Asian Studies Program at UMBC

🏆 A big congratulations to our 2 Asian Studies award winners this Spring 2026!

Michelle Yang, rising sophomore in Asian Studies/English, has won the Outstanding Service Award in the program. We are so grateful for Michelle’s hard work this past year supporting the program’s events, newsletters, and more!

Alan Zhang, new graduate from Asian Studies, has won the Constantine Vaporis Academic Excellence Award. Alan has demonstrated an outstanding academic record during his time in our program and we couldn’t be more proud!

Join Global Asias Initiative, Global Studies Program and UMBC Culture Builders tomorrow for a screening of Dr. Zareen Taj’s film! We’ll have an engaging dialogue about hope and culture building and learn more about the film from Dr. Taj. See you then!

Join us TONIGHT! We are so excited to host author, Manil Suri and alumnus, Aditya Desai for conversation over the book, A Room in Bombay.

Meet us at the Library Gallery, starting at 4:30pm. Refreshments will be provided!

Manil Suri Book Event: A Room in Bombay Join us in conversation with author of A Room in Bombay: A Memoir, Manil Suri, and English/MCS Alumnus, Aditya Desai. The event will be held on Thursday, April 16th, starting at 4:30PM in the...

🎬 Join us for the screening of “Made in Ethiopia” tomorrow (3/5), in the Library Gallery at 4:30PM!

🗣️ Sit in on a Q&A with the filmmaker herself, Xinyan Yu, along with discussants, Tracy Tinga (MCS) & Guenet Abraham (Visual Arts).

🍴 Food will be provided during this event.

🔗 RSVP: https://my3.my.umbc.edu/groups/asianstudiesprogram/events/151537

Welcome back, students! We hope you all have been staying warm & enjoying the snow.

Asian Studies will be hosting a variety of events this spring semester and coming up in a couple weeks is already Lunar New Year! Join our celebration with food & fun! ❤️🏮🥟

RSVP on myUMBC here: https://my3.my.umbc.edu/groups/asianstudiesprogram/events/149902

Happy Holidays from Asian Studies! ☃️❤️

Check out our newsletter of program updates from this fall semester! It has been an exciting 2025, and we look forward to 2026 with you & our program at UMBC 🎉

Read our newsletter linked below!

https://asianstudies.umbc.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/74/2025/12/Asian-Studies-Highlights-Fall-2025.pdf?utm_source=ig&utm_medium=social&utm_content=link_in_bio

Thank you so much for attending the Asian American Children’s Literature Exhibition organized by Dr. Sharon Tran! We had a beautiful evening engaging with work created by Dr. Tran’s English 360 students and sharing in story time with Dr. Tamara Bhalla, Dr. Fan Yang, and their daughters.

Plans are in the work to host the children’s books that students selected in an accessible location for people to visit. For now, please reach out to Dr. Fan Yang (Director, Asian Studies) at [email protected] if you would like to check them out!

Recap from our KPOP DEMON HUNTERS: A Conversation on Media, Culture, & Globalization event! 💜

We had a lot of fun eating great food, dancing, and watching clips from KPop Demon Hunters - all the while having meaningful discussions about the connections between the movie and Korean culture led by Mea Lee and Angelina Jenkins.

🔗 Check out more from the news story on our event by Catalina Sofia Dansberger Duque! https://umbc.edu/stories/celebrating-k-pop-culture-in-kpop-demon-hunters/

Thank you to our amazing guest speakers and all who attended and supported our Reframing Global Asias events last week! We got to do some hands-on art making and mapping, build collaborations between faculty and students, and learn from our guest speakers about activism, storytelling, and our relationships with language and communication. Hope to see you all at future Global Asias events!

Image list:
1. Guest speaker Shengxiao “Sole” Yu presenting her talk House of Mirrors
2. Sole showing participants how to make a zine on heritage languages at CADVC Gallery
3. Guest speaker Joyhanna Yoo sharing her personal relationships to languages at CADVC Gallery
4. Global Asias post-doctoral fellow Mika Thornburg introducing the Solidarity with Anti-Imperialist Struggles event
5. Anakbayan UMBC presenting on Youth Solidarity Organizing
6. Students, faculty, staff and guests mapping personal and institutional relationships to imperialism, and to opportunities for change
7. Dr. Yoo presenting her work Semiotics of Skin:
The Discursive Construction of Desirable Figures of Personhood in Korean Beauty’s Global Circulation

RECAP: We had a great turnout at the Major Event at UMBC this past Monday! Students learned all about the Asian Studies Program as a major/minor & even got to try some mooncake for the Mid-Autumn Festival 🥮🎉

And in case you didn’t get a chance to meet her, we’d like to introduce you to the program’s brand new director - Professor Fan Yang!

🔗 Check out our website at https://asianstudies.umbc.edu/ to learn more about Professor Yang, upcoming events, and more!