5pan's 4th annual spring issues and leadership conference

This is for my student friends in and around the 5 colleges... This weekend the 5 College Pan Asian Network (5PAN) will be hosting its fourth annual leadership conference, "Digging Deep: Discovering Our Roots and Learning to Grow"on Saturday," February 27th, 2010, at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

Lots of networking opportunities and cool workshops on a wide range of topics, including South Asian in Relation to U.S. Politics, Modern Day Disenfranchisement - Asian American Voting Rights and Patterns, When Hate Hits You - Asian Americans and Hate Crimes, and more. Jennifer 8. Lee, author of The Fortune Cookie Chronicles, will be the keynote speaker. The details:

The Five College Pan Asian Network presents its 4th Annual Spring Issues and Leadership Conference

"Digging Deep: Discovering our roots and learning to grow."

We hope to focus on what it means to be an Asian/Asian PacificAmerican and how we come to consciousness and gain an understanding of our identity, especially by digging deeper and learning about our racial history in this country.

Saturday, February 27, 2010
UMass, Herter Hall 2nd Floor
9 am - 4:30 pm

**Keynote Speaker: Jennifer 8. Lee, a journalist for the New York Times**

Workshops

* Margaret Abraham - Domestic Violence in the Asian Pacific American community
* JACL (Japanese American Citizens League), Bill Yoshino - Asian American and Hate Crimes
* Sujani Reddy - South Asian/American Politics in the US
* Iyko Day - Asian Americans and Affirmative Action
* Joshua Roth - Racial Slurs and Jokes
* Floyd Cheung - Reading Asian American Poetry
* Eric Hamako - Monsters, Messiahs, or Something Else?: Mixed-Race in Science Fiction Movies
* AALDEF - Asian Pacific American Voting Rights
* Panel with CN Le, grad students, faculty - Mutual Mentoring
* Panel: Miliann Kang and Elena Volpe - APA Women and Mental Health
* Calvin Sun - Social Networking Ettiquette
* Eric Hamako - Zombie Orientals Ate My Brain! Orientalism in Contemporary Zombie Film & Fiction
* CN Le - Balancing "Asian" and "American" Identities
* Panel: Richard Chu, Falguni Sheth, Larry Hunt - White Liberal Racism: An Oxymoron?
* AALDEF - Human Trafficking

I had the pleasure of being the keynote speaker at this event last year, and really enjoyed 5PAN's enthusiasm and hospitality. For more details, and to register for the conference, go to the 5PAN website here. And for further information, take a look at the Facebook event page here.