University Students, Alumni Fight for Growth in Asian American Studies
NBC News
University students and alumni across the country are calling for more Asian American and Pacific Islander studies courses, majors and minors, tenured professors, and departments, some using the hashtags #Fight4AAS and #Fight4FacultyOfColor on social media. As an academic discipline, Asian American and Pacific Islander studies was created after the 1968 and 1969 Third World Liberation Front student strikes at San Francisco State University and University of California, Berkeley, in which students of color demanded that their histories and experiences be taught in ethnic studies programs. “The importance of Asian American studies is rooted in the desire to create a more democratic academy, one that takes seriously the world-view of race and ethnicity in the U.S.,” Trinity College history professor Vijay Prashad told NBC News. “How to understand the complex hierarchy of racial power in America without close study?” However, students today argue that almost 50 years later, Asian American and Pacific Islander studies still struggles for legitimacy, faculty, and funding on many university campuses…

Chalk Dust on the Sleeve of Her Soul
The Chronicle of Higher Education
[This essay is excerpted from a eulogy delivered in June at Trinity College Chapel, in Hartford, Conn., by Trinity College President Emeritus James F. Jones, Jr.]
This all started when the mathematics department voted unanimously to invite Marjorie Van Eenam Butcher to join the faculty of Trinity College in the mid-1950s. The department petitioned the dean. The dean discussed the radical request with the president. The president consulted with the trustees. After six months of deliberation, a decision came down from on high: She was to be appointed to the faculty — but, mind she, only on an adjunct basis. The first woman on the faculty of Trinity College! She quickly earned a reputation on campus … but her dedication to her students soon turned into legend…

Write your own story in your own voice
West Hartford News
Do you have a story that wants to be told? Your own or one shared that you can’t get out of your head? Or perhaps one imagined with a character whispering, Please tell my story? Starting on Tuesday, June 21, author Susanne Davis will offer a six-week workshop, “Write Your Own Story in Your Own Voice,” at The Mark Twain House & Museum. The workshop will run on six Tuesdays from 6 to 8 p.m.: June 21 and 28; July 12, 19 and 26; and August 2. … Susanne Davis’s short stories have been published in many journals including American Short Fiction, Notre Dame Review, descant, Feminist Studies, St. Petersburg Review, and Zone 3. Her nonfiction has been published in Harvard magazine, The Harvard Law Bulletin and Mothers Always Write, along with many other newspapers and journals. She holds an MFA from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop and teaches creative writing at Trinity College and the University of Connecticut…

2016 Sunken Garden Poetry Festival Features Current Poet Laureate
Connecticut Magazine
Nature and creativity will coalesce again this year at the Sunken Garden Poetry Festival at the Hill-Stead Museum in Farmington. … The festival continues July 10 with a showcase of veterans’ poetry and art. Headliner Brian Turner served in the U.S. Army for seven years, including deployments in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Iraq. Opener Doug Anderson served as a combat medic in Vietnam and musical guest Logan Vath served in the Navy. The night will also feature an art show from the Veterans Art Foundation. Celebrated poet and poetry advocate Edward Hirsch will headline on July 20, and Clare Rossini, artist-in-residence in the English department at Trinity College in Hartford, will open. The quirky folk music duo The Lords of Liechtenstein will provide musical entertainment…

Is China Building Africa? – Analysis – By Zhengli Huang and Xiangming Chen
Eurasia Review
“The US destroys and China builds,” was how a taxi driver from Ethiopia in Washington DC responded to Chen’s question about China’s main activity in Africa. Building is what China has been doing, on a massive scale, with projects of all kinds sited in African cities and spread across this vast continent. Having built the $150 million gleaming new conference centre at the headquarters of the African Union in Addis Ababa, China recently signed a contract worth $12 billion to build the Coastal Railway in Nigeria stretching 650 km across the country from Calabar in the east to Aba, Port Harcourt, Warri, Benin City and Lagos in the west. Never before in human history have we seen the spectacle of a continental-sized China, which was as poor as most African countries only 30 years ago, building up Africa’s infrastructure on such a scale that could help the world’s poorest continent catch up in development…
About the Authors: Xiangming Chen is the Dean and Director of the Center for Urban and Global Studies and Paul E. Raether Distinguished Professor of Global Urban Studies and Sociology at Trinity College, Connecticut, a distinguished guest professor at Fudan University, Shanghai and an adjunct professor at the Graduate School of the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences. He has published extensively on urbanisation and globalisation with a focus on China and Asia. He is also a Senior Contributor for the “China and the World” series at The European Financial Review…