Week 2

Gabriela Garcia-Mejia

Section A03

Week 2

            One of the readings for this week was Transformative Disjunctures in the Academy: Asian American Studies as Praxis by Linda Trinh Vo where she discussed the struggles that she has faced being an Asian American woman in the academy.  Vo mentions that, similar to Professor Valverde, she too noticed the lack of Asian Americans and people of color in positions of power in the academy. That there were almost no women that were in tenure track positions and that those that were had their work constantly questioned as if they were not capable enough or their work was not as valid as their male counterparts. Even though she was just as, if not more than, qualified as some of her peers she was still marginalized. It really stood out to me when she said that for many people of color it is not the academic demands but the hostile environment in the academy that pushes them away.

For the Asian American community, there was a lack of representation at the university even though they were making up half of the demographic. So how is it that the next generation can feel welcomed when they do not see themselves identifying to their professors? Those that do reach their students on a more personal level are usually the ones that the university looks down on for not focusing on their “work” and those that don’t connect with their students are praised because they are publishing. For me personally I relate to this because I was completely naïve when I came to college so I had no idea that UC’s were research institutions and that professors had to do research and teach. I soon realized that this mean that a lot of professors are only interested in their research and they teach not because they enjoy it or they care about their students, they do it because they are forced to. I actually had a Biology professor that told the class the only reason he was there was because he had to, and he was to this day one of the worst professors I’ve had.

Question: Could the incorporation of Ethnic and Gender Studies in the K-12 curriculum not help change current and future generations' views but also validate these studies in higher education?

Resources:

Terisa Siagatonu "Ethnic Studies" - ALL DEF POETRY: INKSLAM 2014. (2014, October 29). Retrieved April 09, 2017, from https://youtu.be/7uBv1f6FmkY

Vo, L. T. (2012). Transformative Disjunctures in the Academy: Asian American Studies as Praxis. In Stockdill, B., & Danico, M. (Eds.), Transforming the Ivory Tower: Challenging Racism, Sexism, and Homophobia in the Academy (pp. 120-144). Honolulu, HI: University of Hawai'i Press.