COLLEGE + COMMUNITY COURSES 

(2011, 2019, 2021)

MONTAGNARD / ASIAN COMMUNITY DISPARITIES RESEARCH NETWORK 

2019, 2021

Chen, Z., Young, A. 

HIST/PSCI 250    Politics, Multiple Identities and Transnational Experiences: Asian American Communities

Guilford College


This course introduces students to the histories of people of Asian ancestry in the United States from one particular angle – the Southeast Asian refugees. Most Americans know about the Vietnam War – mostly from the American side, but not many people understand what the war meant for the residents in Vietnam and Southeast Asia, and what happened to American allies in the war (most notably, the Montagnards and the Hmong) after the U.S. troops pulled out of this region. This is a story largely untold and ignored by mainstream histories. This topic is particularly pertinent to Guilford College given the fact that North Carolina is currently home of the largest concentration of Montagnards outside of Southeast Asia, and the College continually admits students from the local Southeast Asian refugee families. Guilford’s Bonner Center has a long history of partner relationship with the local Southeast Asian refugee communities. 

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See

2011

King, R.

MST 1100   Digital Media for the Artist: The Global Village Revisited

University of North Carolina School of Arts


Marshall McLuhan coined the phrase Global Village circa 1964 in reference to the way electric media had, even by then (e.g., prior to the internet) interconnected the entire planet. We are revisiting and working with McLuhan's concept in light of current events and circumstances. 


We are also working with the Montagnard community the North Carolina Piedmont region --part of the global village in our own backyard, so to speak. Many Montagnards came to NC after the war in Vietnam ended, bringing with them rich cultural and artistic traditions that we are learning about and entering into dialogue with. 


Our basic approach is to explore and document the intersection of McLuhan and Montagnards in contemporary life by taking a human-relationships/social-networking based approach that we are calling inside-out or autobiographical anthropology. Rather than starting with abstractions (culture, identity, etc.) we are starting and staying with actual people, their stories, and interactions. 


This project is inevitably situated within the current discussion and experimentation about the fate of formal education in the 21st century. With so many of us now having ample, constant access to vast amounts of information and perspectives, what becomes of schools? The response this project offers is, in part, that schools can be re-contextualized as 'nodes' in a larger network that includes social service agencies, online information, and personal and professional social networks. In other words, what becomes of schools in the 21st century? They become networked in a way that is much deeper and expansive than having the internet in every classroom, integrating technology into teaching and learning, etc.


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