Sparking Asian American Studies in Connecticut Schools with Thi Bui’s “The Best We Could Do” is part of ECSU’ 21 NEA Big Read award (00029961) to celebrate Thi Bui’s graphic memoir.
NEA Big Read is a program of the National Endowment for the Arts in partnership with Arts Midwest.
El proyecto NEA Big Read es una iniciativa del National Endowment for the Arts (el Fondo Nacional para las Artes de Estados Unidos) en cooperación con Arts Midwest.
Jason Oliver Chang is Associate Professor of History and Asian American Studies at the University of Connecticut where he also serves as Director of the Asian and Asian American Studies Institute. As a public servant he sits on the Board of Education for West Hartford Public Schools, the Governor’s Hate Crimes Advisory Council, and the State Historical Records and Archives Review Board. He is the founding member of Make Us Visible CT a grassroots organization which led the charge for the introduction of Asian American and Pacific Islander studies in Connecticut public schools.
Jennifer Heikkila-Diaz (she/her or they/them) identifies as Korean American, Asian American, and biracial. For over two decades, she/they has worked in coalition with students, families, and school-based staff, pursuing educational equity–most of those years as a teacher, in school administration, and instructional coaching, and some of those years in education nonprofit work. She/they has had the privilege of supporting and partnering with thousands of students, families, teachers, and school leaders. Currently, JHD works at New Haven Promise as the Chief of Talent & Operations and at Fund for Teachers CT as a Program Officer. She/they is part of the CT Anti-Racist Teaching & Learning Collective, and is the co-founder of aapiNHV. She/they spends as much time as possible with young people, including her/their children, Magdalena and Gabriela
Quan Tue Tran is Senior Lecturer and Senior Program Coordinator in the Ethnicity, Race, and Migration Program at Yale University. She earned her PhD in American Studies from Yale University. Her research and teaching interests include critical refugee studies; Vietnamese boat people; Asian American studies; comparative ethnic studies; migration studies; diaspora and transnational studies; memory studies; and food studies. Her book manuscript, Anchoring Vietnamese Boat People’s History and Memory, examines refugee identity, community, and cultural formations in the global Vietnamese diaspora by tracing contemporary efforts in remembering the Vietnamese boat people exodus in Southeast Asia, Western Europe, Australia, North America, and cyberspace. Dr. Tran is also a poet and translator.