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!

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!

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