“The Virulent Roots of American Violent Othering: Asians as disposable things, and other stories of dehumanization”
CHSNE’s first anniversary event for the Tunney Lee lecture Series
We must get to the deep taproots of Anglo-American settler colonialism to understand the virulent and violent acting out that stretches from the very beginnings of Columbus’ and Puritan arrivals. I’ll ground the story of the schizoid love/hate attitude towards Asians in the US to the deep history we ignore. The teas, porcelains, and silks of the China trade were the foundation consumables the settler colonial North American knew of “Cathay” and “The Orient.” Such love of “things,” also regularly disposed, continue to define the ways Asian beings are encountered in US culture to this day.
October 23rd, 2:00 PM EST
Jack (John Kuo Wei) Tchen
Jack Tchen is a historian, curator, dumpster diver, and teacher surfacing the disappeared stories othered by systems of power and wealth. Dr. Tchen is the Clement A. Price Professor of Public History & Humanities and Director of the Price Institute on Ethnicity, Cultures, and the Modern Experience Rutgers Newark. He is the founding director of the A/P/A (Asian/Pacific/American) Studies Program and Institute at New York University, NYU. He co-founded the Museum of Chinese in America. His ten- years of work on anti-Asian xenophobia, a two-hour PBS documentary on the “Chinese Exclusion Act,” and exhibition at the New-York Historical Society led him to focus on intersectional history of American eugenics. Via a series of exhibits, conferences, and performances, he has been retelling NYC-US history from the lens of “Nordic” eugenics hierarchies of “fit” elite, white Protestants versus the world’s “unfit” others.
9-26-10/2/21
You can also find Jack at the following virtual conference. Free admission.
