Mara Baldwin (Executive summary or paper (html / PDF) )

Tara Fickle (Executive summary or paper (html / PDF) )

Luling Osofsky (Executive summary or paper (html / PDF) )

Ian Rios (Executive summary or paper (html / PDF) )

Arijit Sen (Executive summary or paper (html / PDF) )

Andrea Siu  (Executive summary or paper (html / PDF) )

Alex Weber (Executive summary or paper (html / PDF) )

Steven M. Wengrovitz (Executive summary or paper (html / PDF) )

With an increase in transracial families being formed in the United States as a result of international adoption, issues surrounding the role of race in family and parentage are increasingly debated and creating controversy.  How parents choose to integrate the birth-culture of their child is directly related to their understanding of the role of race, within their family’s identity.  Racial self-awareness of parents is directly related to parental awareness surrounding the delicacy of racial and cultural identity in their children’s social position and lifestyle.  Approaches of how parents integrate and establish the importance of culture and ethnicity within their families is gauged by the proportion of family identity that each of the family’s cultures have in proportion to one another.  Adopted children need to be encouraged to talk about their racial difference in order to understand what role they want it to play in their own lifestyles.  Adoptive families are often not prepared enough to foster dialogue about race and how to deal with emotional implications of these conversations.  More support for transracial adoptive parents must be offered and made easily accessible.  More research must be done on how different approaches to talking and thinking about race in transracial families have a positive or negative affect on the children being raised within them. (Click here to see this paper in its entirety (html / PDF).)

Crafting Familiarity from Foreignness: Racial Identity Formation and the Quest for Authenticity in Korean Transracial Adoptees
by Tara Fickle

Crafting Familiarity from Foreignness: Racial Identity Formation and the Quest for Authenticity in Korean Transracial Adoptees / Tara Fickle, Class of 2006

Unifying or Undermining? Wrestling with An Asian American Aesthetic: An Analysis of New York City’s Asian American Art World
by Luling Osofsky

The contemporary American art world of the 1980’s-mid 90’s witnessed an era defined by "identity politics"- whereby minority artists came to the fore with powerful works addressing issues of cultural dislocation. In 1991, Hunter College hosted a panel discussion in which five Asian American artists, of diverse Asian-heritage and artistic backgrounds, hotly debated the question, "Is There an Asian American Aesthetics?" In my research, roughly fifteen years after the original discussion, I sought to uncover the current pulse and viability of this debate, and to explore what the Asian American art community considered the current implications and repercussions of a concept such as race-based aesthetics. In conducting interviews with over twenty-five Asian/ Asian American artists, arts administrators, curators, critics, and academics, all based in New York City, I investigated the unique pressures felt by the Asian American art world, and how they in turn addressed, resisted, rejected, and/or satirized these pressures in their cultural production. (Click here to see this paper in its entirety. (html / PDF))

Asian American Youth Groups: How Youth Groups are breaking down Social and Political stereotypes around Asian American Youth and Political Activism
by Ian Rios

The basis of my work was to attack the idea that Asian Americans are not politically active. In doing so, I took an in depth look into how Asian American Youth groups are becoming a greater and greater factor in the development of the social and political awareness of Asian American Youth. The general notion that Asian Americans are not politically active and especially don’t voice their opinions and vote has been a stereotype that has characterized and plagued the Asian American community for decades. In looking at the development of Asian American youth, I sought to foresee how the next generation of Asian Americans will become progressively more oriented towards positions of leadership and break stereotypes that confine Asian Americans to a place of political silence within the American system. (Click here to see this paper in its entirety. (html / PDF))

THE EMPIRE THAT LEFT NO ROOTS: An inquiry into how the nature of British settlement of Hong Kong and Singapore led to the failure of the British sport of cricket taking root in these countries
by Arijit Sen

Always having been interested in cricket, I had long wondered why the game took roots in some former British colonies while remaining almost invisible in others. With this in mind, I attempted to conduct research into the history of British colonization in Asia, and to unearth how the method by which the British had colonized the ports of Hong Kong and Singapore differed from the way the Indian sub-continent had been colonized. I further wanted to see if this method had had any part to play in the relative in popularity of the game in HK and Singapore while making it the most popular sport in India. With this in mind I have attempted to show the history of British presence in Asia, with a bias towards the south-eastern port towns of Hong Kong and Singapore. I have then endeavored to show how the sport of cricket was affected by this history, and why the history that introduced the game to these islands worked towards ensuring that the game would not succeed. I have, as far as possible, tried not to concentrate on the actual history of a game that I know few find possible, but if there are any questions regarding the history of the actual game I am more than happy to address them- nothing makes me happier than talking about cricket, which is why I would like to thank the Freeman East Asian Studies Program for giving me this opportunity. (Click here to see this paper in its entirety. (html / PDF))

A Contemporary Study of Interracial Dating and Relationship Practices of College Age Students from Hawaii
by Andrea Siu

This paper focuses on the interracial relationships and dating practices of college age students from Hawaii. Sexual relationships are very personal and a willingness to date out of one’s race serves as a good indication of an individuals feelings on race. Questions about dating and relationship practices, therefore, were used to measure the racial tolerance of the participants in the study. The main sources of data are surveys, U.S. Census Bureau statistics, and personal interviews. The data collected illustrates that students from Hawaii in college on the mainland retain their opinions on interracial relationships, but their awareness of racial politics increases. Additionally, these students often participate in the racial segregation on their campus due to the nature of race in America. Simply being raised in a multiracial community will not result in the breakdown of social barriers and the easing of racial tension. (Click here to see this paper in its entirety. (html / PDF))

A Concise Summary of Research Conducted at the Shaolin Temple in Henan, People’s Republic of China
by Alex Weber

The Shaolin temple in Henan, People’s Republic of China, has been hailed as the birthplace of Zen Buddhism and Chinese martial arts. How has this bastion of culture dealt with the aftermath of the cultural revolution and the forces of modernization, namely commercialization, a growing tourist industry, and increased involvement of the Chinese Communist Party? (Click here to see this paper in its entirety. (html / PDF))