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M E E T T H E S P E A K E R S
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Keynote: Maryam KashaniMaryam Kashani is an Assistant Professor in Gender and Women’s Studies and Asian American Studies at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. She received her Ph.D. in Social Anthropology at the University of Texas at Austin where she was also a lecturer in Asian American Studies. Her research is concerned with the lived experience of Muslims in the United States through the lenses of epistemology, gender, race, visual culture, and political economy. Her book project is based on ethnographic research and filmmaking conducted amongst Muslim communities in the greater San Francisco Bay Area and at a Muslim liberal arts college in Berkeley, California. The related film works, Our Look Was As If Two Lovers Or Deadly Enemies and Signs of Remarkable History premiered at the Sharjah Biennial in the United Arab Emirates in March 2015. Her films and videos have been shown at film festivals, universities, and museums internationally and include “things lovely and dangerous still” (2003), Best in the West (2006), and “las callecitas y la cañada” (2009).
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Soo Ah Kwon
Soo Ah Kwon is Associate Professor of Asian American Studies and Human Development and Family Studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She is an interdisciplinary scholar whose research interests include youth culture, transnational youth movements, and race and higher education. She is author of Uncivil Youth: Race, Activism and Affirmative Governmentality (Duke University Press, 2013)
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Chris EngChris A. Eng is a Chancellor’s Post-Doctoral Research Associate in the Department of Asian American Studies at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He received his Ph.D. in English from The Graduate Center, City University of New York with a certificate in American Studies. As an undergraduate, Chris co-founded the Coalition for the Revitalization of Asian American Studies at Hunter (CRAASH) to advocate for the institutional support for ethnic studies. His research and teaching explore the interconnections between Asian American cultural production, critical ethnic studies, performance studies, and queer of color critique.
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Timothy ChenTim is a first year graduate student at Princeton University in the Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering department. He recently graduated from UIUC with a Bachelor’s in Mechanical Engineering and a minor in Asian American Studies. As an undergraduate, Tim was a student leader in the APAC community in which he served as Co-President of Asian American Association, Co-Director of Paradox Platform, Co-Director of APAC, and Undergraduate Representative for the Asian American Studies Advisory Committee. At UIUC, he advocated for the standalone U.S. Minority General Education requirement and the Asian American Studies major. In his spare time, Tim enjoys watching Korean dramas with his girlfriend and lamenting the inferiority of Princeton’s bus system compared to CUMTD.
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Lila SharifProfessor Lila Sharif is in the Department of Asian American Studies at UIUC. earned a dual Ph.D. in Sociology and Ethnic Studies from the University of California, San Diego in 2014. She is the first Palestinian to earn a Ph.D. in Ethnic Studies. Her research focuses on the relationships between food, colonial violence, memory, and environmental issues. You should definitely take her Race and Empire class in the fall.
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Junaid RanaJunaid Rana is an anthropologist who writes about global capitalism, diaspora, racism, and social protest movements. He is the author of Terrifying Muslims: Race and Labor in the South Asian Diaspora (Duke, 2011), winner of the 2013 Association of Asian American Studies Book Award in the Social Sciences. Recently he has written about academic boycott with Diane Fujino in the journal American Quarterly, and on academic freedom in the Journal of Asian American Studies.
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