Tri-College Asian

Student Conference

Helen Zia is an award-winning journalist and scholar who has covered Asian American communities and social and political movements for decades. She is the author of Asian American Dreams: The Emergence of an American People, a finalist for the prestigious Kiriyama Pacific Rim Book Prize. Zia is former Executive Editor of Ms. Magazine. She was named one of the most influential Asian Americans of the decade by A. Magazine. Zia has received numerous journalism awards for her ground-breaking stories; her investigation of date rape at the University of Michigan led to campus demonstrations and an overhaul of its policies, while her research on women who join neo-Nazi and white supremacist organizations provoked new thinking on the relationship between race and gender violence in hate crimes. A second generation Chinese American, Zia has been outspoken on issues ranging from civil rights and peace to women's rights and countering hate violence and homophobia. In 1997, she testified before the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights on the racial impact of the news media. She traveled to Beijing in 1995 to the UN Fourth World Congress on Women as part of a journalists of color delegation. She has appeared in numerous news programs and films; her work on the 1980s Asian American landmark civil rights case of anti-Asian violence is documented in the Academy Award-nominated film, "Who Killed Vincent Chin?" and she was profiled in Bill Moyers' PBS documentary, "Becoming American: The Chinese Experience."

Arjun Singh Sethi is a community activist, civil rights lawyer, writer, and law professor based in Washington, DC. He works closely with Muslim, Arab, South Asian, and Sikh communities and advocates for racial justice, equity, and social change at the local and national levels. His writing has appeared in CNN Opinion, The Guardian, Politico magazine, USA Today, and The Washington Post, and he is featured regularly on national radio and television. He holds faculty appointments at Georgetown University Law Center and Vanderbilt University Law School, and presently co-chairs the American Bar Association’s National Committee on Homeland Security, Terrorism, and Treatment of Enemy Combatants. In the wake of the 2016 presidential election, Arjun traveled the country and met with a diversity of people and documented the hate they experienced during the campaign and after inauguration. American Hate: Survivors Speak Out was released in August 2018 and named an NPR Best Book of the Year.

Cynthia Dewi Oka is the author of Salvage: Poems (Northwestern University Press, 2017) and Nomad of Salt and Hard Water (Thread Makes Blanket, 2016). Her work has appeared in ESPNW, Hyperallergic, Guernica, Academy of American Poets, American Poetry Review, Kenyon Review, The Massachusetts Review, Painted Bride Quarterly, and elsewhere. She is a contributor to the anthologies Women of Resistance: Poems for a New Feminism (OR Books, 2018), Who Will Speak for America (Temple University Press, 2018), and What Saves Us: Poems of Empathy and Outrage in the Age of Trump, edited by Martín Espada. Her work has also been selected for the Best of Kweli: An Aster(ix) Anthology (Blue Sketch Press, 2017).

Nazia Kazi is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Stockton University in New Jersey, where she teaches classes on race, migration, and empire. Her first book, Islamophobia, Race, and Global Politics, is an introduction to the topic of Islamophobia and its complex connection to US foreign policy and multicultural movements in the US.

Sonalee Rashatwar (she/they), MSW, LCSW, MEd is an award-winning social worker based in Philadelphia. She is a fat queer nonbinary bemme therapist, specialized in treating sexual trauma, body image issues, racial or immigrant identity issues, and South Asian family systems, while offering fat positive sexual healthcare. Popularly known as TheFatSexTherapist on Instagram, their fame hit an all time high when they were featured on Breitbart in March 2018 for naming thinness as a white supremacist beauty ideal. Sonalee is a sought-after speaker who travels internationally to curate custom visual workshops that whisper to our changemaking spirit and nourish our vision for a more just future. Sonalee is not paid for her labor as a community organizer, where she has fundraised and facilitated a free 5-day political action summer camp for LGBT+ South Asian and Indo Caribbean youth called East Coast Solidarity Summer. They recently earned their LCSW and opened a small private practice in West Philly.

Bakirathi Mani is Associate Professor in the Department of English Literature at Swarthmore College. Born in Bombay (now Mumbai), raised in Tokyo, and educated in the United States and in India, Mani's research and teaching focuses on transnational feminist and queer studies, South Asian American public cultures, and critical race/ethnic studies. Mani earned her Ph.D. from Stanford University, her M.A. from Jawaharlal Nehru University, and her B.S.F.S. from Georgetown University. She is the author of Aspiring to Home: South Asians in America (Stanford University Press, 2012). Her forthcoming book Haunting Visions: South Asian Diasporic Visual and Exhibition Cultures, considers how images of empire have become archetypes of self-representation in contemporary South Asian diasporic art.

Arpita is 1.5 generation Tamil who lives in Nipmuck land (Central MA). They are a junior History major at Bryn Mawr College and are interested in interrogating questions of diaspora, foodways, cultural belonging, and (re)framing community for QTPOC! They spend their free time making playlists and watching Bobs Burgers with friends. They’re excited to learn, grow, and build community at the conference this year. If you see them walking around, feel free to say hi!

Lei Ouyang Bryant (Ph.D. and M.A. in Ethnomusicology, University of Pittsburgh; B.A. in East Asian Studies, Macalester College) is an Associate Professor of Music at Swarthmore College. Her scholarly interests are in music, culture, and performance in East Asia (primarily China, Japan, and Taiwan) and Asian America. Her research examines issues of music and memory, identity, politics, race and ethnicity, popular culture, and social justice. Research projects include music and memory in the Chinese Cultural Revolution, Race and Performance in Asian American musical theatre, and social justice and taiko drumming in the American Midwest. Lei previously taught at Skidmore College (2006-2017) as Associate Professor of Music and at Macalester College (2004-2006) as a Consortium for Faculty Diversity Postdoctoral Fellow.

Shannan (she/they) is a Black and Taiwanese Texas native. After college, they hope to bring a multidisciplinary approach to policy and nonprofit work addressing economic equity, health care, and STEM education. Shannan is the secretary of Bryn Mawr’s Self Government Association (SGA), a board member of Zami+ and NAACP, a Resident Hall Advisor, and a current co-teacher for the course “Advocating Diversity in Higher Education”

Mari (she/they) is a first generation Black and Filipina American from Philadelphia who loves dancing, science fiction, and thinking about how to enhance and create more inclusive communities. She is the co-founder of the club Multi* at Bryn Mawr, in addition to holding a Community Diversity Assistant position and managing a coffee shop on campus. Through creative nonprofit work in the future Mari hopes to engage with urban communal spaces for recreation and learning, in ways that expand opportunities for marginalized individuals to connect. Much of their work emerges from interests in race, the body, diaspora, and visuality.

Amy Kim is an honors English major and film and media studies minor from San Diego, CA. Over the summer, she conducted research into the 1992 L.A. Riots while working as a production assistant for LadyBuds, an upcoming documentary about women in cannabis. She helped design Percepticon, a Mellon Diversity Grant project about perception biases in film and media, and currently serves as a board member on WOCKA (Women of Color Kick Ass). In her free time, she fantasizes about soup dumplings and swing dancing. Speak to her about the importance of children's entertainment, and you may just have to saw your leg out of the conversation.

Maya is an Education and History major on track for teacher certification for social studies in secondary education. They are the co-investigator of the Community, Schools, Colleges, Partnerships (CSCP) study that looks at community school models in Philadelphia. Maya is also the co-president of Swarthmore Queer Union as well as on the board of Aja for Black women and non-binary students on Swarthmore's campus. They are also involved in Organizing for Survivors (O4S) that looks towards transformative justice options and Title IX policy changes. They have also co-written two works based on Shakespeare plays for The Revolutionary Arts Festival for artists of color as well as co-facilitated Culture and Identity (CIA) week at Swarthmore College.

Born and raised in Queens, New York City, Nayab Khan is an energetic, outgoing Pakistani American Muslim. As a first-generation college student, she studied Biology as an undergraduate at the University of Pennsylvania and received a Master’s in Nonprofit Leadership from Penn’s School of Social Policy & Practice. At Penn, she was actively involved in advocacy work in the interfaith and Asian communities. Nayab is currently an intern for Peaceful Families Project, a national organization with international reach devoted to preventing domestic violence, with a particular focus on Muslim families of diverse cultural, ethnic and racial backgrounds. Nayab also currently serves as the Programs Specialist on the National Board of the East Coast Asian Americans Student Union (ECAASU). She is dedicated to working out and getting fit. Nayab also loves to make and drink tasty chai!

Peter J. Wong, PhD, MScEcon, MPP, is Research Director of Asian and Pacific Islanders with Disabilities of California (APIDC). Dr. Wong completed his doctorate in urban planning at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs. His dissertation topic focused on employment challenges and successes for Asian American Pacific Islanders (AAPIs) with disabilities. He received his BA from UCLA, and holds master’s degrees in public policy from the University of Michigan and in economics and planning from the London School of Economics. He served as a senior advisor at the White House National Economic Council to President Clinton, where he specialized in income maintenance and poverty statistics. Dr. Wong is an Adjunct Professor at California State University, Long Beach, in Asian and Asian American Studies and the Graduate Center for Public Policy & Administration.

Dorcas Tang is an artist, photographer, and storyteller whose diasporic identity as a third-generation Chinese-Malaysian drives her work. She is currently a senior at Swarthmore College majoring in Studio Art and double minoring in Spanish and Educational Studies although her parents still hold out hope for her to be a lawyer. Her most recent work is Los Paisanos del Puerto: Portraits of the Chinese diaspora in Puntarenas, Costa Rica. Looking towards the future, she is excited to continue bridging communities and fostering critical dialogue through creating socially engaged visual narratives. If she could have any superpower in the world it would be the ability to completely understand other human beings. And cats.

Dawn Philip, JD, LSW, is the Senior Staff Clinical Community Liaison in Swarthmore's Counseling and Psychological Services (CAPS). In this role, Dawn engages in individual and group psychotherapy and works to bridge existing gaps between mental health services and the broader campus community, particularly traditionally marginalized populations. Dawn completed a two-year clinical fellowship at Williams College where she provided individual and group psychotherapy to students and engaged various campus groups around how to best cultivate holistic student mental health and wellness. Prior to obtaining her MSW, Dawn practiced civil rights law and policy for several years with a focus on racial and environmental justice. Dawn’s broad advocacy background informs her deep interest in issues related to diversity, social justice, and identity formation.

Hilary Hla, Psy.D. is a Postdoctoral Psychology Resident at Swarthmore College Counseling and Psychological Services. She identifies as a cisgender mixed-race woman of primarily Burmese and German descent. She received her doctorate in clinical psychology from Widener University and is a Certified School Psychologist in the state of Pennsylvania. Her clinical areas of interest include college counseling, psychodynamic therapy, identity development in adolescence and young adulthood, diversity and multiculturalism, mixed-race identity, and parental conflict in the family system.

Nanda is a first-gen Punjabi and Bihari American from Dallas, TX. She has served as the President of Bryn Mawr's Self-Goverence Association (SGA) and as co-president of a QTPOC affinity group called ZAMI+. She believes in healing and restoration through a commitment to land justice; come talk to her about gardening! In her free time you can find her listening to friends' curated playlists and indulging in her love for pho.

Vivek Ramanan has been learning and performing Bharatanatyam, South Indian classical dance, for the last 19 years. He is also an accomplished South Indian drummer and vocal percussionist and has performed around the United States. He is a graduate of Swarthmore College and currently works in Boston, MA at Foundation Medicine. Surya was one of the first dance fellows for the IndianRaga Fellowship in 2016 and was a Creative Director for the fellowship in 2017. Along with Aarthy and Surya, he has conceptualized, choreographed and collaborated on multiple dance videos that have gained much traction through social media.

Aarthy Sundar has trained in the classical dance form, Bharathanatyam, for the past 15 years, and has given numerous solo and group performances throughout the Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex, other US cities like Boston and San Jose, as well as in Delhi and Chennai, India. She continues today to seek opportunities to use her passion for dance as a platform for social awareness and change. She is currently a speech-language pathology clinical fellow at the Charlie Norwood Veterans Affairs Hospital in Augusta, GA. Aarthy was one of the first dance fellows for the IndianRaga Fellowship in 2016 and was a Creative Director for the fellowship in 2017. Along with Surya and Vivek, she has conceptualized, choreographed and collaborated on multiple dance videos that have gained much traction through social media.

Surya Ravi is a passionate Bharatanatyam dancer who began her initial training in Dallas, Texas. She performed in many productions with Expressions School of Dance and continues to collaborate with other artists in local productions in California. She is currently pursuing a Doctorate in Physical Therapy and hopes to apply the knowledge to Indian Classical Dance. Surya was one of the first dance fellows for the IndianRaga Fellowship in 2016 and was a Creative Director for the fellowship in 2017. Along with Aarthy and Vivek, she has conceptualized, choreographed and collaborated on multiple dance videos that have gained much traction through social media.