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Lisa Lowe
Lisa Lowe is Samuel Knight Professor of American Studies at Yale University, and an affiliate faculty in the programs of Ethnicity, Race, and Migration, and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. An interdisciplinary scholar whose work is concerned with the study of race, immigration, capitalism, and colonialism, she is the author of Critical Terrains: French and British Orientalisms (Cornell University Press, 1991), Immigrant Acts: On Asian American Cultural Politics (Duke University Press, 1996), and The Intimacies of Four Continents (Duke University Press, 2015), and the co-editor of The Politics of Culture in the Shadow of Capital (Duke University Press, 1997) and New Questions, New Formations: Asian American Studies, a special issue of Positions: East Asia Cultures Critique 5:2 (Fall 1997). Lowe’s teaching interests include the study of Asian American studies and critical race and ethnic studies, colonialism and U.S. empire, and cultures of globalization.
The formal welcoming of Lisa Lowe by Brooklyn College administration, followed by an overview of Asian and Asian American experiences in Brooklyn by Vivian Truong (History, Swarthmore College) and Zohra Saed (Asian American Studies, Macaulay Honors College). Lisa Lowe will share her family’s experience of immigrating to and living and working within the United States.
Speakers
Moderated by Dr. Rosamond S. King, director of the Ethyle R. Wolfe Institute for the Humanities
Video available.
An overview of the history of, and major topics and trends within Asian American Studies through a conversation between Moustafa Bayoumi (English, Brooklyn College), Lisa Lowe (American Studies, Yale)
Moderated by Yung-Yi Diana Pan (Sociology, Brooklyn College)
How can our teaching practices overcome centuries of what Freire calls the “banking model of education”, which treats students as empty vessels to be filled, instead of seeing them as active participants in their own learning?
Moderated by Anna Gotlib (Philosophy, Brooklyn College)
The adage goes, “History is written by the victors.” If the “victors’ ” voices appear in historical archives more often than “subaltern” voices (i.e., the voices of people who were not of the ruling class/age/gender/race/caste), how do we reclaim those voices and let the subaltern “speak”? And in archives that more regularly collect sources from powerful elites, how can we listen to the voices of more (seemingly) marginalized and (seemingly) undocumented historical figures?
Moderated by Lauren Mancia (History, Brooklyn College)
A reading featuring Asian American alumni of Brooklyn College’s master’s of fine arts in creative writing programs.
Readers
Moderated by Madeleine Thien (M.F.A. Faculty, Brooklyn College)
Brooklyn College students and faculty discuss their research into the history of Asian Americans and Asian American studies on campus, Asian Americans in the general archives, and in the COVID Archive.
Moderated by Miriam Deutch (Library, Brooklyn College)
Many of the disciplines and departments of our modern university were formed and developed in the 19th century, at the same time that European countries were colonizing various parts of the world. Panelists will discuss how colonialism shaped various academic disciplines, and how scholars today are attempting to fundamentally decolonize and transform age-old concepts and categories that have historically been foundational to their disciplinary methodologies.
Students who identify as activists focused on any issue have a private, informal opportunity to speak with the Hess Scholar. Current Brooklyn College students who identify as activists can request an invitation, and faculty can suggest students as well, via e-mail.
We often think about imperialism and colonialism as phenomena that happened in the world after 1500 C.E., as a result of European exploration. But how (and by whom, and of whom) was colonialism practiced before the early modern period, in the premodern world? And how does such premodern history both deepen our understanding of colonialism in modernity and enhance our understanding of the world before European hegemony?
How do we understand and address the growing xenophobic upsurge in the United States (and elsewhere)? Is it just a matter of economic frustrations and security-focused phobias, or are the voices of nationalist hatred emerging from deeper, and more troubling, waters?
A new, original lecture by Lisa Lowe.
