Thursday, April 14, 2016
4:00-5:30 pm
Greene Hall
Uw-Milwaukee

Join us as we acknowledge the new publications of Chia Youyee Vang, Associate Professor of History, and Dalia M.A. Gomaa, Lecturer of English and Women’s and Gender Studies. Vang and Gomaa Book Event Flyer

“Claiming Place: On the Agency of Hmong Women” (Chia Y. Vang, Faith Nibbs and Ma Vang) expands knowledge about the Hmong lived reality while contributing to broader conversations on sexuality, diaspora, and agency. While these essays center on Hmong experiences, activism, and popular representations, they also underscore the complex gender dynamics between women and men and address the wider concerns of gendered status of the Hmong in historical and contemporary contexts, including deeply embedded notions around issues of masculinity.

“The Non-National in Contemporary American Literature: Ethnic Women Writers and Problematic Belongings” (Dalia M. A. Gomaa) examines contemporary narratives by Arab-American, South-Asian American, Chicana, and Cuban-American women writers. Gomaa argues that the disparate histories of Arabs, South Asians, Chicanas, and Cubans in the U.S. unfold new non-national sites for affiliations and identifications that unsettle notions of a unified American national space. In each chapter a South-Asian American, Chicana, or Cuban-American text is paired with an Arab-American text to examine sites of ambivalence, which problematize an individual’s sense of belonging to an “imagined community.”