The recipients of the Spring 2022 Center for Ethnic Studies Travel and Research Grants have reported on their research projects. They were asked to give a short account of how they used their grant, and how this money helped further their research and study in the area of Ethnic Studies.

We are currently accepting applications for the Autumn 2022 Travel and Research Grants. Find more information and apply here.

Julian Adam

I have always been very interested in studying history, especially history related to Native Americans. This minor is very important to me. Being able to have a reason to focus on studying something makes it feel more worthwhile. I have greatly increased my knowledge through this minor program. I have been able to find a sense of connectedness among my peers and professors in this same field of study. I wouldn’t have been able to experience these things if it wasn’t for this minor program.

My end goal is to go to graduate school for American Indians Studies. The graduate school I want to go to is the University of Saskatchewan in Saskatoon, Canada. Receiving this scholarship allowed to me to have the funds to be able to tour the campus and attend some Indigenous events that were going on at that time of my trip. Having been a part of this minor program, I had a lot of knowledge to be able to share while I was there. I was also able to learn a great deal more when I took my trip. I stayed with my partner during this trip who is, himself, Indigenous.

After receiving this scholarship and having had the opportunity to travel to the graduate school I wish to attend, I have learned and realized many things. After visiting the university, I now have an even greater interest in attending the university after I graduate from this university. I was also able to attend my first powwow with my partner when I was in Saskatoon. This was an eye-opening and wonderful experience that I would not have been able to have if it weren’t for the funding I received through this scholarship.

My interest in American Indian Studies has increased greatly since I was given this opportunity. I hope to be able to have more experiences like this in the future. I am more than certain this minor program will be able to help me with that dream.

Coralia Balasca

I am thankful for the Center for Ethnic Studies’ support of my research on immigrants in the United States.  The funds from the CES grant are used to help offset the cost of incentives for my survey respondents. By completing the survey, my respondents are entered in a raffle to win $10 gift cards as a thank you for their time.

I had a wonderful response rate for my survey, with over 5,000 respondents who presented their current views on immigrants in America. This data will enable me to get at now only how respondents view immigrants in terms of economic, cultural, and racial terms but also how this might differ based on respondent’s own proximity to the immigrant experience (based on immigrant generational status). To my knowledge, this is the first data set that is able to tease out how children, and grandchildren of immigrants connect to the immigrant experience and how this may shape how they view current immigration to the US.  The attached image is from the Southern Sociological Society Annual Meeting in Birmingham, AL, where I presented preliminary results from my survey on American’s view of immigrants.

I look forward to sending a second survey this fall. This second survey will be looking closely at what social ties and health. Specifically, I look to characterize what types of immigrants, and their descendants build in the United States, what types of social ties they maintain to their countries of origin and lastly how these ties may impact individuals' health.

Lastly, being in the Ethnic Studies group has reinvigorated my work, with appreciation for individuals with whom I share interests and who are in different departments/areas of the university that I would otherwise not get the chance to meet on such a large campus.

Anais Fernandez Castro

Through the combination of FLAS and CES travel grant, I got to attend and learn about Qoyllur Rit’i up close and in real-time. Qoyllur Rit’i is an annual pilgrimage up a sacred mountain in the Sinakara Valley of Qosqo (Cusco, Peru). Before attending, my thought process was that Qoyllur Rit’i was going to just be this “long-standing Indigenous ritual” with some non-obvious syncretism. But after attending I learned that this celebration is connected to the intersectionality of different cultures, religions, and languages. The culmination of viewing and participating in this event in person really allowed me to question and understand mestizaje in Peru in a new light.

My journey started directly at the feet of Señor Qoyllur Rit’i. The first thing I saw was a stone-enclosed altar which marked the start of the pilgrimage and was the first sign that the Andean cosmology would act alongside Catholic impositions. My Quechua professor and I lit our first candle of the night for the safety of everyone who let us get to this point and journey.

During our trek up the mountain, the only thing that guided us was a pathway that the Pleiades constellation created, and the “rest stops' ', which were dedicated spaces that usually contained a single cross that we used to thank and reflect on the previous year after lighting a candle.

The journey up for us, pilgrims, is different from those of the “Pabloitos”, which is the general term used for those from the (seven) nations doing the trek as a ritual. The nations each had their own perspective outfits (and roles) that could separate them from one another. Pabloitos are held to the highest degree of respect and authority. In the space of Qoyllur Rit’i, they occupy the role of organizer, medic, and security.

At around midnight, we arrived at what my professor called the hopes and dreams fair. There were approximately 30 tents set up side by side selling objects for the purpose of manifestations of dreams and goals. My professor pointed out that one artifact even included imagery of the Virgen de Guadalupe, which connected Mexican Catholicism to this space and time.

At the sanctuary, we found that the nations were well into their dances, which were an homage. I specifically got to witness the nation of Urubamba. Then we waited until la misa de los despiertos, a mass that takes place at sunrise, for us which was around 4:30 am. I quickly realized why the mass was named like that. My eyes started to betray me and I realized how sleep-deprived I was, it was at this point that I also felt the altitude and weather change. The Pabolitos stared at us, giving us no other option but to be awake and listen, all the usual hymns and prayers were said but in Quechua.

Looking back, I realized how intersectional and accepting of newness Qoyllur Rit’i was. That the traditions were everchanging and adaptive to the survival and continuation of these traditions.

Jackie Courchene

I am very thankful to have received this grant from the Center of Ethnic Studies. This grant has allowed me to make progress in my upcoming thesis presentation to take place at Urban Arts Space this January. My thesis consists of a performance and installation that leads audience to contemplate Latinx stereotypes and identity. Over the summer I began thinking more critically about images and tropes of Latinx identity that circulate within pop culture, and the niches of Latinx culture that are not represented often in the public eye. This led to my decisions regarding costumes and allowed me to connect some pieces that felt nebulous before this summer. This money allowed me to purchase two headdresses and make a down payment on costumes for myself and my dancers to be made by Rosely Polanco, a recent BFA grad in the Dance Department.

The first headdress I purchased is reminiscent of Carmen Miranda. It is large, sparkly, and covered in fruit—exactly what one would expect of the “Chiquita Banana Lady”. I am using this headdress to create a character in my thesis performance that represents Latina identity as it is represented in Hollywood and pop culture. This Carmen Miranda inspired character functions as a representation of misrepresentation when it comes to the way that Latina women are portrayed. Carmen Miranda herself was a misrepresentation of Latina identity as she was a Portuguese immigrant to Brazil, who then made her way to Hollywood and became famous for her Latina persona. In addition to the troublesome claim of Latina identity, Miranda appropriates the look of Black Bahian women in Brazil. I am still working out exactly how this character will be performed and implemented into a transformational moment that comments on misrepresentation of Latinx identity to then show the multiplicity within Latinx identity. I next purchased a Flower Crown to create a character to contrast the Carmen Miranda character. I will connect this character and image to Día de los Muertos, rituals around remembrance, and ancestry to acknowledge the Latinx people who came before us in our history and folklore who tried to change our future.

After reading Woman in the Zoot Suit by Catherine Ramirez, I realized that the costume for my thesis needs to be Zoot Suits. I learned about the Zoot Suit Riot, the Sleepy Lagoon Murder, and the Zoot Suit’s connection to Pachuca culture and the Chicanx movement in Los Angeles. These oversized suits were not only worn by men, but women as well. During this period in the 1940s, there was a lot of discrimination against Latinx people in LA, especially women. Latina femininity is diverse and multiplicitous, but the Zoot Suit of Pachuca culture was not welcome in all social circles in LA which led to violence, discrimination, and criminal accusation against these women. I see these suits as representative to the rise activist work for the Chicana movement specifically.

Thank you again Center of Ethnic Studies for this grant and for helping me further my research and MFA Thesis project. I greatly appreciate your help!

Maretha Dellarosa

I would like to thank to the Center for Ethnic Studies for the research grant. I used the grant to participate in the AERA community of education researchers. This space allows me to have ongoing communication and support provided by the Graduate Student Council (GSC). Additionally, through this grant, I was able to participate in the American Educational Research Association (AERA) annual meeting to present my research. My research focuses on examining how teachers conceptualize their teaching practices within an immigrant context and how they engage with teaching to affirm students’ culture and academic needs. To answer these questions, I employed case of study design (Thomas, 2015). These were the cases of seven teachers who affirmed students’ culture in their teaching. This study took place in an after school program located in nine multiple sites throughout Spark County (pseudonym) in Midwest area, the US. The program is a community that reflects the struggles of marginalized community (immigrants, refugees, and other children who are from low-income families, K-12 ages 5 – 18) who need both life and academic supports in order to become a “New America”. Children who are enrolled in this program obtain academic support and meet three days a week for two hours for each meeting. Each site has a Bilingual Assistant who helps parents understand the program. Data was collected from January 2021 until May 2021 through video and audio recording of semi-structured interviews, online focus group discussions, online observation, relevant documents, and course work. The observation was conducted via Zoom because of the COVID-19 pandemic. The findings demonstrate that teachers affirm students’ culture by involving aspects of culture, such as languages and customs, in academic work. Affirming students’ culture is pivotal because teachers value what students manifest in their life. It also means that they take effort to arrange significant learning experiences that lead to students’ success. At the broader scale, this study is expected to add on teachers’ cultural awareness and compassion being in relation to their pedagogy that will lead them to understand the knowledge production and recognition between students and teachers. Also, they will understand the context of a multicultural society that comes from a history of immigration and thus diaspora. When teachers know what it means to value students’ culture, they will infuse such knowledge to their students so that students gain practical experience on how to appreciate differences. Such experiences guide students to be successful generations who understand how to contribute to the multicultural society (Al Majali & Al Khaaldi, 2020; Schall & Kauffmann, 2003).

Ryan Goeckner

Thanks to the Center for Ethnic Studies Student Travel and Research Grant, I have been able to supplement additional funding from the National Science Foundation to get my dissertation project off to a strong start. The COVID-19 pandemic has thrown many things about what we assume to be our “normal” lives into question. From the ways that many of us conduct our research and engage with participants, to what we think about the futures of our communities, many of us have reflected on what our experiences since the beginning of 2020 have to say about our futures. For many communities, this is the first time that we have been faced with such existential questions as what our lives might look like after an intense upheaval, but for many Indigenous communities, this is but one of many crises that they have faced in recent memory that threaten their lives, livelihoods, and the continuation of their cultures. With this in mind, reactions to the COVID-19 pandemic by American Indian communities can provide researchers with an opportunity to understand how resilience, as a meaning making process, within communities provides links to understanding the envisioned futures of these communities. Working alongside researchers at the Institute for Indigenous Studies at Lehigh University’s Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute’s funded project, my dissertation project seeks to understand how 10 Native communities enact resilience in the wake of the pandemic.  

With the assistance of funding from the Center for Ethnic Studies, this summer I was able to kick off my dissertation research and begin to explore these questions. Toward the end of June, I was able to travel to northeastern Kansas to host community conversations with Native communities in the region. During this trip, along with other members of the research team, I learned about the unique experience of the pandemic in these communities, how they adapted to support their communities, and their ideas for moving forward. Altogether, we have completed seven community conversations in four states, with several more planned before the end of October 2022. Moving forward, we are shifting our focus to the working group portion of the project where interested participants are provided with assistance from the research team to design and implement projects aimed at moving their communities forward from the pandemic. We are excited to see what ideas they come up with. Additionally, I now have funding to provide participant incentives to a total of 30 participants for follow-up interviews to collect more in-depth data about their ideas about the future of their communities.  Thank you again to the Center for Ethnic Studies for their support for my project.

Hunter Klie

Thank you to the Center for Ethnic Studies for providing funding for my trip to the 2022 Association for Asian Studies Annual Conference. The conference this year took place in Honolulu, Hawaii, and I traveled there with three other scholars in the field of East Asian Languages to present on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) in East Asian language teaching. Our panel featured a diverse group of professors and graduate students teaching Chinese, Japanese, and Korean at the college level in Ohio. Our panel, titled "Language Learners as Agents for a Change: Cultural Performances to Advance DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) in East Asian Languages" was well attended by a variety of academics and language instructors from across the United States in a variety of disciplines and language backgrounds.

My portion of the panel presentation was titled "Promoting Linguistic Diversity and Inclusion in Chinese Language Teaching through Teaching Materials." In this presentation I reported findings based on my analysis of two Chinese language textbook series in use here at The Ohio State University. I analyzed the representation of both learners (students of the foreign language) and members of the target culture (native Chinese speakers), and discussed the ways in which the series depict diversity in Chinese language communities. Currently, all published research on this subject is limited to analysis of only visual depictions of diversity and inclusion, focusing on in-text descriptions of characters, as well as illustrations and photographs. My presentation brought a new dimension to the discussion of representation by taking a multimedia approach. Rather than just examine images in the textbooks of learners and target society members as most current research does, I examined how audio recordings included in these materials are used to present the linguistic diversity and cultural diversity of Chinese speaking populations. By presenting audio recordings of Mandarin speakers from all over the Chinese speaking world with their unique and different accents, affectations, dialects, grammatical habits, prosody, and expressiveness, learners are exposed to the diversity of the Sinosphere through the literal voices of those diverse populations. Beyond audio recordings, using these lessons in classroom activities and engaging students in language use with diverse speakers challenges assumptions of a Chinese monoculture and widens learners' perspectives.

Research on diversity and representation in East Asian language teaching materials is still somewhat new. Several attendees approached me after the presentation asking for advice, recommendations, and details on what I had learned in my preliminary research. This suggests to me that there is indeed interest in this subject and that other educators are facing similar questions on how to incorporate diversity and inclusion into their own language teaching curriculum. I hope to publish an article on this subject soon. Hopefully this initial presentation at AAS 2022 will spark further inquiry into the ways language and cultural diversity can be presented in East Asian language classrooms.

Anisa Kline

For my dissertation, my research assistant and I are surveying migrant agricultural guestworkers in Ohio, and the award from CES has helped cover gas and travel expenses for this fieldwork. We are examining the relationships between the living and working arrangements of agricultural guestworkers, here on an H-2A visa, and their healthcare access, self-reported health and occupational health and safety. As of June 21st, we have driven approximately 5,000 miles and visited 64 different farms in 24 counties throughout Ohio. As can be seen by the number of miles driven, this population is difficult to access- they are dispersed throughout the state and often live in remote areas. We have visited workers in a wide variety of geographic locations, both in terms of region (Northeast Ohio, Central Ohio, Southwestern Ohio) and urban/rural settings. We have surveyed a total of 131 H-2A workers to date, and hope to reach 250 by the end of the summer.

Grace Maynard

American novelist Ralph Ellison (1914-1994) published his creative and political insight on the relationship between Black American culture and other American cultural identities in his first novel, Invisible Man, in April of 1952 – a work that would quickly gain public recognition as a staple in Black American literature and, subsequently, uphold an extraordinary standard of greatness for the rest of his literary career to exceed.

This standard of greatness would prove to haunt Ellison throughout his career post-Invisible Man, hindering his ability to officially publish the literary opus that would consume the rest of his life: Three Days Before The Shooting, a deeply-complex, multi-series saga centered around the shooting of controversial, race-baiting U.S. Senator, Adam Sunraider, who is attended by a jazz musician-turned preacher, Alonzo Hickman. Throughout its compositional history, Three Days Before The Shooting (otherwise known as the “Hickman Novel”) serves as a kind of sandbox for the many perceptive, humanistic insights around which Ellison centered his literary career, which, alongside Three Days Before The Shooting, can most notably be seen in the brilliant critical essays that Ellison consistently produced over the second half of the twentieth century.

Within Ellison’s critical essays, there exists significant contextual evidence alluding to the literary influences that likely shaped the unfinished Hickman Novel into what we read of it today. Of the influences suggested throughout his essays, the works of The Cambridge Ritualists, I argue, prove to be the most significant in the Hickman Novel’s creation. The Cambridge Ritualists, a recognized group of classical scholars based in Cambridge, England in the early 20th century, established the common roots of myth, rite, and ritual as being central to the study of religion, culture, and art. I would suggest that the concept of myth, rite, and ritual is one that Ellison embodied within Invisible Man in its entirety and continued to do so to a larger extent into the creation of the Hickman Novel. It is within the Hickman Novel that the concept of myth, rite, and ritual are of the utmost significance, underscoring themes of Native American ritualistic practices which serve as the archetypal basis to the work as a whole.

To understand the full extent of Ellison’s influence taken from The Cambridge Ritualists, thanks to research funding provided by The Ohio State University Center for Ethnic Studies, I traveled to the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C. where Ralph Ellison’s personal library containing his original, personal copies of the works of The Cambridge Ritualists are preserved. Following a method of research fellow Ellisonian scholar and Professor at Villanova University, Bryan Crable, first established in his own work examining Ellison’s influence from The Cambridge Ritualists, I examined Ellison’s hand-written markings and other physical fragments of evidence in each of his personal copies of the works of The Cambridge Ritualists to determine which of these authors’ influences may have played significant roles in Ellison’s creation of the Hickman Novel. In doing so, my findings suggest that Crable’s initial exploration of Ellison’s copies of The Cambridge Ritualists shows only a fraction of the sheer extent of influence Ellison appears to have taken from The Cambridge Ritualists. There exists significant evidence to prove that Ellison’s influence form The Cambridge Ritualists played a critical role in the career-long development of the Hickman Novel, and, more importantly, his personal framework of philosophy through which he suggests his audience considered in order to properly understand and address complex race relations in contemporary American culture.

Mehr Mumtaz

I am a third year PhD student in Sociology at the Ohio State University, studying international migration, immigrant and refugee incorporation in the U.S., and political behavior. I applied for the CES Travel Grant to help supplement my travel to UC Berkeley where I was invited to attend an interdisciplinary workshop in migration research between July 24th and August 2nd, 2022. Additionally, I used CES funds to attend a mini-conference on international migration at the University of Southern California (USC) in Los Angeles, California, on August 5th.

UC Berkeley’s Interdisciplinary Migration Initiative (BIMI) offers a summer institute each year where it invites junior scholars in immigration studies to attend a 10-day workshop at UC Berkeley’s main campus. During the workshop, junior scholars are offered an opportunity to learn about methods in immigration research from cutting edge researchers in the field. The workshop is designed to create an environment where scholars are given an opportunity to have one-on-one conversations with prominent professors in the field and make connections with their cohort peers.

Thanks to the CES Travel Grant, I had the pleasure to participate in BIMI’s Summer 2022 Institute. The workshop was focused on understanding and modeling migration flows with particular attention to forced and climate migration. My participation in the workshop not just exposed me to new theories and methodologies in migration research, it also facilitated my knowledge about the ethics of researching immigrant communities, especially while dealing with vulnerable populations within that community. The workshop also exposed me to advanced methods in merging traditional data with big data to analyze migration flows between local and international regions. Most importantly, the workshop provided me with several opportunities to share my current research on refugee resettlement in the U.S. with my peers and acquire their critical feedback on my work. I was grateful for the opportunity to share my work in a room full of experts in the field of immigration studies who could offer me generative feedback on my work.

Currently, I am in the process of revising my ongoing research project, based on the feedback I received during the workshop. I am also continuing to maintain my relationship with my cohort peers. Each week my cohort peers and I co-work on zoom, share our goals and research agenda with one another, and facilitate each other in our scholarly work. Moreover, we maintain a Slack group where we post job and research opportunities relevant to the field of international migration.

Overall, I gained valuable connections and knowledge from my participation at UC Berkeley’s workshop, as well as at the mini-conference in international migration at USC. I am grateful to OSU’s Center for Ethnic Studies for awarding me the grant and providing me support to seek research opportunities in California this summer which will serve crucial to my academic career as a sociologist.

Blessy Samjose

I am grateful for the Center for Ethnic Studies travel grant because the financial assistance helped me partially finance one conference presentation during the Spring 2022 semester and cover the annual membership cost for a prominent research organization in my area of research. At the time of the grant application, I was a final year doctoral student at the department of Teaching and Learning. I graduated in Summer 2022 with a doctorate in Education and a GIS in South Asian Studies and am currently on the job market applying for jobs in academia.

I attended the 14th Regional IBBY conference at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee and presented in a panel titled, “Freedom Songs in Children’s and YA Literature.” My section on the panel focused on the impact of freedom songs in the Indian struggle for independence against British colonization through a critical analysis of a middle-grade Indian historical novel Neela: Victory Song. Since my dissertation research is on South Asian children’s and young adult historical fiction, participating in a collaborative research panel gave me the opportunity to explore interdisciplinary venues in my research. I am attaching a photo of my team after our presentation. Participating at this conference also helped me network with prominent scholars in my area of research and meet and hear from inspiring authors writing for children and young adult audiences. The sessions with authors and various research presentations revitalized my research and critical thinking during a harrowing period in my dissertation writing.

I also used a portion of the travel grant to cover annual membership fees for the Children’s Literature Association (ChLA), a prominent research organization in my area of research. I was selected to present at their annual conference. My presentation was titled, “Beyond dark clouds and rain: An ecocritical analysis of monsoon narratives in three picture books by South Asian authors.” Unfortunately, I was unable to travel to this conference for an in-person presentation because of dissertation deadlines. I am attaching the conference schedule that shows my accepted conference paper title to the email.

Although I was unable to attend the conference, the ChLA membership gives me access to the organization’s journal, Children’s Literature Association Quarterly. The access gave me an understanding of recent scholarly research published in this journal. I am currently finalizing

a research manuscript on refugee childhoods represented in four selected Southeast Asian children’s literature that I aim to submit for peer review this month. In addition, since I am currently on the job market, the membership allows me to participate in and benefit from workshops and mentorship opportunities for early career academicians.

Justin Salgado

A few blocks from the Morelos metro stop, and a short bus ride away from the Aeropuerto Internacional de la Ciudad de México, sits the Archivo General de la Naciòn (AGN). Approaching the archive, I noticed massive gates and interesting architecture. I quickly learned that the AGN is housed inside the Palacio de Lecumberri, a palace that served as a penitentiary from 1900-1976. In 1982, it became home to the national archives, housing records since the days of the Spanish Empire. This space has become an important site for those interested in the history of Mexico and Latin America and is a necessary place for scholars, new and old, to visit.

This summer, with the help of a travel grant from the Center of Ethnic Studies here at Ohio State, I visited the AGN to conduct research for my dissertation project. Currently, I am researching the history of public health on the U.S.-Mexico border, specifically in the sister border cities of El Paso, Texas, and Ciudad Juárez, Chihuahua. Wanting to better grasp federal public health structures, I ventured to the center of it all and visited Mexico City. My trip lasted about four weeks, and in that time, I was able to consult the records of President Miguel de la Madrid Hurtado, who served as Mexico’s 59th president from 1982 to 1988. Another collection I worked with is the Secretaría de Salud collection, which proved very interesting and helpful.

Documents from the Unidad de la Crónica Prsidencial, viewed in Galeria 2 of the Archivo General de la Naciòn

When not at the AGN, I spent my evenings exploring the city. At every corner, I had the opportunity to try some authentic Mexican food—from tacos, gorditas, and posole to aguas frescas, fresh-cut fruit, and postres, too many to name. Doña Esther, the lady who lived in the apartment building I stayed in, must have noticed my enthusiasm for the food because she chuckled as she

warned me that the food might be challenging for my American stomach. Fortunately for me, it wasn’t, and I felt like I was making a separate research trip on the various foods encountered during my time in Mexico City.

El Ángel de la Independencia at the Paseo de la Reforma in downtown Mexico City.

After what felt like the shortest four weeks of my life, I left Mexico City and headed to Texas. In El Paso, I visited the C. L. Sonnichsen Special Collections Department, where I worked with documents from the Southwest and Border Studies Collection and the El Paso Planned Parenthood papers, among many more.

Although I am at a very preliminary stage of my project, thanks to the support of the Ethnic Studies Program at Ohio State, I was able to conduct exciting research that will be helpful in my project on the history of the U.S.-Mexico Borderlands. But, more importantly, this trip helped me acknowledge the importance of adopting an intersectional and binational approach in my work. I look forward to continuing this research during my time at Ohio State!

Yukina Sato

My research focus is to unpack the hybridity in performing arts, especially the combination between Japanese cultural heritage and western concert dance. I chose Saeko Ichinohe (1936-2021), a Japanese American dance artist who immigrated to the U.S in the 60s and formed her dance company in the 70s through the 2010s. She pulls her creative inspiration from her cultural heritage and merges her dance training such as Ballet and Modern dance. I visited her archives at The New York Public Library, all studios, and her company locations as well as interviewed her dancers and collaborators. My archiving process in NYC is summarized in a short documentary film: https://youtu.be/2C4zj5Sedxk

Also, I brought back one of Saeko Ichinohe's choreographies, "Chidori." It is a duet about the love story between a fisherman and a bird. The embodiment of her choreography assists me to understand her hybridity kinesthetically. I and Dr. Williams and my cohort, Forrest Hershey met twice a week to read the Laban Notation score and embody the choreography. Thanks to the grant, I am fortunate to have live musicians. "Chidori" was specifically choreographed for Japanese Koto music. I asked Columbus Koto Ensembles to play "Chidori" for the live demonstration. Also, throughout the research, I wanted to understand performative "Japaneseness," which is a stereotyped image of Japanese dance or Japanese dancers by the people in the U.S. Based on my understanding, I created a solo with intermedia technology. Both dance pieces were performed in April.

Reflection blog: https://yukinasato.com/2022/04/19/reflection-of-transcendence-時を超えて-4-16-2022/

Jessica Tjiu

The Center of Ethnic Studies (CES) Travel and Research grant has helped me to conduct archival research at different institutions in the San Francisco Bay Area: California Historical Society, San Francisco Public Library, UC Berkeley Asian American Studies Library, and Stanford University. I used the CES Travel and Research grant to pay for all my flight and transportation expenses.

I visited these institutions to conduct research on the representation of Asian/Asian American women and girls in the so-called “Yellow Slave Trade” during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. At these various institutions, I analyzed archival documents, including but not limited to photographs, newspaper articles, journals, and annual reports, that detailed the public interests in the prostitution of Chinese women and girls, also known as the “Yellow Slave Trade.” First, I began my research trip with the nineteenth-century photograph collections of Chinese women and girls in San Francisco’s Chinatown by a German-American photographer, Arnold Genthe. Then, I linked one of the subjects, a Chinese girl, from the photograph collection to the Occidental Board Presbyterian Mission House, which worked with the San Francisco police department to “rescue” Chinese women and girls from prostitution. Tracing these particular rescue narratives through the perspectives of the (white) authorities, I questioned the archival and discursive representation of Chinese/Chinese American women and girls as (hyper)visible and, yet, silent victims of potential sexual violence and exploitation. In particular, I wonder who is being silenced through these rescue narratives and how the archives on the early presence of Chinese/Chinese American women and girls are innately imbued with silences and fragmentations. Therefore, how do we grapple with the interiority and complex personhood of these Chinese/Chinese American women and girls? Furthermore, how do we decenter the Orientalist lens on prostitution and sexual exploitation through the intersections of gender, race, class, and sexuality?

All in all, the CES Travel and Research grant helped me to conduct preliminary research for my dissertation project. I will use the archival materials that I gathered from my research trip, as I prepare to work on my dissertation prospectus this academic year. Without the CES Travel and Research grant, I would not have had the opportunity or the financial ability to go back to the San Francisco Bay Area in August 2022. I am grateful to the Center for Ethnic Studies for its support in my research project.

Charlize Wang

I am deeply pleased and honored to receive this prestigious research grant. With this financial support, I was able to have access to more resources to further investigate my research studies and participate in professional development in national and regional language associations. More importantly, I also had opportunities to present and expand my network at the International Conference on Chinese Language Instruction at Princeton University and the Ohio Foreign Language Association’s 60th Anniversary conference.

My exploratory study, "The Effects of Raciolinguistic Ideologies in U.S Classrooms and Beyond", investigated the effects of raciolinguistic ideologies in foreign language classrooms and beyond in the U.S. Participants were Asian Americans who were from Spanish, Chinese, and Korean classes and self-identified as heritage learners in relation to their linguistic and cultural backgrounds. Minoritized groups are disparaged in social contexts. The concept of "looking like a language and sounding like a race" (Rosa, 2019) postulates how people perceive one’s race and heritage language (HL). I unpacked the existing data from empirical research (Chang, 2020; Leeman & Serafini, 2020; Harris & Lee, 2021) to further look at how racialized perceptions are constructed and affect heritage language (HL) and non-HL learners. To that end, this study provided a systematic framework with a focus on creating an inclusive classroom.

The purpose of this study is to (1) analyze how racialized perceptions are rooted in class and (2) identify patterns in how raciolinguistic ideologies are framed in minority groups. The findings show that instructors explicitly outline racial and linguistic ideologies to help non-HL speakers have a better understanding of HL learners’ challenges. Furthermore, the mistreatment of instructors' double standards is constructed based on one’s ethnolinguistic background and racialized perceptions. Recommendations suggest that it is paramount for instructors to explicitly address the issues of language ideologies and outline HL learners’ oppressed situations. Raciolinguistic ideologies devalue HL learners’ academic attainment and learning outcomes. As for future study, it is imperative to pinpoint how racialized encounters influence mixed-race classes with longitudinal observations and a trajectory analysis of classroom interaction. Practitioners and educators also need to advocate for equity and diversity in educational settings.

As an emerging researcher, I also value the opportunity of giving a presentation on my research program at national and regional conferences as a means of assessing the strengths and limitations of my studies. This academic setting helps me gain insights into teaching and develop my skills in research design. Again, I am grateful for the opportunity to represent OSU and share my critical awareness of language ideology with researchers and scholars from other institutions.

Yitong Xin

It’s a great honor to receive $200 travel support from the Center for Ethnic Studies to support my conference trip to Washington, DC, to attend the 2022 Society for Social Work and Research (SSWR) 26th Annual Conference. The $200 was used to pay for one night of lodging at the conference hotel.

SSWR is one of the biggest international conferences in the social work field, attracting social work researchers and scholars from around the world to present their novel research findings at the conference. Attending the 26th SSWR conference allowed me to engage with other scholars who share similar research interests and build potential collaboration relationships. The conference paired me with a mentor to discuss job opportunities and career development advice, which is very helpful for my next steps. The oral paper I presented at SSWR this January, titled “Reported Improvements in Racial Trauma and Mental Health Outcomes Following Psilocybin Experiences Among Black, Indigenous, and People of Color Population in North America.” This project explored the self-reported impact of the psilocybin experience on symptoms of racial trauma (race-based trauma) and mental health outcomes subsequent to an experience of racism among the black, indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) population in North America. This study is the first to explore how mental health symptoms among BIPOC who have experienced racial trauma can change after psilocybin experiences in the natural ecology. These data suggest that psilocybin may have the potential in decreasing the negative impact of racial trauma and related mental health outcomes among BIPOC. Our oral presentation was a great success and attracted the attention and interest of many scholars/researchers in the field.

Since photo shooting was restricted during the presentation session, I was not able to retain a picture for my presentation during the session. Photos attached are the cover page of my PowerPoint slides and online presentation schedule.