APA Leaders 2016: Meet Avalon Igawa!

Posted in Articles, Asian Diaspora, Campus Life, Interviews, United States on 2019-09-18 01:44Z by Steven

APA Leaders 2016: Meet Avalon Igawa!

USC APASA (University of Southern California Asian Pacific American Student Assembly)
2016-03-10

Avalon_

Hi again! Hope everyone’s doing well with only one day left to get through before spring break! Anyways, as our headline says, our third APA Leader is Avalon Igawa! Avalon’s heavily involved in the APA community being the President of SCAPE and a CIRCLE coordinator. It’s hard to find someone with her passion and energetic personality! Read more about Avalon in our interview below:

Name: Avalon Igawa Major: Political Economy (Minor: Digital Studies) Year: Junior

What does being APA mean to you? I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about this question, and I realize that while it used to be really hard for me, it isn’t so much anymore. And I think that’s because I finally accepted that I don’t need a concrete answer and nobody else does either. It’s a beautiful identity because we can define it for ourselves and let it represent what we want. Wow, that sounded really cheesy, but I feel like it’s true! It took me a long time to accept that I could identify as Asian Pacific American and that I wasn’t erasing my mixed identity. I can be APA and I can be Irish American and I can be mixed. Because for me, being APA means that I can relate to the stories of other APAs and recognize the diversity of all the deep complex histories and narratives that have shaped so many of our experiences. Being APA represents hxstory and struggle, but most of all it represents community. And that’s what I love about it so much…

Read the entire interview here.

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Seeking Multiracial Americans or Brazilian Residing in the United States for Research Study

Posted in Brazil, Caribbean/Latin America, Media Archive, United States, Wanted/Research Requests/Call for Papers on 2018-06-26 23:15Z by Steven

Seeking Multiracial Americans or Brazilian Residing in the United States for Research Study

Ariane Y. Kreidl, Student ETS Academic Advisor; USC TRiO; Educational Talent Search
Business Administration 19’
USC Marshall School of Business
University of Southern California

My name is Ariane Kreidl and I am research scholar at the University of Southern California (USC). I am seeking participants for a research study about race. This research aims to understand racial norms through a comparative analysis of biracial/multiracial Americans and Brazilians individuals living in the United States.

Eligibility criteria. Participants must be one of the following:

  • Biracial/multiracial Americans (i.e., individuals who have mixed ancestry of two-or-more races)
  • Brazilians living in the United States for at least three (3) years.

There are two (2) ways to participate:

  1. Online Survey (Qualtrics)a: Closed-ended questions related to the research topic. The estimated response time is approximately 20 minutes. Participants will have the opportunity to enter a drawing to win a $50 Amazon/Visa Gift Card.
  2. Interview in-person or via Skypeb: Open-ended questions related to the research topic. Interview will last between 30-75 minutes. Participants will have the opportunity to enter a drawing to win a $100 Amazon/Visa Gift Card! (This interview block is limited to only 20 participants).

Participation is completely anonymous.

Thank you for considering this research invitation.

aIf you are interested, please click on the link for the survey: Qualitrics.Survey.Akreidl.
bIf you are interested, please click on the following link to select a date and time: Research.Interview.Appt.Slots.

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Reflections on the Critical Mixed Race Studies Conference (CMRS) 2017

Posted in Articles, Media Archive, United States on 2017-03-22 17:08Z by Steven

Reflections on the Critical Mixed Race Studies Conference (CMRS) 2017

Multiracial Media: Voice of the Multiracial Community
2017-03-22

Thomas Lopez, President
Multiracial Americans of Southern California (MASC)

Back in February 2015 I met with Duncan Williams, Fanshen Cox DiGiovanni, Sonia Smith-Kang and Shannon Haugh over Vietnamese fusion food in Atwater Village to kick-off the site planning meeting for the Critical Mixed Race Studies 2016 conference to be held at the University of Southern California (USC). It occurred to me then that fusion food gets its name from the people eating it as much as what is on the menu. As the President of Multiracial Americans of Southern California, I knew my involvement would be more oversight than direct action since seeing to the management of MASC keeps me busy enough. Still, I sat-in in part because I needed to know in what direction we were moving and also in-part for the good eats.


Thomas Lopez with Maria P. P. Root

We quickly realized this conference would be unlike any of the ones before. For starters, one of the first things we did was review dates in the Fall to hold the conference to maintain the biannual schedule set by the initial organizers. It soon occurred to us that many dates were unavailable due to USC’s football schedule. For those that don’t know, you don’t want to be anywhere near USC on a game day, unless you’re going to the game. As we started striking out dates due to conflicts we eventually settled on a shift of the conference to the Spring and thus was born the new Critical Mixed Race Studies Conference of 2017

Read the entire article here.

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