Impactful Articles for Junior Fellows

Annie Chang:

Lori Kido Lopez’s “The Yellow Press: Asian American Radicalism and Conflict in Gidra” is a text that has defined my research project in its current form. Although it may not stand out among the literature I’ve pursued my project, it’s an article I keep returning to because it was what sparked my interest in Gidra and motivated me to switch.

Similar to my approach to Gidra, Lopez conducts a textual analysis of the first two years of Gidra’s run to examine three categories of conflict: internal conflict, external conflict, and produce conflict. Instead of leaning on the notion that ethnic media will shy away from reporting con fl ict that may expose its community’s stability, Lopez deconstructs that notion through her exploration of the ways in which conflict was used to construct Asian American identity. Using the Black press as a point of comparison, she highlights the importance of newspapers like Gidra as a place where people of color can express their voices which they can’t do in mainstream ethnic media.

Lopez sheds light on a facet of the Asian American Movement that is not explored too often: printed publications. Prior to this reading, the books I had discussed the Asian American movement broadly, which meant that the importance of journalism was often not shown in-depth. This article came to me at the right time because I was unsure of where to pivot my project, so when I found Lopez’s piece, it felt like I finally had a sense of direction.

Tori Harwell:

In Hartman’s article Venus in Two Acts, she brings into question what history is and how modern history is to tell the story of those who were purposely forgotten through the lens of the Black Venus. A nameless and storyless woman, a symbol of the endured violence of slavery, Hartman argues that their footprints are scribbled in the margins as a means to forget. Thus, she reveals an in pass for the modern historian trying to right the fact that “the archive of slavery rests upon founding violence. This violence determines, regulates and organizes the kinds of statements that can be made about slavery and as well it creates subjects and objects of power” (Hartman 10). She postures that one must tread this impossibility quite carefully by using the methodology of critical fabulation, as “the intent of this practice is not to give voice to the slave, but rather to imagine what cannot be verified” (Hartman 12). The methods and theories she presents in the article are radical and contested. My project hinges on understanding how people’s relationship with the land has been shifted in part due to colonization; and the imposition of gender, sex, and race across different spaces. I have often felt uneasy about the archives I have worked with to gain insight into previous land practice because such a large narrative is missing. Venus in Two Acts brings into question the methods with which historians practice their craft, and in turn, it is a litmus test for me to understand the boundaries of my project.