Hmong Critical Studies

Coming up on Feb 12-13, several events about Hmong American Experiences and Scholarship....

Film Screening

Thursday, 7-9:00 pm, 259 Educational Sciences Building, 1025 West Johnson Street

“Media for Social Justice: Hmong American Media Productions”

Va-Megn Thoj with Louisa Schein

We will show a documentary and a narrative short by Va-Megn Thoj and a preview of Thoj and Schein's current project. All films address Hmong immigrants in relation to their reception in the US. Presenters will discuss how media may be used for promoting social justice.

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Discussion Reading Group **Pre-reading required**

Friday, Feb 13, 9:30-11 am, 340 Ingraham

“Race, Violence and Hmong Hunting Incidents”

Discussion of reading with authors Louisa Schein and Va-Megn Thoj

In this reading seminar participants will dialogue about the Chai Soua Vang hunting incident in Wisconsin based on a pre-reading of Schein and Thoj's article "Occult Racism: The Masking of Race in the Hmong Hunter Incident."

**Please email aasp@mailplus.wisc.edu to get a .pdf of the reading,

"Occult Racism," American Quarterly 59(4), December 2007

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Public Talk and Discussion, Friday, 13, 2-4 pm, 206 Ingraham

“Media and Hmong Masculinity: From Immigrant Misfits to Perpetual Warriors to Gran Torino Gangbangers”

Critical Perspectives in Hmong American Experiences and Scholarship

Louisa Schein with Va-Megn Thoj

This talk is about Hmong racialization, and the unintelligibility of Asian race, questions of Hmong in/hypervisibility and social consequences of these. We use the theme of violence (including symbolic and epistemic) to tie together several high profile incidents to develop an analysis of racialization.

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Louisa Schein is a professor in the Department of Anthropology at Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, New Brunswick campus. She is interested in cultural politics, ethnicity, nationalism and transnationalism. She is the author of Minority Rules: The Miao and the Feminine in China's Cultural Politics, (2000, Duke University Press.). She has researched Hmong in the U.S. and China for almost three decades and collaborated on documentary films on the Hmong.

Va-Megn Thoj directs and produces films about the Hmong and Asian-American community. A community activist as well as a filmmaker, he is a founding member of the Center for Hmong Arts & Talent, a non-profit community arts organization in St. Paul, where he has also been an instructor. He is also founder of Community Action Against Racism (CAAR) and owner of Frogtown Media Productions. He has received grants from the Bush Foundation, Minnesota State Arts Board, the Jerome Foundation, and the New York State Council for the Arts. He is also the recipient of a Telly Award and the 2004 Rockefeller Media Arts Fellowship.

Louisa Schein and Va-Megn Thoj are the authors of “Occult Racism: The Masking of Race in the Hmong Hunter Incident: A Dialogue between Anthropologist Louisa Schein and Filmmaker Va-Megn Thoj.” 2007. American Quarterly 59(4), December: Pp.1051-1095.

All events are sponsored by the Asian American Studies Program as part of the "Critical Perspectives in Hmong American Experiences and Scholarship." For more information, please contact Lynet Uttal at luttal@wisc.edu or the Asian American Studies Program as aasp@mailplus.wisc.edu.