Intermountain Asia and DEI: Asian Studies in Colorado and Beyond

British and Irish Studies Room, Norlin Library 5th Floor (CBIS)
Friday, April 29, 2022
Noon to 4:30 pm

Introductory remarks from John-Michael Rivera, Associate Dean for Arts and Humanities

This public-facing symposium during the afternoon of April 29, 2022 will bring together faculty from several Front Range higher educational institutions to discuss connections across Asian societies and between Asia and the US, diversity and marginalization in and among Asian countries, and how scholars of Asia can participate in diversity and equity initiatives in Colorado and elsewhere. The symposium will highlight CAS’s unique ability to coordinate and organize academic discussions on Asia in the Front Range region. Cumulatively, the symposium will bring Asia, Asian America, and transnational Asia into dialogue. 

For each of these roundtables, speakers were asked to consider several questions, and they were also invited to discuss how their own research, teaching, and personal experiences relate to the roundtable discussion

12:15 pm Roundtable 1 - Inter-Asian Connections and Links between Asia and Colorado, will ask participants to reflect on the importance of teaching about Asia in Colorado and what is gained by examining connections and linkages between Asian societies and Colorado.

  • Former AAS president Christine Yano has called for a more global Asian studies that takes as its subject matter the interconnections between Asian societies and between Asia and other world regions, including the US. What does your research/teaching tell us about such interconnections and how they matter? What is gained by examining such interconnections and linkages?
  • Why is it important and useful to teach/research about Asia in Colorado? How is Asia relevant to Colorado?

Einor Cervone, Associate Curator of Asian Art, Denver Art Museum
Clarence Lee, Asian Languages and Civilizations, CU Boulder
Carole McGranahan, Anthropology, University of Colorado Boulder
Andrea Stanton, Religious Studies, University of Denver
Moderator: Rachel Rinaldo, Sociology and Center for Asian Studies, University of Colorado Boulder

Einor Cervone is the Associate Curator of Asian Art at the Denver Art Museum, prior to that she served as the Mozhai Foundation Curatorial Fellow in the department of Chinese and Korean Art at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA). She holds a B.A. from Tel Aviv University and a Ph.D. in Chinese art and literature from Harvard University.

Clarence Lee is an Assistant Professor of Japanese at the Department of Asian Languages and Civilizations at University of Colorado-Boulder. His research focuses on the intersections between early modern Japanese medical history, intellectual history, and literature.

Carole McGranahan is professor of anthropology at the University of Colorado. Her research is with Tibetan communities around the world, from Nepal and India to New York City and Toronto.

Rachel Rinaldo is associate professor of sociology and faculty director of the Center for Asian Studies at the University of Colorado Boulder. Her research focuses on gender and social change in Indonesia. 

Andrea Stanton is Associate Professor of Islamic Studies and 2021-222 Director of the Center for Middle East Studies at the University of Denver.

1:30 pm - Roundtable 2 - Diversity and Marginalization within and among Asian Societies, will ask participants to reflect on historic and recent struggles over religious, racial/ethnic, sex/gender and other forms of inequality and diversity within and between Asian societies and what can be learned from such struggles. 


  • What is important to understand about struggles around diversity and marginalization (gender, race, class, sexuality, religion, etc) within and among Asian societies? (feel free to discuss your own research on such topics)
  • In terms of issues of diversity and inequality, what connections do you see between Asian societies in Asia and Asian/Asian American societies in the US?
  • Why is it important for people in the US to know about such struggles? What can we learn from them?

Lucy Chester, History, University of Colorado Boulder
Joon Kim, Ethnic Studies, Colorado State University
Evelyn Shih, Asian Languages and Civilizations, University of Colorado Boulder
Tenzin Tsepak, Center for Asian Studies, University of Colorado Boulder
Moderator: Keller Kimbrough, Asian Languages and Civilizations, University of Colorado Boulder

Lucy Chester, Associate Professor of History and International Affairs at CU Boulder, is the author of Borders and Conflict in South Asia: The Radcliffe Boundary Commission and the Partition of Punjab (Manchester UP, 2009). She is currently revising a book manuscript, to be published with Oxford University Press, on connections between British India and the Palestine Mandate in the 1920s-1940s. 

Joon K. Kim is Professor of Ethnic Studies at Colorado State University, and his research addresses the conundrum of immigration and diversity in South Korea by focusing on the role of civil society organizations and organized labor in advocating for immigrant rights and facilitating their adaptation.

 Keller Kimbrough earned a PhD in Japanese literature at Yale University (1999). He currently serves as Chair of the Department of Asian Languages and Civilizations at CU.

Evelyn Shih is an Assistant Professor of Chinese at CU Boulder. Her research concerns Sinophone and Korean media culture, and she is preparing a book manuscript titled Cold War Laugh Lines—Comic Communication in Taiwan and South Korea.

Tenzin Tsepak is an Instructor of Tibet and Himalayan studies at the Center for Asian Studies. Tsepak conducts research on Tibetan history, literature, and culture, with a special interest in Indic poetics in Tibet from the thirteenth till the late eighteenth centuries.

2:45 pm - Roundtable 3 - Asian Studies in Justice, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Work, will ask participants to reflect on how scholars of Asia can participate in JEDI efforts, in Colorado and elsewhere.

  • How should scholars of Asia be involved in JEDI efforts in the US and elsewhere? 
  • How does the study of Asian societies or Asian diasporas contribute to JEDI efforts?

Aun Hasan Ali, Religious Studies, University of Colorado Boulder
Mithi Mukherjee, History, University of Colorado Boulder
Stephanie Santos, Gender, Women, and Sexualities Studies, Metropolitan State University Denver
Moderator: Katherine Alexander, Asian Languages and Civilizations, University of Colorado Boulder

Katherine Alexander is an assistant professor of Chinese in the Department of Asian Languages and Civilizations. Her current research focuses on the uses of vernacular religious literature in social reform and reconstruction after the Taiping Civil War in 19th century China.

Aun Hasan Ali is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Religious Studies at CU Boulder. His research centers on Islamic intellectual history and he is the author of two forthcoming books: The School of Hillah and the Emergence of Twelver Shiism: Social Networks and the Concept of Tradition and Why Hadith Matter: The Evidentiary Value of Hadith in Imami Law (7th/13th to 11th/17th Centuries) (co-authored with Hassan Ansari).

Mithi Mukherjee is Associate Professor of History at the University of Colorado, Boulder and specializes in the intellectual, political, and legal history of modern India and of the British Empire. Her research interests include Gandhian thought;  the Indian Constitution and Democracy; International Law and Human Rights, and Asian anti-colonialism.

Stephanie Santos is assistant professor of Gender, Women, and Sexualities studies at the Metropolitan State University of Denver. She is an interdisciplinary scholar who uses ethnography, computational humanities, and cultural analysis to study gender and development issues in Southeast Asia.

A reception with light refreshments will follow.