ASAM In the News

6.7.2013: New Faculty Book

Mary Anne Mohanraj's science fiction novella, The Stars Change, has been picked up by Circlet Press, and will be published in October 2013; it's the story of a South-Asian-colonized university planet, on the eve of the first interstellar war.

4.14.2013: New Faculty Books

Diem-My Bui's Monster Culture in the 21st Century: A Reader (co-edited with Marina Levina, Bloomsbury Academic)
In the past decade, our rapidly changing world faced terrorism, global epidemics, economic and social strife, new communication technologies, immigration, and climate change to name a few. These fears and tensions reflect an evermore-interconnected global environment where increased mobility of people, technologies, and disease have produced great social, political, and economical uncertainty. The essays in this collection examine how monstrosity has been used to manage these rising fears and tensions. Analyzing popular films and televisions shows, such as True Blood, Twilight, Paranormal Activity, District 9, Battlestar Galactica, and Avatar, it argues that monstrous narratives of the past decade have become omnipresent specifically because they represent collective social anxieties over resisting and embracing change in the 21st century. The first comprehensive text that uses monstrosity not just as a metaphor for change, but rather a necessary condition through which change is lived and experienced in the 21st century, this approach introduces a different perspective toward the study of monstrosity in culture.

Anna Guevarra's coedited volume (with Nilda Flores-Gonzalez, Maura Toro Morn, and Grace Chang), Immigrant Women Workers in the Neoliberal Age, University of Illinois Press
To date, most research on immigrant women and labor forces has focused on the participation of immigrant women on formal labor markets. In this study, contributors focus on informal economies such as health care, domestic work, street vending, and the garment industry, where displaced and undocumented women are more likely to work. Because such informal labor markets are unregulated, many of these workers face abusive working conditions that are not reported for fear of job loss or deportation. In examining the complex dynamics of how immigrant women navigate political and economic uncertainties, this collection highlights the important role of citizenship status in defining immigrant women's opportunities, wages, and labor conditions.

4.3.2013: Kumashiro receives Mid-Career Award

Kevin Kumashiro is the recipient of the prestigious American Education Research Association (AERA) 2013 Division K Mid-Career Award. The Award is designed to recognize a significant program of research on issues in teaching and teacher education. Kevin will be recognized at the Division K Business Meeting of AERA in San Francisco, CA on April 28, 2013! Congratulations to Kevin!

4.2.2013: Rooshey Hasnain Interviewed in UIC News on Campus Mental Health