Publication Type: Presentation Proposal
Abstract: Award-winning Laurie Lawlor, author of recently released "This Tender Place: The Story Of A Wetland Year", will offer hands-on experience using nature journals with K-12 students and other aspiring writers to help hone observation skills, express creativity, and celebrate questioning.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: "The anti-imperialism of that day is the neocolonialism of today."

That was how, in 1970, William Pomeroy concisely explained what became
of turn-of-the-century discourses of empire in the United States. In
other words, post-1898 arguments against territorial acquisition in the
Pacific and the Caribbean set the stage for the informal imperialism
that would come to define United States ascendance in the twentieth
century.

My presentation examines the aftermath of oppositional politics.
Three-and-a-half decades after Pomeroy's 1970 formulation, his assertion
has only become more persuasive: opposition to one mode of expansion -
formal colonization - has fueled the rise of others - multiculturalism
and economic globalization. Specifically, I examine the ways in which
the figure of the struggling post-1975 Southeast Asian refugee both
displaces and reinscribes the question of empire today. For at this
figure, there is a curious convergence of neocolonialism and
multiculturalism.

I consider the feasibility of the category Asian American for
Vietnam-era refugees. Are these refugees exceptional or paradigmatic
for Asian American cultural politics? The cultural politics of Asian
Americans, as with all constituencies of post-Civil Rights
mobilizations, bottom-line at success or failure. And Asian Americans
have famously been deemed a success, a so-called model minority. This
mythic status has been a central object of Asian American critique, and
that critique has set the agenda for Asian American mobilization:
locating manifestations and roots of inequality in the face of apparent
equality.

This presentation draws on a diverse range of sources for coming to
terms with Asian American refugee culture, particularly Spencer
Nakasako's documentary series on Southeast Asian youth in the San
Francisco Bay Area (1993-present). From a consideration of these
materials we can consider the extent to which post-1975 refugees are a
product of anti-imperialism, of neocolonialism, of multiculturalism, and
of globalization. (We might therefore adapt Pomeroy's formulation to
describe the transitions of the last quarter of the 20th century: The
multiculturalism of that day is the globalization of today.)

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This paper analyzes the determinants of homelessness among day laborers in San�ya, Tokyo�s largest yoseba, or day labor ghetto. Yoseba have long served as kakikomidera, or �temples of refuge,� for Japan�s unemployed. However, under the Heisei Recession since 1990 demand for day laborers has dramatically declined and homelessness has exploded. While the link between the recession and rising homelessness among day laborers has been affirmed by social science researchers in Japan, this paper is the first research effort to empirically explore the factors that determine whether or not an individual day laborer becomes homeless. A binomial logistic regression analysis is performed on survey data from day laborers in San�ya, showing that, contrary to expectation, characteristics such as youth and possession of job-related skills were not found to significantly prevent homelessness. However, day laborers were able to draw on their formal education, past experiences as a day laborer, and interpersonal connections with labor brokers to avoid homelessness. These relationships with employers proved to have the largest impact, suggesting that this form of social capital is the most important asset in avoiding homelessness in Japan�s yoseba.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This paper argues that anti-extradition campaigns of the early 20th century helped define the American political and intellectual discourse on the refugee problem. Between 1905 and 1910 advocates for asylum used the language of human rights and �civilization� to campaign against the extradition of �migr�s from the United States to their oppressive homelands. Mass rallies and petitions and a diverse coalition of lawyers, progressives, ethnic leaders, and socialists won the support of the State Department in providing asylum for Christian Rudowitz, a refugee who had committed violent political crimes in Russia. Yet asylum campaigns were limited and could prompt repression. Despite the efforts of the Political Refugee Defense League, extradition proceeding were used to detain and accumulate evidence against Mexican exiles for use in later neutrality law persecutions and deportation hearings. Indeed, the definition of �political� activity and the difference between refugee and alien were highly contested. This paper highlights how the selective way atrocity was publicized (especially in the writings of journalists and in first person accounts by refugees) and the prominent debates over intervention and collusion contributed to tenuous conceptions of political persecution and American asylum.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Patriotism, with its emphasis on boundaries and a passionate attachment to a particular place as well as its seemingly inevitable association with jingoism, bigotry and war, has often been seen as anathema to universalistic moral theories including liberalism. However, political thinkers have long recognized that patriotism can be useful because it can provide social cohesion in our fragmented societies. This has given rise to several recent attempts to rehabilitate or articulate a new understanding of patriotism which avoids the moral pitfalls of traditional patriotism while still allowing it to serve as a source of social cohesion. These “liberal patriotisms” generally proceed by altering the object of the patriot’s attachment from a particular political entity to some sort of universal value. This paper explores Richard Rorty's work "Achieving Our Country" as an example of a these recent attempts at rehabilitating patriotism and their pitfalls.