April 18, 2012
Women's studies professor presents at Association of Asian American Studies Conference
Submitted by Shireen Roshanravan
Shireen Roshanravan, assistant professor of women's studies, participated in the "Working Papers Session: Situating Asian American Critique: The Poetics of Resistance in Place" at the Association of Asian American Studies Annual Conference in Washington, D.C., April 11-14.
Roshanravan co-wrote an essay with Taiwanese scholar Jen-Feng Kuo titled "Reading the Political Navigations of Asian American Women: Methodological Interventions from the Decolonial Turn," which was circulated one month prior to the conference for comment by faculty experts on the session theme. During the session, each author received detailed feedback on their contributions from senior and junior scholars in the field of Asian American Studies.
Roshanravan and Kuo's paper centers acts of community affirmation by Chinese American women in the early twentieth century and South Asian American women of the post-1965 immigrant bourgeoisie to elaborate a decolonial feminist methodology for reading Asian American women’s political resistance to histories of Western imperialism and European colonization. The paper seeks to contribute a methodological approach that can better identify the often unrecognized ways that Asian American women affirm their racial-ethnic identities. Roshanravan and Kuo collaborated across continents on this paper, writing together via Skype, for a year prior to its presentation.