The Department of is pleased to announce that Mia Narae Song '22 was awarded an Engaged Learning in Scholarship. She will use funds from this scholarship for her ethnographic study of Asian Americans and the creation of resources to help people of color to protect themselves and others from social injustices in the workplace.
Mia is a senior majoring in American Studies in the College of Arts and Sciences. She is involved in the Translator Interpreter Program (TIP) providing her bilingual skills in English and Korean individuals in need of services in Tompkins County. She also practices her passion for social advocacy and change as a Panhellenic Member for the Greek Judicial Board. In her free time, she enjoys cooking, baking, running, and reading. This fall, she is looking forward to studying abroad at the University of Cambridge. Mia describes her research project below:
My research is focused on creating an anti-Asian and xenophobic harassment resource guide book and Bystander Intervention Training Workshop for the Ithaca and Tompkins County region. Through these two projects, I hope to both empower and equip people of color by providing them with the knowledge and the physical resources to be able to protect themselves and others from social injustices in the workplace. I hope to document this journey by authoring a book set to be published in April 2022. This pursuit seeks to demonstrate the site of resistance and resilience in the Ithaca Asian American community, preserving the lived experiences of POC, and finally to repaint and reposition their lives through stories of empowerment.
This project is the aggregation of my passions and interests in American Studies, Inequality Studies, and Asian American Studies. I believe there exists a moral imperative to document, preserve, and produce academic research and cultural discourse that centralizes the lives of Asian Americans. My research will pull threads of the formations and frameworks of Asian Americans in Ithaca, promoting greater discussion and subsequent awareness of anti-Asian bias and xenophobic harassment in America. Through this research experience, I hope to carry these learnings and perspectives when I enter law school in the near future to better understand how I can discover and resolve needs in my most immediate communities.
Congratulations, Mia!
The Engaged Learning in Scholarship was established by an anonymous donor to support students who seek training in anthropological techniques or who would like to participate in anthropologically-oriented engaged learning opportunities. The Department of is grateful for these Scholarships and for the opportunities they've given to many students over the years for transformative research and life-changing experiences.
