THE POWER OF REAL LIFE REAL STORIES

May 3, 2012 Thursday
12:00-3:00 PM
Healey Library 11th Floor
University of Massachusetts Boston

This event is generously sponsored by Le Sandwich, Randolph and Kashmir Indian Restaurant, Boston.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Contact: Shirley S. Tang
May 1, 2012
Shirley.Tang@umb.edu

BOSTON, May 1, 2012. The Asian American Studies Program at UMass Boston will host its 8th Annual Asian American Digital Storytelling Festival, “The Power of Real Life Real Stories,” on May 3 in the Healey Library, 11th Floor. UMass Boston is the only research university in New England designated and funded by the U.S. Department of Education as an Asian American Native American Pacific Islander Serving Institution (AANAPISI). Highlighted by the Association of American Colleges and Universities as a national model, the Asian American Studies Program offers the most Asian American Studies courses, faculty, and community linkages of any university in New England.

Shirley S. Tang will give the keynote address on “Media and Digital Literacy via Asian American Studies Pedagogies of Wholeness” with students/alum Tri Quach, Pratna Kem, and Chu Huang at the 2012 CIT and Educational Technology Conference: “Transforming Teaching and Learning”.

Date: Thursday, May 10, 2012
Time: 9:00-9:45 am (keynote address) [8:00 am -3:30 pm (conference)]
Location: Healey Library, 11th Floor, University of Massachusetts Boston

The stories in the video about English Language Learners and immigrants in the U.S. are those of high school students from Charlestown High School in Boston, MA.

Producer ChuYu Huang: I am the Youth Program Associate at Boston Chinatown Neighborhood Center. I lead a youth leadership program at Charlestown High School called Chinese Immigrant Student Leadership (ChISL), a program developed in partnership with the Boston Chinatown Neighborhood Center, a non-profit community-based organization in Boston. I am raised in
Chinatown, Boston and have gone through the public education  system from elementary school into college. For college, I attended University of Massachusetts Boston with a double major in Sociology and Asian American Studies. I gained interest in media making through my Asian American Media Literacy Course; it is where I learned how to create my own digital story. This is one of the many courses that I took at University of Massachusetts Boston where I learned a lot from and also took away useful skills to plug into other areas of my life. In this instance, I was able to take what I’ve learned from the course and made use of the skills. This video story challenge was an opportunity presented by the White House Initiative on Asian American Pacific Islander’s for
Asian Americans to share their stories and help raise awareness. I am very blessed to have the video make it this far into the finalists.

Find out more!

Watch video here!

May 18
Apple Store, Boylston Street (Back Bay-Copley)
815 Boylston Street
Boston, Massachusetts

RECEPTION 4:30-5:45 pm Chilli Duck Thai Cuisine Restaurant
829 Boylston Street, Boston (steps from the Apple Store)
Appetizers generously provided by Chilli Duck; wine/beer available for sale with ID

Digital storytelling in Asian American Studies honors the unforgettable voices and stories of diverse peoples, revealing new dimensions of public dialogue while moving the spirit in each of us. Daring, self-reflective storytellers draw on living memory, family records and social documentation to create intensely powerful stories about relationships, (im)migration, war, homeland, and more…Join local students of UMass Boston’s nationally-recognized Asian American Studies Program as they share their collective purpose and highlights from their iMovie digital archives. 

This program is one of a series of events at UMass Boston
in recognition of Asian American & Pacific Islander Heritage Month 2011
offered by the Asian American Studies Program

Two of the four WGBH Short Waves finalists are students in UMass Boston’s Asian American Studies program who have produced their digital stories in the AsAmSt 370 Asian American Media Literacy class. Congratulations, Frances K. Chow and Pratna Kem!

PRATNA KEM was voted winner of the 2011 WGBH Short Waves Contest!

Shirley Tang was on a panel with Giles Li, William Liu and Min Hyoung Song, moderated by Lisa Mullins of PRI’s The World, as they discussed Tadashi Nakamura’s newest film, A Song For Ourselves. Tad’s film is a personal journey into the life and music of Asian American Movement troubadour Chris Iijima. This program was hosted by WGBH in honor of Asian Pacific American Heritage Month.

Find out more!

The 2011 Asian American Digital Storytelling Festival presented 22 new digital stories — all written, edited and directed by UMass Boston’s Asian American Studies students in the AsAmSt 370 Asian American Media Literacy class. Each of the digital stories featured is a culmination of students’ intensive research and reflections throughout the semester. “It has been a crazy semester: we laughed, we cried, we probably know more about each other than we should. But through it all, I think we are all in some way, thankful for the experience.” — Pratna Kem, AsAmSt 370 graduate teaching assistant.

Shirley Tang teams up with photographer Anh Ðào Kolbe to document the commitments and contributions of faculty and staff affiliated with the intercollegiate Asian American Studies Program at UMass Boston. A photographic exhibition of portraits held in the Joseph P. Healey Library in the final week of 2011 brought together faculty, staff and students to reflect on why research, teaching and service all matter in Asian American Studies. The exhibition is part of Dr. Tang’s larger documentation project with and about faculty and staff in the ethnic studies academic programs and units at UMass Boston.