement.

I, The Muslim Student Association at UCLA, and the global community here at Change.org came together to protest this willful closure of a wonderful and globally important program. Over 5,000 of you signed our petition. Dozens of UCLA students chanted at rallies, created posters, stood outside of administrative buildings during votes, and generally made a nuisance of themselves. I spoke at rallies, carried posters, yelled into a loudspeaker; in short, we at Change.org and in the UCLA community made our voices heard, and, in the end, the UCLA administration listened.

The success of the Save Islamic Studies Campaign is about more than just a program re-opening for admissions. This is about positive, grassroots, student-led educational activism. This is about the internet revolution, the democracy of social media, and the fact that today, more than ever, the voices of change cannot and will not be silenced by the combined forces of a hostile academic or political system.

We in the campaign stand in solidarity with our Muslim brothers and sisters in the Middle East, who are changing an entire region using the very tools that we have used in our (now-successful) campaign. These students are the proof that our ideas, our social media, and our voices will be a major force for positive global change in the 21st century.

With gratitude for all of the help that you at Change.org have given us,
Ilona Gerbakher and the Save Islamic Studies Campaign at UCLA

Film TV 106C is offered this summer at UCLA and fulfills the Asian/Pacific Area Allied Field requirement for the Asian American Studies Major. Session A

If you would like to declare Asian American Studies (major or minor) please talk to Barrett Korerat! bkorerat@asianam.ucla.edu

http://www.registrar.ucla.edu/schedule/subdet.aspx?srs=238338910&term=111&session=A

This was sent awhile back ago in their monthly newsletter from the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center.

_________________________________________________________

UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center Newsletter

April 2011                       Volume 9, Number 8 

Director’s Message

Libraries! While the CSRC was opening its newly renovated library as a unique resource for students, community members, and scholars from around the world, UCLA was receiving worldwide media attention for student Alexandra Wallace’s now infamous YouTube rant, “Asians in the Library.” The video drew an immediate and sharp rebuke from UCLA Chancellor Gene Block. The student, who removed the posting and apologized, received threats and withdrew from the university. So what have we learned? The first lesson is that libraries remain important sites for education: as library patrons we encounter not just a collection of resources but other people as well, and we must learn to learn from both. The CSRC Library has hosted scholars from Finland, England, Italy, Tunisia, and Japan, among other places. Even from Mexico! Knowledge begins with difference. The second lesson is that social media has transformed the way we communicate: exchanges that were once private can now be made into instantaneous and public spectacles. But UCLA’s curriculum has not caught up to that new normal, and we are not preparing our students for the mediated social environment they must navigate. Digital natives such as Ms. Wallace have no prior experience with the once sacred divide between public and private. Although she removed her posting, it will live on forever, and prospective employers will know about it once they Google her name. The third lesson is the one most frequently overlooked in this entire incident: Ms. Wallace was a student—our student—and students make mistakes. That is part of the learning process. Otherwise we would not grade them! Our job as educators is to create and sustain a learning environment—a community, if you will—and to guide students through the difficult and necessary process of learning to learn from books, from other people, and from sitting in a library. Ms. Wallace’s video should not be considered as something alien to the UCLA community. To do so is to fool ourselves about the complicated state of “diversity” on the campus and to deny ourselves any opportunity to learn from the inevitable mistakes that can and will happen. The video should be acknowledged as a mistake, and as an offense to Asian Americans, but it should also be seen as a learning opportunity. It behooves us to ponder how we might have made the best of that opportunity, and how that student might have been part of such a process.

Chon A. Noriega

Director and Professor

Hosted by USAC General Representative 1 Office

Wednesday, April 20th 6-8PM

Ackerman 2nd Floor Lounge

Come to the second Diversity Dinner and listen to an engaging panel of 6 on-campus groups discuss the Asian American Identity while enjoying a light dinner!

What does it mean to disaggregate the term “Asian American”? What does it mean to be an Asian American at UCLA and in the 21st century?

After the panel, everyone will be given a chance to participate in a “Life Swap” and talk with people from different backgrounds about the topic.

Organizations participating include:
Asian Greek Council (Theta Kappa Phi)
Association of Chinese Americans
Asian Pacific Coalition
Association of Hmong Students
Samahang Pilipino


*Presented by USAC Gen Rep 1’s CommUNITY Team :)