Roundtable Discussion
Speakers:
Thuy Linh Nguyen Tu, Professor, NYU
Kandice Chuh, Professor, CUNY Graduate Centre
Nadine Attewell, Associate Professor, Simon Fraser University
Moderator: Feng-Mei Heberer, Associate Professor, HKU and NYU
Date: Thursday, December 4, 2025
Time: 4:00 pm Hong Kong Time
Venue: Room 436, 4/F, Run Run Shaw Tower, HKU
In recent years, there has been a groundswell of interdisciplinary interest in studying the everyday work of empire, racial capitalism, and settler colonialism in Asia from the specific grounded location of the diaspora. As showcased by books like like Experiments in Skin (Thuy Linh Tu), Bundok (Adrian De Leon), Asians on Demand (Feng-Mei Heberer) and Archives of Intimacy (Nadine Attewell), this intellectual, methodological, and geographical (re)turn to Asia has been routed through a diversity of theoretical frameworks: the transpacific, Asian indigeneity, global Asia, and so on. This, in turn, has brought Asian diaspora studies scholars into generative, if sometimes frictional engagements with colleagues in cognate area studies disciplines who bring their own distinct intellectual genealogies, theoretical frameworks, and methodological commitments to bear upon problems of shared interest.
These nascent attempts at using the contested geographical and racial formation of “Asia” as a hinge for bridging or mediating the gap between Asian and Asian diaspora studies have raised a series of productive questions that are the focus of this roundtable. What are the political and intellectual stakes of bringing Asian studies into closer engagement with Asian diaspora studies? What can the study of the emergence, circulation, and impact of heterogeneous contemporary meanings of Asia and Asianness helps us understand about current modalities of racism and racial formation? How might this scholarly “meeting of the disciplines” contribute to the urgent work of generating meaningful change under our currently intensifying conditions of crisis and emergency?
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