Several years of pandemic education has revealed and intensified mental health issues for all students. Despite greater attention to student needs, the conventional wisdom around mental health has reinforced practices of toxic positivity as well as harmful racial stereotypes connected to academic performance, emotional regulation, and coping with stress. Asian American studies scholars and practitioners have addressed these problems long before the onset of the pandemic and their insights have great significance for understanding and supporting the needs of all students.

On Thursday, October 20, the Asian and Asian American Studies Institute and the Asian American Cultural Center will be hosting a day-long event to discuss these concerns. From 9:30 - 11:00 AM, we will be holding a panel discussion with a panel discussion with our invited scholars and practitioners. This space will be for faculty and staff. Since space is limited we ask that you RSVP to reserve your spot.

From 1:00 - 5:00 PM, each of our guests will be hosting a 45-minute workshop for students.

This in-person event will be held on Thursday, October 2o, in the Student Union Ballroom (Rm 331). It will also be livestreamed if you are unable to make it to campus. RSVP here for the 9:30 - 11:00 AM faculty and staff panel.

Information on the Panelists:

Lawrence-Minh Bùi Davis, PhD is a guest on the traditional territories of the Piscataway Nation. As Curator of Asian Pacific American Studies at the Smithsonian Asian Pacific American Center, he oversees the Smithsonian Literature + Museum Initiative, devoted to rethinking collective responsibility for what we write and read, and why. He is lead organizer for the Asian American Literature Festival, co-founder of the Center for Refugee Poetics, and co-founding Director of the arts anti-profit The Asian American Literary Review. He is currently ranked as the 9th best ice cream maker in human history.

Mimi Khúc is a writer, scholar, and teacher of things unwell. She is the creator of Open in Emergency and the Asian American Tarot. Her forthcoming book, dear elia: Letters from the Asian American Abyss (Duke University Press), is a creative-critical, genre-bending deep dive into the shapes of Asian American unwellness at the intersections of ableism, model minorization, and the university.

James Kyung-Jin Lee is Professor of Asian American Studies and English and the Director of the Center for Medical Humanities at UC Irvine. He is the author of Pedagogies of Woundedness: Illness, Memoir, and the Ends of the Model Minority (Temple UP, 2022) and Urban Triage: Race and the Fictions of Multiculturalism (U of Minnesota P, 2004).

Erin Khuê Ninh is an associate professor in Asian American Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She writes about the model minority as racialization and subject formation (not myth). Her first book, Ingratitude: The Debt-Bound Daughter in Asian American Literature (awarded Best Literary Criticism by AAAS), centers on intergenerational conflict in immigrant families. Along with Shireen Roshanravan, she edited #WeToo: A Reader, a special issue on sexual violence for the Journal of Asian American Studies (awarded "Best Public Intellectual Special Issue” by the Council of Editors of Learned Journals)

Dr. Amanda Waters is dedicated to the advancement of health equity and community well-being. As a clinical psychologist and consultant, she works toward making the world more loving, just, and connected through her efforts in nonprofits and institutions of higher education. She also serves on the boards of the Asian American Psychological Association and the American Psychological Association's Division 35, Section 5 (Psychology of Asian Pacific American Women). She loves eating chocolate chip cookies and being around water to de-stress and re-center.