Fall 2002- Spring 2003 Lecture Series
Speaker Bios & Lecture Summary

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June 06, 2003
 

May 30, 2003
 

May 23, 2003
 

May 09, 2003
 

For thirty years, Corky Lee has used his camera to ensure that the faces of Asian Pacific Americans and their experiences be included in American history. His mission has been to document the incredibly diverse Asian American communities ignored by mainstream media. In an interview in AsianWeek Corky commented: "I'd like to think that every time I take my camera out of my bag, it's like drawing a sword to combat indifference, injustice and discrimination, trying to get rid of stereotypes."  

April 25, 2003
 

April 11, 2003
 

April 04, 2003
 

March 28, 2003
 

March 21, 2003
 

Alvin Eng:
Prof. Eng is currently working as an Adjunct Professor of Speech at the Borough of Manhattan Community College’s Speech, Communication and Theater Department. He graduated from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, with an M.FA. in Musical Theater Writing. He has taught creative writing at many schools including Fordham University (Lincoln Center Campus) and the New School University (Parsons School of Design), as well as the art of playwriting to various middle and high school students. He has also edited and compiled a play anthology and oral history entitled, “Tokens? The NYC Asian American Experience On Stage,” (Temple University Press/Asian American Writers Workshop, 2000).

March 14, 2003
 

Vincenzo Milione is currently the Director for Research and Education at the Calandra Italian American Institute under the aegis of Queens College, The City University of New York.

Dr. Milione is responsible for the social science research on Italian Americans, as well as conducting institutional research on its faculty, administrative staff and students. His research at the Calandra Institute has included the educational and occupational achievements of the Italian American community for estimating the labor pool of post secondary faculty and administrators, and the graduation and high school drop out rates of Italian American youths.
 

March 07, 2003
 

Melanie Bush works in Student Affairs at Brooklyn College, CUNY. She holds a Master of Public Health degree and is a Ph.D. candidate in Anthropology at CUNY. In 1998, Ms. Bush initiated a Community Building Initiative at Brooklyn College.

Loretta Chin is the Special Projects Coordinator in the Office of the Dean for Student Life at Brooklyn College, CUNY. She is also the advisor to the Asian Student Union and Asian Outreach Committee.

February 28, 2003
 

Parmatma Saran is Professor and Chair of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Baruch College, CUNY. He chairs the Asian and Asian American Studies Committee at Baruch College, and is a member of the CUNY Graduate Faculty in Sociology. Dr. Saran's books include: Direct Administration in India; Asian Indian Experience in the United States; New Ethnics: Asian Indians in the United States; Rural Leadership in the Context of India's Modernization.
 

February 21, 2003
 

Lana Lin is currently Assistant Professor in Media and Communication Arts at the City College of New York. Her work engages with the ways experience is shaped by cultural contexts and the possibility/impossibility of translating that experience through representation. Lin’s films and videos have been shown at the American Museum of the Moving Image, Astoria, NY, the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and The Whitney Museum of American Art. She recently had a solo show at the China Taipei Film Archive, Taipei, Taiwan. 

H. Lan Thao Lam is an interdisciplinary artist/writer who has lived in Vietnam, Malaysia, Canada and the US. Lam’s current body of work involves investigative inquiries and analysis, language, installation, and object making. Her projects destabilize the notion of master narratives by questioning the construction of the past, its meaning and its historical legacies.

Recently relocated to New York, Lam was the Assistant Professor of Sculpture in the Art Department at Middle Tennessee State University. Her work has been exhibited and distributed in Australia, Canada, Hong Kong, Vietnam and the US.
 

February 14, 2003
 

Sung Gwak is Associate Professor of  Nursing at Borough of Manhattan Community College. She received her nursing training in medical-surgical, and critical care at the Medical College of Georgia, and the University of Alabama at Birmingham.
 

January 31, 2003
 

Delgermaa Ganbaatar grew up in a small town named Hatgal with her parents and a younger sister and brother. The town is located in northern Mongolia (Huvsgul province) where she began her education, learning Russian in high school. After completing her high school studies she was accepted into the Institute of Foreign Service at the Mongolian National University in Ulaanbaatar. She concentrated on Russian and English, graduating in 1999 with a degree in Russian Studies.  Immediately after graduation, she began teaching at one of the major universities in Mongolia, Mandakh University. While teaching at Mandakh University she enrolled in the Masters program at the National University of Mongolia and earned a degree in linguistics in December of 2000. Her diploma's thesis topic was “Borrowed Words from Mongolian into Russian."

Delgermaa Ganbaatar continues to teach both Russian and English courses at Mandakh University while beginning to study French. The courses she currently teaches are English as a Foreign Language (EFL) to the first year students, Russian (to the second year).

January 24, 2003
 

Irene Chung is a clinical social worker who has worked with Asian Americans for over twenty years. She is currently Asst. Professor at the Hunter College School of Social Work and maintains a private practice in Manhattan.
 

January 17, 2003
 

Renata Huang is a budding documentary maker who has produced shows for Channel Thirteen and other stations. In 2000, she produced "Spirit & Harmony: Chinese Americans in New York." She is now working on several short documentaries about Asian Americans in the aftermath of 9/11 which is underwritten by the Asian American Federation of New York.
 

January 10, 2003
 

Uday C. Naval is the former President of Society of Indian Academics in America. He retired a few years ago from Herbert H. Lehman College, where he taught English and Linguistics for a quarter century. Dr. Naval has published much in areas related to language studies, art criticism, management practices and Indian philosophy.  
 

December 20, 2002
 

Laxman Kanduri is a recognized food processing authority. He is a Certified Quality Auditor at the NYS Department of Agriculture and Markets, and a Certified food safety trainer at FDA/USDC. Prof. Kanduri received his bachelor's degree in agriculture, and his master's degree in food technology at the Central Food Technological Research Institute, Mysore, India. He has been a consultant to the tri-state food industry in snack foods, vegetable, meat, fish, poultry processing and quality control areas for over 12 years. An ABD in Nutritional Sciences, Prof. Kanduri has been teaching at Kingsborough Community College for the past 15 years in the Department of Physical Sciences.

December 13, 2002
 

Edward Ma  is a certified psychotherapist who practiced at Coney Island Hospital Psychiatry Department over 27 years.  He is the Asian Program Director at The Center for Marital and Family Therapy.  Founder/President of the Asian American Community Consultation Association, he has served as a Human Rights Commissioner of New York City, as well as board members of Chinese American Planning Council and Community Board 2 in Manhattan.  Recently, he conducted a workshop on "Family Dialogues Can Prevent Violence" at the annual conference of National Association of Asian Pacific American Education in 2001.
 

December 06, 2002
 

David Crook is University Dean for Institutional Research and Assessment at the CUNY central office. He directs the Office of Institutional Research and Analysis, which collects and analyzes CUNY student data for decision support and reporting. Dean Crook is also responsible for CUNY's Office of Assessment, which administers the University's testing program. Dean Crook began his career at CUNY in 1989 as a Research Analyst in the Office of Institutional Research and Analysis. Dean Crook received a B.A. in English from Cornell University, and a Ph.D. in sociology from Columbia University's Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.

Cheryl Littman is the Manager of Research in the Office of Institutional Research and Analysis where she oversees projects involving the analysis and reporting of CUNY student data. Before coming to CUNY in the spring of 2001, Dr. Littman worked as a research analyst for the Chicago Public Schools. In addition, she has worked as a program evaluator and has held a variety of teaching positions. Dr. Littman earned a B.S. in biology from Cornell University, an M.S. in biology education from Long Island University (C.W. Post), and a Ph.D. from the Department of Education at the University of Chicago.
 

November 22, 2002
 

Philippe Koutouzis has been Chargé de Mission for the Musée des Arts Asiatiques-Guimet since 1997. His focus of expertise is in European and Asian, Modern and Contemporary Art. Mr. Koutouzis lived in China for 7 years (1991-1998), where he witnessed firsthand major trends of the Chinese modern art movement. He has represented museums; conceived, organized and curated exhibitions around the world. This summer, Koutouzis curated for Musée Guimet the modern part of the exhibition "China - a Arte Imperial, A Arte do Cotidiano, A Arte Contemporânea held at the FAAP’s Museum in São Paulo, Brazil, between August 18th, 2002 and November 03rd, 2002.
 

November 15, 2002
 

James Lap is Associate Director of Evening and Summers Sessions Office and faculty in Computer Systems Technology department at New York City College of Technology (City Tech) – CUNY. He graduated from New York University and Columbia University with computer software engineering degree. He has been member of the faculty at Pace University and at City Tech since 1980’s, at New York University since 1997 and at AAARI since Spring 2002. His hobby is Mathematics. He has been member of American Mathematical Society (AMS) and member of International Congress of Mathematicians (ICM) since 1994. In August 2002 he attended ICM conference in Beijing, China where the oldest Magic Squares were found over 4,800 years ago.
 

November 08, 2002
 

Tom Tam is a long time movie maker in Chinatown and the Asian American community.  Besides having worked briefly as a field cameraman in a television news department, Tam has also taught the art of movie-making at Montclair State College. He has made many short movies in super 8 and 16 mm, as well as lengtheir videotapes, which had been exhibited at various institutions including the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the Musee Guimet of Oriental Art in Paris, France. Tam is also one of the founder of the Asian American Film Festival in 1977, which became Asian Cine Vision, an organization with international recognition for showcasing movies from Asian/Asian American artists. He was the Chairman of Asian Cine Vision from 1995 to 1996.

In addition to 23 shorts, and 4 longer videotapes, Tam has completed the following short movies:  A Brief Summer in China (40m 1993), Westward Wind (30m 1994), Lazy Canyon (35m 1995), Delphi on My Mind (10m 1996), En Route to Lhasa (30m 2000). Sunrise on Mulberry Street (102m 1999) was his first feature length undertaking. 

In the fall of 1997, Tam set up his own company, Oishi Movies Inc., which produced his first commercially available videocassette, "Reminiscences: A Collection of Movies by Tom Tam, 1969-1978." 

November 01, 2002
 

Pyong Gap Min is Professor of Sociology at Queens College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. The areas of his research focus are immigration, ethnicity, ethnic business, women’s gender role, and immigrants’ religions, with a special focus on Asian Americans. He is the author of three books, including Caught in the Middle: Korean Communities in New York and Los Angeles (1996), the winner of two national book awards. He is the editor or co-editor of five books. They include The Second Generation: Ethnic Identity among Asian Americans (2002) and Mass Migration to the United States: Classical and Contemporary Periods (2002).

October 25, 2002
 

The CUNY Reception for Asian Faculty and Staff 2002 is an annual gathering of faculties within CUNY. At this year's event, the very first AAARI Research Awards Program was announced.

October 18, 2002
 

Gary Y. Okihiro is director of the Center for the Study of Ethnicity and Race and professor of international and public affairs at Columbia University. He is author of several books in U.S. and African history, most recently of THE COLUMBIA GUIDE TO ASIAN AMERICAN HISTORY (2001), and COMMON GROUND: REIMAGINING AMERICAN HISTORY (2001). He is the recipient of the lifetime achievement award from the American Studies Association, and is a past president of the Association for Asian American Studies.

October 11, 2002
 

Gan Yu

Click below to visit lecture synopsis

Traditional Chinese Art Under Western Influence:
Introduction to Contemporary Leading Chinese Artists

Videos

Gan Yu is Director and Chairman of eChinaArt.com, which exhibited works of more than a thousand Chinese artists, and received extensive media coverage.  A recipient of many awards, he has had one man shows at galleries in Minnesota and San Francisco. His works have been shown internationally. He received his MFA from University of Minnesota, and has taught Chinese painting, calligraphy, and the history of Chinese art.  He is a Chinese American born in Shanghai, China, in 1958.

September 27, 2002

 

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