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Collaborative Institutions
The William Joiner Center
The William Joiner Center for the Study of War and Social Consequences was
founded in 1982 to provide advocacy and educational services to veterans and
to promote research and teaching on war, and particularly the Vietnam War.
The Center has sponsored exchanges of writers, artists, scholars and educators
from Vietnam and the U.S. since 1987 a time when few other U.S. institutions
were reaching out to Vietnam with the historic visits of Le Luu and Nguy Ngu,
two prominent veteran writers from North and South, from PAVN and ARVN forces
respectively. This ongoing program of exchanges, with support from the Ford
Foundation, has grown to be one of the center s most successful undertakings.
In 1990, the Joiner Center and the Writers Association of Vietnam sponsored
the first Conference of Vietnamese and American Veteran Writers with over
sixty of Vietnam s most prominent writers attending together with a delegation
from the U.S. To date, over twenty-five of Vietnam s most prominent writers
have spent from three months to three weeks visiting the Center, meeting with
writers, editors, translators, and publishers from the U.S., Latin America,
and Europe at the Center s Writers Workshop held in June of each year. During
these visits, writers have been hosted in the homes of U.S. writers and veterans,
including Vietnamese Americans, who have offered intimate views of American
life and traveled with them through the best and worst of our cities and countryside.
Other recent efforts of the Joiner Center include its
Vietnam Institute, a summer institute for high school teachers and its Vietnam
Today Program, a three-week summer study program at Hue University. A most
recent initiative in cooperation with the Harvard Yenching Institute involves
English Department faculty members in Vietnam. Since 1993, close to a dozen
faculty members from the Universities of Ha Noi, Hue, Ho Chi Minh City, and
Can Tho have enrolled in UMass Boston s M.A. Program in Bilingual/ESL Studies.
While enrolled in the program, participants work closely with the Joiner Center
through seminars on literary translation as part of an ongoing project of
the University of Massachusetts Press to introduce recent Vietnamese literature
in translation to English- speaking audiences. These efforts add to a growing
university press list which includes works such as Le Luu s A Time Far Past,
Nguyen Quang Thieu s The Woman Carry River Water, Bruce Weigl and Thanh Nguyen
s Poems from Captured Documents, Kevin Bowen and Bruce Weigl s Writing Between
the Lines, and Nguyen Ba Chung, Kevin Bowen, and Bruce Weigl s Mountain River:
Vietnamese Poetry from the Wars 1948-1993.
The
Asian American Studies Programs The Asian American
Studies academic program of the University of Massachusetts Boston offers
opportunities to study the historical experiences, voices, contemporary issues,
and contributions of diverse Asian communities in the U.S. By drawing on shared
commitments of faculty, staff, and students throughout the university in an
evolving intercollegiate structure, the program provides rich, interdisciplinary
approaches in teaching and research with dynamic linkages to local communities
and supportive learning environments for students of all backgrounds. Students
may design a major or concentration in Asian American Studies.
The program offers 4-6 courses each semester, often cross-listed with departments such as American Studies, Sociology, Political Science, English, and Women s Studies. Comparative work with Asian Studies (including Vietnamese Studies), Latino Studies, and Africana Studies is encouraged. Course content and pedagogy are designed to be student-centered and to support community involvement, particularly with immigrant populations. Through its curriculum, the program enables students, faculty, and community practitioners to work together in examining issues such as:
The social, cultural, economic, political, religious,
and environmental consequences of massive demographic shifts within the U.S.
population during the past 30 years due to immigration and refugee resettlement
40% of which has come from Asia.
The complex process of racialization of individuals and groups as well as
the inter- relationships among and between various racial groups historically
and currently, including Asian Americans who do not fit in a bipolar, white-black
paradigm of race relations whether in post-1992 Los Angeles or closer to home
in Dorchester.
The economic, political, social, and cultural changes resulting from the globalization
of capital, labor, information, and popular media as well as the ways in which
transnational, diasporic populations such as Indian, Chinese, and Vietnamese
communities in the U.S. are products of and agents in that globalization process.
The social and psychological impacts of traumatic experiences and healing
practices, and their relationships to dynamics of identity and culture, as
exemplified by the situations of Cambodian and Vietnamese refugee survivors
and their families.
The critical and commercial success of writers, designers, and musicians whose
cultural works have incorporated Asian and Asian American forms, traditions,
aesthetics, and themes in original and powerful ways.
As a model of democratic educational practice, the Asian American Studies
program is committed to: enabling students of all backgrounds to develop essential
critical thinking skills as well as sensibilities for community-building,
community service, and social responsibility; preparing students to function
fully and comfortably in a multiracial, multicultural society; integrating
instruction in the classroom with practices of mentoring and role modeling
outside of the classroom to address the holistic, social and academic needs
of students.
The Coalition for Asian Pacific American Youth (CAPAY)
CAPAY is a statewide youth run organization that works with over 45 high schools
in Massachusetts to eradicate racism by educating school communities about
Asian Pacific American (APA) issues and providing support services and critical
educational resources for high school youth. Its Steering Committee consists
of fifteen youth aged 16-20 from high schools in Massachusetts, predominately
in the Greater Boston area. In addition to making decisions for the organization,
the Steering Committee provides a network of activists and community resources
to APA youth. CAPAY works in Greater Boston and with APA high school youth
in Worcester (a city with a significantly growing Southeast Asian immigrant/refugee
population), and Lowell (the second largest Cambodian community in the U.S.)
through youth and community development leadership training.
Founded in 1994 by a grassroots movement of APA high school youth who responded to racial discrimination in local high schools, CAPAY aims at building bridges with other Asian and non-Asian youth and school communities through organizing and critical leadership education. Some of its projects include: Annual Asian Pacific American Heritage Month Education Project; The Community YouthLearn AmeriCorps Project; The Immigration and Welfare Reform Education Campaign; The Summer Leadership Program;and the Youth Leadership Development Project, all of which provide workshops in schools and communities focusing on developing skills in community organizing, cultural awareness, and leadership for Asian Pacific American youth.
The East Asian Studies Program
The UMass Boston East Asian Studies Program (EAS)
draws on courses related to East Asia offered by the Departments of Modern
Languages, History, Art, Religion, Philosophy, Political Science, and Sociology.
EAS has traditionally been a "Program of Study" at UMass Boston,
requiring four semesters of either Chinese or Japanese language, plus three
other courses related to East Asia. It is currently being restructured so
as to offer a Major and a Minor in East Asian Studies. The Major , designed
for those preparing for graduate study or a career related to East Asia, will
consist of twelve courses, including two years of language for non-native
speakers. The Minor is designed for those wanting to develop a better understanding
of East Asian history and culture, including growing numbers of Asian and
Asian American students; it will consist of eight courses and will have no
language requirement.
The East Asian Studies Program also organizes and sponsors events promoting greater understanding of East Asian history, culture, and current affairs. A lecture series on "Modernization vs. Westernization in East Asia," so far has featured presentations comparing Chinese to Western attitudes to crime and punishment, comparing labor-management relations in Japan and the US, comparing East Asian and Western legal traditions, and presenting a Confucian perspective on human rights issues.
The Institute for Asian American Studies
The purpose of the Institute for Asian American Studies is to bring together
resources from the campus and community in order to conduct applied research
on Asian American issues, to expand Asian American Studies in the curriculum,
and to support Asian American development initiatives in Massachusetts. Professors
Paul Watanabe (Political Science) and Constance Chan (Career Center, CPCS)
were appointed institute co-directors in 1993.
The Institute plays an major role in developing closer relations with the Vietnamese American community. NetworkUs provides resources for a network for executive directors of Asian American community-based organizations to support leadership and organizational development. The Center for Community Economic Development (CCED) is a university-community collaboration comprised of the Institute for Asian American Studies, the Gaston Institute, and the Trotter Institute, all at the University of Massachusetts Boston, and more than 25 community-based organizations in Boston including community development corporations, employment and training agencies, multi- service organizations, and advocacy groups linking academic institutions, community- based organizations, and the public and private sectors.
The Institute supports Community Forums including a recent forum on community economic development, human services, and political participation in the Vietnamese community, conducted in Vietnamese and held on October 24, 1998 at the University of Massachusetts Boston the first gathering of its kind with over 200 members of the Vietnamese community attending. A Cultural Competence Project in collaboration with the Trotter and the Gaston Institutes and the McCormack Institute educates medical care providers in Massachusetts on issues pertinent to cultural competence in health care delivery. The Women of Color Research Group seeks to identify women of color from both academia and community-based settings interested in developing information and research on matters of concern to their communities. The Massachusetts Poll and The Asian American Political Handbook Project also support efforts of political education for the communities the Institute serves.
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