New Hmong studies fellows at the University of Minnesota announced

Contacts: Susannah Smith, Institute for Advanced Study, (612) 624-2921, slsmith@umn.edu

MINNEAPOLIS / ST. PAUL (06/11/2009) — The Program in Asian American Studies and the Institute for Advanced Study at the University of Minnesota announced today the selection of the University of Minnesota’s first Hmong Studies Postdoctoral Fellow and Graduate Fellow for 2009-2010.

Leena Her, currently a visiting assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, will be the Hmong Postdoctoral Fellow. An educational anthropologist, Her has a Ph.D. from Stanford University and was a Fulbright Scholar in Laos. Her research interests include comparative analyses of educational opportunities and disparities amongst Hmong youth in Laos and the United States.

Alisia Giac-Thao Tran, a Ph.D. candidate in psychology at the University of Minnesota, will be the Hmong Studies Graduate Fellow. Her research interests include minority mental health and parental racial/ethnic socialization amongst Asian American populations.

Funded by a grant from the Henry Luce Foundation to the University of Minnesota and the University of Wisconsin, Madison, the Hmong Studies Postdoctoral Fellow and Graduate Fellow will help the University of Minnesota contribute to its leading role as an intellectual center for Hmong Studies in the United States.

“The trail-blazing work that Professor Her and Alisia Tran are doing will help us revise our understandings of the Hmong in America,” said Erika Lee, Director of the Asian American Studies Program at the U of M.

“Both their research and teaching will offer students and faculty the University of Minnesota a great many opportunities for stimulating course-work and research,” said Ann Waltner, Director of the Institute for Advanced Study. 

Hmong involvement in one of the Cold War’s bloodiest conflicts resulted in thousands of Hmong people being forced to escape from their upland villages in order to take refuge in Thailand, where most became refugees who were resettled around the world in the late 1970s and 1980s. The exodus and resettlement of the Hmong in the "West" is a compelling story and one that can be studied from a variety of perspectives and disciplines, especially in the United States. In less than one generation, many Hmong have transformed from uneducated refugees into increasingly successful Asian Americans in the areas of their major settlement, in particular in the Central Valley of California and in the two Upper Midwestern states of Minnesota and Wisconsin.

The Minneapolis-St. Paul urban area has emerged in the past decades as the intellectual and cultural center of the Hmong in America. In addition to the Hmong Cultural Center in St. Paul, a repository for Hmong resources, the Hmong American community of the Twin Cities has been at the forefront of education and communication within the diaspora, including the production of a Hmong American literature (represented by the influential Paj Ntaub Voice) and numerous internet sites. 

Her will be teaching one undergraduate course in the spring of 2010 through the Asian American studies program, and both she and Alisia Tran will give a public presentation of their work during the next academic year.

For more information about the Hmong Studies Program contact Erika Lee, Director of the Asian American Studies Program, erikalee@umn.edu