Symposium Schedule

 

Friday. May 10, 2024

9-9:20 am: Gathering and Morning refreshments

9:20-9:30 am: Welcome remarks, James Kyung-Jin Lee (he/him), UCI

9:30-10:45 am: Opening Keynote: "Unwellness and Care in the University," Mimi Khúc

Keynote description

Our students are dying. This is a reality many of us, including students themselves, have not been able to face. We have not been able to look directly at the mental health crisis happening beneath the veneer of our beautiful universities—a crisis the pandemic has only exacerbated. Dr. Mimi Khúc invites us to confront this crisis together, by drawing from her recent book, dear elia: Letters from the Asian American Abyss, and sharing what she has learned from students during her mental health tour across the U.S over the past seven years.

Keynote speaker:

Dr. Mimi Khúc (she/her) is a writer, scholar, and teacher of things unwell. She was the 2023 Scholar / Artist / Activist in Residence for FLOURISH: Community-Engaged Arts and Social Wellness at the University of Toronto Scarborough, and is currently the Co-Editor of The Asian American Literary Review and an adjunct lecturer in Disability Studies at Georgetown University.


10:45-11 am: Break

11 am-12:30 pm: [Panel]: "Disintegrating Rigor" 

Panel description:

This panel brings together four scholar-teachers to reflect on what it means to think beyond, perhaps even against, “rigor” as the imposition of standards that elide relationships of care. What happens if, in setting aside the pursuit of “rigor” with its attendant and calculated judgments and exclusions, we pay more attention to the networks of learning – and care of learning – that animate both scholarly and pedagogical endeavors? What if we exchange evaluation and assessment for exploration and attunement – exploring with one another, scholars and students, the pressing questions of our time and attuning one another to our mutual, collective, and individual needs as the “best practice” for developing intellectual engagement?

Panelists:

Dr. Jonathan Alexander is Chancellor’s Professor of English at UC, Irvine. 

Dr. Traise Yamamoto is an Associate Professor of English at UC, Riverside. 

Dr. Emma Stapely is an Assistant Professor of English at UC, Riverside. 

Row Ramires is a Ph.D candidate in the English Department at UC, Irvine.


12:30-1:30 pm: Lunch

1:30-3 pm: [Working session]: "Our Ableist Syllabi: Reading Our Syllabi for Filth"

Workshop description: 

This working session will give participants the opportunity to collectively break down actual syllabi, to expose and deconstruct its ableist assumptions that make students and instructors unwell. 

Facilitator: 

Dr. erin Khuê Ninh is a Professor and current Chair of the Asian American Studies Department at 

UC, Santa Barbara.


3-4 pm: share out and reflect


Saturday, May 11, 2024

10:30 am-12 pm: [Panel]: "On Illness, On Care: How We Teach the Body"

Panel description: 

This panel begins from our position as graduate students who study the medical practices we turn to for addressing our own conditions of unwellness. Within scaffolded personal reflections and group activities, we ask: how do we teach about pain while acknowledging that the people in our classrooms, educators, and students, are also experiencing pain?

Panelists:

Claire Chun (she/her) is a Ph.D. candidate at the University of California, Berkeley in the Department of Ethnic Studies. 

Maile Aihua Young (they/them) is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of English at the University of California, Santa Barbara.


12-1 pm: Lunch

1-2:30 pm: [Working session]: "Toward an Access- and Care-Centered Classroom"

Workshop description

This working session will begin the work of rebuilding and rewriting the classroom as a space that centers disability, decolonial, and queer practices of worldbuilding.

Facilitator: 

Dr. erin Khuê Ninh is a Professor and current Chair of the Asian American Studies Department at 

UC, Santa Barbara.


2:30-3:30 pm: share out and reflect, closing