Please join me in welcoming Dina Okamoto for her seminar entitled, “Boundary Claims and the Emergence of New Categories:  Asians and Hispanics in Comparison.” The talk will be at 11 AM this Wednesday, October 25th in the Library.

Dina G. Okamoto is Class of 1948 Herman B Wells Professor in the Department of Sociology and Director of the Center for Research on Race and Ethnicity in Society (CRRES) at Indiana University. She received her Ph.D. in sociology from the University of Arizona in 2001 and was Assistant and Associate Professor at the University of California, Davis. Her research examines how group boundaries and identities shift and change, which has broader implications for immigrant incorporation as well as intergroup conflict and cooperation. Dina’s current projects investigate the civic and political incorporation of immigrants in the United States, intergroup relations between immigrants and U.S.-born minority and majority groups in the 21st century, and the ways in which youth-serving community organizations deal with increasing ethnic, racial, and language diversity. In addition to serving at RSF as a visiting scholar, she was also a visiting fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences (CASBS) at Stanford.

In Dina’s latest book, Redefining Race, she traces the complex evolution of “Asian American” as a pan-ethnic label and identity, emphasizing how it is a deliberate social achievement negotiated by group members, rather than an organic and inevitable process. The book was named the winner of the 2016 Book Award from American Sociological Association’s Section on Asia and Asian America.

I hope everyone is looking forward as I am to an interesting and productive discussion.

Best regards,

Eric Bias
Program & Scholar Assistant
RSF