Organizer: Hunter College; UCLA Asian American Studies Center

Type/Location: In Person / New York, NY

Description:

Join us for an exclusive preview of Foundations & Futures: Asian American and Pacific Islander Multimedia Textbook with Dr. Karen Umemoto, Director of the UCLA Asian American Studies Center. An unprecedented resource featuring 50 unique chapters and 250+ corresponding lesson plans, Foundations and Futures will be the most comprehensive collection of Asian American and Pacific Islanders available for free and online for high school, college, and lifelong learners.

About the Speaker:

Dr. Karen Umemoto is the Helen and Morgan Chu Endowed Director’s Chair of the Asian American Studies Center and a Professor of Urban Planning and Asian American Studies. Professor Umemoto’s research centers on issues of democracy and social justice in multicultural societies with a focus on US cities. She also examines and pursues planning processes that include a diverse array of voices, acknowledges different ways of knowing, and allows for meaningful deliberations. She is equally concerned about the structural, procedural and relational obstacles to attaining a just and democratic society. Her research and practice thus takes a broad view of planning in the context of social inclusion, participatory democracy and political transformation.

Her recent work has focused on the problem of the overrepresentation of Native Hawaiians and Pacific Islander youth in the Hawai‘i juvenile justice system. Professor Umemoto’s co-authored award-winning book entitled, Jacked up and unjust: Pacific Islander teens confront violent legacies, features youths’ narratives in an ethnographic study of youth violence in Hawai’i examined within the historic role of colonization and racial domination in the US. It critiques the punitive turn in juvenile justice and disciplinary policies and offers alternative approaches that focus on healing and restorative practices. She has also worked on juvenile justice reform initiatives as a researcher, evaluator, planner, and advocate.

Prof. Umemoto’s current research focuses on the history of placemaking in Los Angeles’ Little Tokyo. She is also working as the Co-Editor/Co-Director of Foundations and Futures, a multimedia textbook on Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders.

Registration:

To attend the event in person, please register here.