August 28, 2013: Fall Forward: Book Talks

[As part of my end of spring semester series, I blogged about my upcoming fall courses. But there are lots of other things going on this fall, so in this week’s series I’ll highlight a handful of other upcoming events and some of their meanings. Please share some of what your autumns will include!]

Three events that exemplify the multi-pronged approach I’m taking to sharing my work.

In June’s book-release series, I wrote about my newest public scholarly project; scheduling different kinds of talks and presentations through which to share my book’s histories and stories, ideas and arguments, with multiple audiences. I’ve got many presentations in the works, and some are definitely scheduled; these three of the latter represent three main types:

1)      URI Diversity Week: On Thursday October 3^rd, I’ll be talking about my book as part of the University of Rhode Island’s Diversity Week events (thanks to my colleague and friend Nancy Caronia). Sharing my work with college students, faculty, and communities is an essential goal of mine, and the chance to do so alongside numerous other speakers working on issues of American and world diversity is doubly exciting. I plan to focus here on my second and third chapters, and the broad and specific histories of American diversity they include.

2)      Plymouth Public Library: On Monday November 18^th, I’ll be reading from and talking about my book as part of the Plymouth Public Library’s Wicked Local Read-A-Thon (thanks to the library’s Jennifer Harris). My central goal for these book talks, as for my public scholarship more broadly, is to connect to audiences outside of academia, to interested Americans and ongoing conversations; the chance to do so in historic American places such as Plymouth is doubly exciting. I plan to focus here on my first chapter, and the fundamentally inaccurate narratives of immigration to which it responds.

3)      Wilfrid Laurier University: In early January 2014, I’ll be speaking about my book to students and faculty in the North American Studies Program at Wilfrid Laurier University in Ontario, Canada (thanks to my NeMLA colleague Jennifer Harris [not the Plymouth librarian!]). To be honest, the chance to share some of my work and ideas with international communities and audiences feels too good to be true; but I promise not to look the gift horse in the mouth, and instead to talk to him or her about my book. I plan to focus here not so much on what’s in the book as on connections of those histories and stories to Canadian immigration, diversity, and Asian Canadian communities.

I’ll keep you posted on these and all my other talks, and would love to hear your thoughts on what makes for a particularly compelling or meaningful presentation. Next autumn event tomorrow,

Ben

PS. Fall plans of yours you want to share?  

PPS. Since I wrote this post, I've scheduled some more events, including two that I wanted to add to these examples since they're really ideal spaces for sharing this work: a talk at the San Francisco Public Library's Chinatown branch, on Saturday November 2nd; and a talk at New York City's Museum of the Chinese in America, as part of their MOCACitizens program, on Thursday September 19th. Both are free and open to the public, so if you're in those areas, please come out and say hi! For a complete list of my currently scheduled talks, see this new page!