A partnership between Bunker Hill Community College and the University of Massachusetts, Boston, to conduct a three-year Bridging Cultures faculty and curriculum development project in Asian American studies.

A partnership between Bunker Hill Community College and the University of Massachusetts, Boston, to conduct a three-year Bridging Cultures faculty and curriculum development project in Asian American studies. Bunker Hill Community College (BHCC) builds on a relationship with the Asian American studies program at the University of Massachusetts, Boston (UMB), to integrate Asian American studies into the BHCC curriculum. Directed by Dean of Humanities Lori Catallozzi, the project engages twelve faculty members from BHCC's humanities departments in collaborative study at three summer institutes with faculty members from UMB's Asian American studies program to examine Asian American communities in Boston and in the nation as a whole. Each institute is devoted to a sub-topic: 1) Asian cultures of the Boston area, 2) intergenerational relationships, and 3) Asian Americans in civic life. Readings are drawn from studies of the history and cultures of specific communities, including Shirley Tang and James Bui on Boston's Vietnamese community, Rajini Srikanth and Esther Iwanaga on Asian American literature, and K. Scott Wong on the history of Boston's Chinatown, as well as from works in the broader field of Asian American studies. Participants also make use of oral histories, documentaries, digital storytelling, policy studies, and archival records, and visit Boston's Chinese, Khmer, and Vietnamese neighborhoods. In addition to taking part in the summer institutes, project participants engage in roundtable discussions and give public lectures during the fall and spring semesters. BHCC faculty members Henry Allen, Mizuho Arai, Aurora Bautista, Jessica Bethoney, Charles Pen Khek Chear, and Lee Santos Silva are participating, along with six additional participants chosen in the project's first year. UMB scholars include Peter Nien-chu Kiang, Shirley Tang, Loan Dao, Patricia Akemi Neilson, Rajini Srikanth, and Paul Watanabe. Faculty members from the two institutions work together to create materials and modules to enhance as many as twenty courses at BHCC. These materials are also disseminated to other institutions in the Massachusetts community college system through an online resource library.