News

“Tomi’s Album B Page 17 b,” Yamashita Family Archives. Photo courtesy of Karen Tei Yamashita

“Japanese/America” symposium explores art, literature, place, music

The Feb. 15 symposium is free and open to the public and includes lectures, discussion, and musical performance.
Cover of "The Asian American Family" zine

“The Asian American Family” makes a zine

When scholarship and personal experience overlap, ideas that emerge can become critique and expression simultaneously.

Photo of David L. Eng. Photo by Sarah Malone

Eng discusses melancholy and dissociation

David L. Eng of the University of Pennsylvania opened Princeton’s 2018-19 Asian American Studies Lecture series.

American Studies students, faculty, staff, and friends celebrate Class Day in the Chancellor Green cafeteria with the awarding of student prizes

AMS honors seniors at 2018 Class Day

Students and faculty of the Program in American Studies gathered with friends and family on June 4 to celebrate graduating seniors and honor their achievements.

Excavation in AMS 352, "Battle Lab: Battle of Princeton" | Still from video by Nick Barberio and Nick Donnoli, Office of Communications

Excavating Princeton and American history

AMS 352, “Battle Lab: The Battle of Princeton,” taught by Associate Director of American Studies Rachael DeLue and Associate Professor of Art and Archaeology Nathan Arrington, uses hands-on fieldwork to explore how the battle may have unfolded.

Photo of Desmond Jagmohan

Recognizing Ida B. Wells, printed speech

Assistant Professor of Politics Desmond Jagmohan located the journalism of Ida B. Wells in a tradition of combative printed speech.

Col(LAB) 1.0 in the dining hall

Col(LAB) 1.0 Food Matters: Risk and Privilege

Writer Annie Sheng describes the Col(LAB) 1.0 experience.

Faculty, Student & Program News

Congratulations to Sarah Rivett for her promotion to professor of English and American studies.

Congratulations to Nicholas Ming-Li Wu for receiving the 2018 Frederick Douglass Service Award, given to a senior who has exhibited “courage, leadership, intellectual achievement and a willingness to contribute unselfishly toward a deeper understanding of the experiences of racial minorities and who, in so doing, reflects the tradition of service embodied in education at Princeton.”

The 2018 Harold Willis Dodds Achievement Prize was presented to Nicholas Fernández. This award recognizes the senior who best embodies the qualities of Princeton’s 15th president, Harold Dodds, “particularly in the qualities of clear thinking, moral courage, a patient and judicious regard for the opinions of others, and a thoroughgoing devotion to the welfare of the University and to the life of the mind.”

Congratulations to Dirk Hartog, one of four recipients of Graduate Mentoring Awards from the McGraw Center for Teaching and Learning. He was honored during the Graduate School’s Hooding Ceremony on Monday, June 4, on Cannon Green.

Congratulations to Brian Herrera for his promotion to associate professor of theater.

The Program in American Studies is delighted and honored to announce that, starting fall 2018, it will be administering three certificate programs: American studies, Asian American studies, and Latino studies.

Congratulations to Dara Strolovitch, recipient of the Midwest Women’s Caucus 2018 Outstanding Career Award.

We gratefully announce the establishment of the Lin Family Endowment for Asian American Studies.

Judith Weisenfeld has been awarded a $50,400 fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities.

ASA course designation in 2017-18 Registrar's catalogThe Program in American Studies joins the celebration for the launching of the new course designation ASA for Asian American Studies, marking the beginning of Princeton's growing curriculum in Asian American/Diasporic Studies. Our thanks to acting director Judith Weisenfeld for her collaboration with the Office of the Registrar and the Office of the Dean of the College to make this happen.

President Eisgruber and Dean of the College Dolan have responded to the report of the Task Force on American Studies.

Publication News

An American Language: The History of Spanish in the United States by Rosina Lozano, associate professor of history, has received the 2019 PROSE Award for Language and Linguistics, sponsored by the Association of American Publishers.

2018 AMS alumnus Nicholas Wu writes with Karen Yuan in The Atlantic about the Facebook group Subtle Asian Traits, “a digital manifestation of a ‘third space,’ or the in-between space in which ‘cultural hybrids,’ such as the children of immigrants, adrift between two national communities, shape their unique identities.”

Rosina Lozano discusses her book An American Language: The History of Spanish in the United States.

Brian Herrera, associate professor of theater, celebrated the legacy of playwright María Irene Fornés with a symposium and in Princeton’s 2018 James Baldwin Lecture. An essay is forthcoming in the journal Theater.

Tanika Raychaudhuri (Ph.D. candidate, Department of Politics) has published a solo-authored article based on research supported by a grant from the Eric Pai Asian American Studies Student Fund.

AMS emerita postdoctoral research associate Laurel Mei-singh writes on “Sowing the seeds of environmental justice in Trenton.”

In the Los Angeles Review of Books, AMS director Anne Cheng asks “Is the idea of ‘Crazy Rich Asians’ preferable to the Model Minority or the F.O.B. (‘fresh-off-the-boat’) or, for that matter, the Yellow Peril?”

Professor of Dance Judith Hamera’s Unfinished Business: Michael Jackson, Detroit, and the Figural Economy of American Deindustrialization has been awarded the Association for Theatre in Higher Education’s 2018 Outstanding Book Award and the American Society for Theatre Research’s Biennial Sally Banes Publication Prize (2017-18).

“[A] collective murmuring of want” — Anne Cheng in the Los Angeles Review of Books on Laurie Greenfield’s documentary, “Generation Wealth.”

Alfred Bendixen, English department lecturer and AMS teaching faculty member, interviewed by the Princeton Alumni Weekly, described crime fiction as “central to American culture and American identity.”

Celebrating faculty books: Books published in the 2017-18 academic year engage with texts and events from the 1600s to the present.

Professor of History Alison Isenberg’s Designing San Francisco: Art, Land and Urban Renewal in the City by the Bay received the 2018 PROSE Award in Architecture & Urban Planning, and a John Brinckerhoff Jackson Book Prize from the Foundation for Landscape Studies.

Around Campus

AMS welcomes the Visiting Scholars and Artists from Puerto Rico (VISAPUR), hosted by the Program in Latin American Studies to support their continued work in the aftermath of hurricanes Irma and Maria.

Sir Gordon Wu, Princeton Class of 1958, was presented the Distinguished Alumni Award by the Asian American Alumni Association of Princeton (A4P). In his acceptance speech, he spoke of Princeton Asian and Asian American alums’ engagements with ideas of American democracy on the world stage.

Eduardo Bhatia, Princeton Class of 1986, minority leader and former president of the Senate of Puerto Rico, delivered Princeton’s 2018 Baccalaureate address on Sunday, June 3, urging the Class of 2018 to remember the diversity of America and to recommit themselves to the ideals and standards of American democracy.