The Intercollegiate Department of Asian American Studies (IDAAS) at the Claremont Colleges is celebrating 25 years on Friday, February 9, 2024 at the Benton Museum of Art, Pavilion & Courtyard, Pomona College. Please RSVP just so we know about how many people will be in attendance.
Tentative Schedule: (subject to change)
12:30pm Lunch
1:00-2:30pm Alumni panel (with lunch continuing)
2:45-3:30pm Performance by Gingee
3:45-4:30pm Mingle
Prior to the February 9th celebration, we are offering two workshops. One is the Music Production for Liberation workshop with Gingee PZ ’06 on Thursday, January 25, 2024 from 4:30-5:30pm at the Grove House, Pitzer College. Dinner to follow. Please RSVP to the dinner separately at https://bit.ly/JAN25MUSIC. For more information, refer to the flyer.
There will also be a Grieve/Resist/Live poetry workshop with Sara Farooqi PZ ’08 on Thursday, February 8 from 7:00-9:00pm at the Grove House, Pitzer College. RSVP if you would like to participate in an intimate gathering in support of our community members currently engaged in the movement for Palestinian liberation. Together we will “tend to our tenderness” using poetry as a tool to explore and transmute grief. This 90 minute workshop will include an exploration of poetry by three Palestinian poets around the following themes:
GRIEF: How are we experiencing this grief? What is it demanding of us?
RESISTANCE: What does it mean to uplift justice and liberation? What truths need to be witnessed?
LIFE: How can we reconnect with and remind ourselves of what it is we are fighting for? What makes life so incredibly sacred and worth protecting?
Prompts will be provided for participants to respond to in their preferred medium (written word, doodles, quiet contemplation, etc.). A large portion of this workshop will be non-verbal, providing space for folks to process and contemplate silently.
Following the workshop, we will have an optional open mike for anyone who would like to share aloud. Participants will receive a free 26 page workbook which we will also be using in our gathering. This event is designed as a supportive space to process together, not a forum for in-depth political dialogue.
7:00-8:30pm Workshop
8:30-9:00pm Optional open-mike
Short bios for our panelists and performers:
Malaya Caligtan-Tran currently works as a sexual health educator and runs a teen peer-led sex-ed program. They were a 2022 Fulbright research grantee to the Philippines where they researched the impacts of large-scale mining in the Cordillera region. Malaya graduated from Pitzer College with a self-designed degree in Indigenous Public Health and a minor in Environmental Analysis.