(We will continue adding guests to this list as they are confirmed, so please keep checking back!)

Keynote Speaker | Panelists | Creative Writers

About the Keynote Speaker

Josephine Lee is currently the director of the Asian American Studies Consortium for the Committee on Institutional Cooperation, an academic consortium of twelve major teaching and research universities in the Midwest. She is the author of Performing Asian America and co-editor of Re/collecting Early Asian America, both published by Temple University Press; she has also published numerous book chapters, articles, and reviews on modern drama, theater history, performance, cultural theory, and Asian American Studies.

Department Affiliations at the University of Minnesota: English Department; Asian American Studies Program; American Studies Department

Panelists: “Life as an Academic”

Time: Saturday, September 26, 2009, 1:30pm – 2:45pm
Location: Ballantine Hall Room 006
Description: The panelists in this panel discussion represent various disciplines and will be sharing their experiences and perspectives as academics at IUB.

Purnima Bose. “I am a post-colonial scholar, whose earlier work focused on British colonialism and the links between Irish and Indian feminists and nationalists in the first half of the twentieth century. Since then, I have become interested in globalization, the role of corporations in public life, and anti-globalization resistance. This interest arises out of a desire to comprehend the local in relation to the global, and connect Indiana to India through a study of General Electric, which has a plant in Bloomington and is the largest foreign employer in India. I am also fascinated by the ways in which globalization shapes the Indian (US) diaspora and its conception of identity and history. Besides an engagement with South Asia, these seemingly different projects are united by my attention to hegemonic structures, on the one hand, and activism, on the other. I am motivated to understand how people make sense of their worlds and how they become inspired to change their circumstances. While my formal training is in Comparative Literature, my scholarship tends to be an eclectic mix of history, cultural studies, social movement theory, and feminist analysis.”

Purnima Bose is an Associate Professor of English at Indiana University, Bloomington

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Fernando Ona’s academic and research interests are in environmental health, social epidemiology and the sociomedical sciences. He applies a systems perspective to the intersection of public health, food and agriculture, social inequities and the environment. Dr. Ona’s expertise includes the impacts of food contamination, food safety and sanitation conditions on human health, including the ecological health and social impacts from community food projects. For several years, he has also researched health disparities among socially excluded populations in the United States, Europe and the Philippines using community-based participatory geographic information systems and integrated health/environmental impact assessment methods.

Fernando Ona is an Associate Professor in the Applied Health Science Department at Indiana University, Bloomington.

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Carwina Weng joined the Indiana Law faculty in 2006 to coordinate the Disability Law Clinic, which assists clients with social security and Medicaid disability benefits. She previously has taught at Boston College Law School (2001-2006) and Florida Coastal School of Law (1996-1999). In addition, she has practiced poverty law with The Legal Aid Society of New York and Greater Boston Legal Services.

Weng teaches and writes in the area of clinical legal education, with a focus on multicultural lawyering and law and psychology.

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Joel Wong teaches counseling theories, counseling skills, and multicultural counseling in the Counseling and Counseling Psychology programs at IU.

His major research interests are (1)  Asian/Asian American psychology and (2) the psychology of men and masculinities. With regard to Asian/Asian American psychology, his overarching interest is in the relationship between cultural variables and mental health. His recent research interests have focused on three interrelated areas: (a) suicide prevention; (b) cultural discrepancies in immigrant families; and (c) the intersection of culture and lay beliefs about psychological phenomena, e.g., lay beliefs about depression and happiness. He is currently the communications officer of the Prevention Section and the Editor of the Section on Ethnic and Racial Diversity Newsletter in Division 17 (Counseling Psychology), APA. He is also an ad hoc reviewer for the following journals: Journal of Counseling Psychology, Psychology of Men and Masculinity, and Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology.

Reading by Creative Writers

Time: Saturday, September 26, 2009, 4:30pm-6:00pm
Location: Neal Marshall Black Culture Center, The Bridgewaters Room

Debra Kang Dean is the author of Back to Back(1997), a chapbook of poems, and two full-length collections from BOA Editions:  News of Home (1998) and Precipitates (2003).  Her poems have been featured online at The Writer’s Almanac, Poetry Daily, and Verse Daily; they have also been published in a number of anthologies, including Unsettling America,Best American Poetry, The New American Poets,Yobo, and Yellow as Tumeric, Fragrant as Cloves.  Her personal essays have appeared in New England Review, Tar River Poetry, Many Mountains Moving, and in the anthology Under Western Eyes.

Debra Kang Dean is a Lecturer in Asian American Studies at Indiana University, Bloomington.

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Eugene Gloria earned his BA from San Francisco State University, his MA from Miami University of Ohio, and his MFA from the University of Oregon. He is the author of two books of poems – Hoodlum Birds(Penguin, 2006) and Drivers at the Short-Time Motel (Penguin, 2000), which was selected for the 1999 National Poetry Series and the 2001 Asian American Literary Award. He has also received a Fulbright Research Grant, a grant from the San Francisco Art Commission, a Poetry Society of America award, and a Pushcart Prize. He teaches creative writing and English literature at DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana.

Eugene Gloria is an Associate Professor at DePauw University.

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Samrat Upadhyay is the first Nepali-born fiction writer writing in English to be published in the West, and the recipient of numerous prestigious awards. His first book, the short story collection ARRESTING GOD IN KATHMANDU (2000, 2001) has been translated into French and Greek.. His stories have been read live on National Public Radio and published widely as well as in Scribner’s Best of the Writing Workshops edited by Sherman Alexie, and Best American Short Stories edited by Amy Tan. Upadhyay’s second book, the novel THE GURU OF LOVE (2003) was named a New York Times Notable Book of the Year 2003, and a finalist for the 2004 Kiriyama Prize. His recent story collection, THE ROYAL GHOSTS, won the 2007 Asian American Literary Award and the Society of Midland Authors Award in fiction. It was also a finalist for the Ohioana Book Award. The Los Angeles Times marks him as “among the smoothest and most noiseless of contemporary writers.”

Samrat Upadhyay is an Associate Professor of English at Indiana University, Bloomington.

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