Asian Pacific American Heritage Month noted with April 7 kickoff event

The Connecticut College community will celebrate Asian Pacific American Heritage Month with a kickoff event, a keynote address by Takeshi Watanabe, assistant professor of Japanese, followed by a student panel discussion on the role and representation of Asian Americans in the media. The event takes place in the Cro’s Nest in the College Center at Crozier-Williams from 5-7 p.m. on April 7 and is free and open to the public.

Takeshi Watanabe holds a Ph.D. in pre-modern Japanese literature and recent areas of his research include Japanese tea culture, the historical literature of the Heian period, 11th to 12th-century diaries written in Chinese by Japanese courtiers, Japanese food culture and cultural exchange in East Asia.

In another public event, from 4:30 to 6 p.m. on April 5 at Unity House, the College’s multicultural center, Shahana Hanif, a Brooklyn-born Bengali Writer, public housing organizer, LGBTQ feminist researcher, and co-founder of the Muslim Writers Collective, will speak about her identities and her grassroots activism. The event is sponsored by the Women’s Center, the Connecticut College Asian Students Association (CCASA), the Center for the Comparative Study of Race and Ethnicity (CCSRE), the Gender and Women’s Studies Department, the Global Islamic Studies program and the Office of the President.

Asian Pacific American Heritage Month is sponsored annually by Race and Ethnicity Programs at Unity House, the College’s multicultural center and CCASA, a student organization that promotes the learning and understanding of Asian/Asian American culture.

For more information on Asian Pacific American Heritage Month, contact Jennifer Nival, Jennifer.Nival@conncoll.edu.

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March 31, 2016