Burmese American Christians: Unlocking their Hidden Stories and Contributions to Asian American Theology and Religion
Timothy Tseng | Professor, Christianity and Asian American Studies and Director, Asian American Christian History Institute | Fuller Theological Seminary
Joseph Cheah | Professor, Religious Studies and Theology | University of Saint Joseph
David Thang Moe | Postdoctoral Associate and Lecturer, Southeast Asian Studies | Yale University
Confucian and Daoist ideas are significantly oversimplified as typically applied and understood within mental health and social activism. Concepts such as filial piety, harmony, and collectivism are often described in static, unchanging terms, such as in discussions of psychotherapy cultural competence. As a result, recommendations and approaches for Asian-American/Pacific Islander (AAPI) populations are at best, blunt and over-prescriptive and at worst, reinforce negative stereotypes of populations as simplistic, conforming, and emotionally-impoverished. This working group will bring together an interdisciplinary group of scholars with research expertise in Chinese history and philosophy, cultural psychology, and sociology, as well as applied expertise in clinical psychology and social activism with AAPI groups. Through monthly meetings over the course of approximately 1.5 years, the working group will produce at least 2 products: one scholarly and one public-facing. We also anticipate the generation of additional ideas and potential for future collaborations.
Keywords: Burmese American, Christianity, Ethnography
Refugee Reconnections: Vietnamese-American organizing in the California Carceral State
Victoria Huynh
Graduate Student, Ethnic Studies
University of California, Berkeley
This research project centers Vietnamese-American grassroots organizing as a site to theorize a framework of healing from refugee trauma. As Vietnamese refugees in the United States are continually displaced by war, incarceration, and deportation, this project asks: how do Vietnamese refugees draw from their spiritual and cultural traditions in order to address the fractures of trauma? How might these embodied, epistemological practices help activists to challenge the state structures responsible for displacement? To examine these questions, in-depth interviews and participant-observation will be conducted with a California-wide network of organizations fighting to free Vietnamese communities from incarceration and deportation: the Asian Prisoner Support Committee, API-RISE, and VietRise. This research project aims to interrogate refugee trauma as the consequence of the U.S. carceral and immigration systems, and to explore spiritual modalities of healing.
Keywords: Activism, Healing, Refugee, Vietnamese American