Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: For Asians and Asian Americans living in a predominantly white area, identity becomes a difficult issue. Even though Asians and Asian Americans embody “difference” or non-whiteness in their appearance, those around them label them as “other.” Using intensive-interviews of young Asians and Asian Americans, the paper explores longing and yearning to be connected or separated from their embodied race. This paper looks at racial melancholia and the dialectical tensions involving complex elusive identity.

Publication Type: Session Paper
Abstract: The metrosexual identity, popularized by the program Queer Eye for the Straight Guy (QE), represents the constitution of an identity brand and personification of a rich niche market. This paper investigates how this identity—and especially its manifestation in QE—facilitates three important processes: media corporation-advertiser synergy; legitimating heterosexual masculine consumerism around products not traditionally coded straight-male, such as cosmetics and spa treatments; and queering television. Media accounts of metrosexuals take pains to emphasize their heterosexuality while encouraging their sartorial and cosmetic savvy, constituting them as poster children for urban affluence and consumerism (particularly in the realms of personal appearance and home decor). That metrosexual heterosexuality is continually emphasized while bringing into play traditional feminine qualities illustrates that ossified notions of femininity and masculinity work to constitute metrosexuality in today’s hyper-commercial media environment.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: In this paper, I adopt a poststructuralist approach with the aim of developing a critical understanding of how the hegemonic status of realist theories serves to legitimize current U.S. national security policy. I focus on two main points. First, I explore how the realism prevalent in the theoretical discourse of IR in the United States is itself a political practice that is constitutive of a particular reality, rather than merely neutrally describing it. Second, I maintain that these realist discourses subjectively and artificially lock U.S. national identity into a Cold War-like national security focus. Indeed, in the wake of 9/11, realist discourses do not merely seek to explain but also serve to legitimate U.S. national security conduct and its hegemonic power. As such, the United States remains constructed as a national security state in realist discourses. I want to show how the idea of the U.S. as a national security state is being (re)produced by practices that would neither appear nor claim to do so. If the national security discourse that made the Cold War possible – in American realist discourses at least – is (re)applied to our own era, then a similar pattern of legitimizing and constituting a national security state will be reproduced.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: How do social movements in low-income ethnic communities effectively mobilize people to advocate for land use that meets their needs? Framing, the process of assigning meaning to events and conditions, defining issues, and articulating needs and rationales for action, is critical to movement groups’ ability to mobilize adherents. Some frames are more effective than others. Specifically, this paper presents findings from two ethnographic case studies. It argues that community-based movements in disadvantaged ethnic neighborhoods can more effectively mobilize by employing a radical, grassroots frame that draws heavily on indigenous and particularistic cultural elements. Conversely, frames that invoke themes of personal responsibility, economic pragmatism and meritocracy, and other universalist ideas are less effective for mobilization in these communities. These findings suggest that radical critiques based on identity politics are more effective tools for recruitment and mobilization by urban movements seeking redistributive social policies than conservative frames that the accept status quo ideology.

Publication Type: Session Presentation
Abstract: In the college-level CFL field, what are better approaches for third- and fourth-year Chinese pedagogy remains an open debate. This panel proposes that it is time to re-position and re-define intermediate- and advanced-level Chinese classes. The panelists will also provide some effective and unique teaching methods in this regard.