Christina Huang 00:00
Hello everyone, my name is Christina Huang.

Divya Aikat 00:03
My name is Divya Aikat. Today's date is July 20, 2023.

Christina Huang 00:07
We are in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in the USA. We are here today with Dr. Shilpa Dave, who is Assistant Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences and Associate Professor of Media Studies in American Studies at the University of Virginia and has been a longtime friend of SAADA. Can you please introduce yourself and give a bit of background?

Shilpa Dave 00:29
Hi, my name is Shilpa Davé. I'm delighted to be here today. I grew up in Madison, Wisconsin, and I attended the University of Wisconsin Madison for my undergraduate and did my PhD at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where I focused on cultural studies literature and Asian American Studies. And I currently teach at the University of Virginia. I'm excited to be with you here today to talk a little bit about Asian American activism and the history of Asian American Studies throughout my lifetime. I still feel like I'm young, and it's still a growing field. But at the same time, I also know I have been a part of this field for over 30 years. And so, I've seen different kinds of manifestations of how Asian American Studies comes about, and college settings, as well as how we're looking at it in popular culture, and generally in global culture as well.

Divya Aikat 01:34
Amazing. Thank you for giving us your background and that introduction. To start off, you grew up in the US Midwest, as you mentioned, and you now teach in the Southeast. Could you tell me a little bit about the experiences that you've had as an Asian American in these different regions, and how that influences your experience now teaching at UVA?

Shilpa Dave 01:58
Well, I've been in several different roles. So right now, I'm a faculty member. But I'm also an administrator, as I work with the dean's office and I work with students, but I work with faculty and curriculum issues too.

When I first started out, I was a young student, taking different kinds of classes, and my parents were immigrants to the United States. They came from India in the 1960s. They came for higher education and ended up at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. My dad came in the 1950s first at the University of Oklahoma and at UT (University of Texas) Austin. And then he returned to India. And then he and my mom got married. And they both came to the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Again, for higher degrees: my mom in educational psychology and my dad decided to get a master's in industrial engineering. And what happened is then my mom's entire family decided to come to the University of Wisconsin-Madison, to come here for higher education. Their intent when they came was to go back to India. They were the children of a new India; a new country had just been formed. And so, all of them were born underneath the British Raj, and had seen Indian independence. They were very interested in taking their knowledge that they learned here and going back to India to help serve the country. Part of this was even before the 1965 Immigration Act. They were here, as I said, in the 50s and in the 60s. A lot of immigrants who were coming at that time were really interested in education. They were interested in serving the country of where they came from – India. And after they graduated and were living in the US, my dad's intent at the time was to start a business in India with a business here in the United States. Unfortunately, it didn't go through. And so, what happened is, then they decided, well, we're just going to stay here in the United States. They ended up making the United States their home.

Madison, Wisconsin, was my hometown as well. It ended up becoming sort of a home for a large group of [Indian] people too. So, what I learned –when I was growing up in the Midwest – is that I was one of few Indians, one of few Asians, in the city of Madison and in the state of Wisconsin. When I was growing up, I was one of the only ones. And I think that kind of experience for Asian Americans in the Midwest is a little bit different than growing up with a critical mass of students or a population. In Chicago, you started to get a larger group of South Asians and of Indians. But in Madison, it was people from all over India, who started to come together. It was a very pan-South Asian kind of identity. I really didn't think of myself as an Asian American until I went to graduate school. Into my 20s, my identity was, I'm Indian American. And I think that's the case for a lot of Indians too, is they don't necessarily see how their journey aligns with the general Asian American experience.

When I learned to become Asian American, when I became Asian American, was not in college, where at the time, we didn't have an Asian American Studies program. It was starting. I had read some Asian American literature and I had been encouraged to look at Indian American literature. But it wasn't established in the Midwest. After, I worked in Wisconsin for a few years and I went to graduate school at University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. It was in graduate school that I took a class. My first semester in graduate school with my professor Stephen Sumida, who was teaching a class on Asian American literature. Not only did I read Chinese American, Filipino/a American, Vietnamese American, Japanese American, and other types of literature, but I was also introduced to the Indian American author, Bharati Mukherjee. She wrote a set of short stories that was included in the class. It was the first time that had ever happened to me. I think at that time I said, "Oh, my goodness, here is a story that I can actually relate to, personally," in terms of my family history. What Asian American Studies means to me is melding American history, my personal history, and Asian American history all together. And so that really has influenced the way that I approach Asian American Studies. That is, being Indian American, being part of South Asian American, and being part of a pan-ethnic Asian American identity. There was a cohort of us where we all had that moment, where we were like, "Whoa, these are our stories". These are important for us personally, but they're also being taught in an educational institution. It can be life changing and it was for several of us.

I decided to change my field of study and study Asian Americans, because it was shown to me that this was valued and valuable in the academy. I really do thank Stephen Sumida, and his class. He became the chair of my dissertation committee. He influenced me and a cohort of us who still get together after all these years. He and his partner, Gail Nomura, who's an Asian American historian, and Steve were teaching in the English department [and American Culture program] gave us this background and introduced us to this larger community in academia.

Christina Huang 09:20
Thank you so much for giving us your background, and explaining what got you into Asian American Studies. I think it's a common story that students don't really explore their Asian American identity until they're in higher education. So, it makes me think about when you talk about your South Asian identity, specifically your Indian identity in your book, Indian Accents, Brown Voice and Racial Performance in America Television and Film, you talk about how Asian Americans are often stereotypes, with their accents and brown face or brown voice, beyond just visuals of stereotypes. And I'm curious about your own experience. Can you provide some insight in the possibility of racialization of your South Asian identity in relation to your activism for Asian American Studies. Specifically, I'm interested in understanding the invisibility or visibility of your South Asian identity.

Shilpa Dave 10:21
When I was growing up, I always knew that I was Indian and Indian American. That was never an issue. I mean, we ate Indian food at home, we had a circle of family friends and my family.

The other thing that happened was that [Association of Indian Americans] used to bring reel-to-reel Bollywood films that would be sent from India, and they would show them in some of the campus rooms. And that was a place for people to get together and watch Hindi films. They [the films] didn't have subtitles and I didn't know Hindi. But they were musicals, as they are right now, and they were from the 60s and 70s. So even growing up, I saw beautiful Indian people singing and dancing, falling in love, being heroes, heroines, villains, comic relief, so I had that, but it was always in a different language, but it was still part of my imagination. Whereas when I was watching American television, or watching American film, I didn't see that. There was a separation that was there. And I think the longing to see oneself visually was there. But what I did find out in terms of, you know, visual representations that we all think about, is that because my background’s in literature and in text, I was seeing storytelling being made in when I was in higher education through literature. And that's how stories became very important to me. And when I was young, I was involved in debate and forensics. So, I used my voice to tell stories, and participated in that. So, I think if I look at how I decided to come about that, part of that was I knew the importance of visual, but I also knew the importance of sound and how people could talk.

And so just to give you an example, when you're growing up, how did you hear accent? Well, my mother and my father both had accents. They were both immigrants, two different variations. My dad grew up and he went to an English medium school in India. And so, his English was pretty good. He had been speaking it for a long time. My mom learned English like many of us do now in the United States, not learning English, but learning a different language when we were in high school ...But she also knew four other languages, including German, Hindi, and Gujrati, and other languages too. So, she did have an accent. And I remember that when we would go to the store, sometimes when we were at the checkout, and my mom was asking a question, or she was saying, “Where are the bedsheets?” Or “where are the towels?” The person who was looking and was trying to understand her, would look at me and say, "What is she saying?" And I understood her perfectly, because I learned not to necessarily hear accent but to look at words. And when I was younger, you would just do that. But as I grew older, I started to get more and more upset that people weren't listening, that they were tuning out something that didn't sound like what they heard. And I was growing up in the Midwest, and people in the Midwest think, oh, none of us have accents. But of course, everybody has a different kind of regional accent, because we have different dialects and accents throughout the country. And so, I think in retrospect, I was always attuned to the idea of accent.

When I started seeing the visual representations of South Asians, and particularly of Indians, that started in the 1980s and the 1990s, every time I saw someone, it was someone who had an accent, and they made that part of their character. But I, myself, didn't necessarily have an accent. And so, when people would come up and talk to me, they would say, “Oh, you speak so well.” And part of that, and the underlying notion on that, was that I wasn't speaking with an Indian accent. And then some people, you know, do have ones. And so, it's always interesting, because people are like, "Oh, can you speak with an Indian accent?" And I said, “Well, if I was an actress, yes, maybe I could.” And sometimes when we are in family gatherings, we talk a little bit about pronunciation of certain words with my parents or with people in our community, we joke about that too.

And part of that is not that they don't know English. It's that the way that they pronounce something is different because their tongue is not used to making those sorts of sounds. Just as when I tried to speak in a different language, my tongue is not used to making certain kinds of sounds too. I'm a lot more forgiving because I've studied this. When people speak to me with accents, I don't assume it's their issue. I know it's my issue. And that I must think about it. So, I think that's how I grew up. But that's also how I started noticing this [accent]. When we think about representations and how we want to see ourselves, I think we understand as Indians and a South Asians, that there are many kinds of accents, even within our community. But, in terms of U.S. representations, and in Hollywood they always want one accent. And of course, the predominant one was one of the most successful characters, a cartoon character named Apu, from The Simpsons, and that show is still running. And it started in the 1990s. For 40 years that show had the character of Apu, and afterwards more and more people were seeing it. Hari Kondabolu did a [documentary] filmed called The Problem With Apu (2017). The actor [who voiced the animated Apu] Hank Azaria, said... At first, he was like it was a character and now he says he will no longer voice it. They've phased out the character of Apu from The Simpsons, rather than addressing the fact that yes, it's an accent, but that people speak with accents. And so, there's some hesitation. And all I hope is to see that people can understand that there's a wide variety of accents. And that includes American accents too, which we all know about.

Divya Aikat 18:11
Yeah, thank you for sharing. I appreciated what you spoke about how growing up, there was these vibrant representations of Indians and Bollywood and you saw that in your community, but not always in the light that you felt that it existed in, or not always an accurate representation. And I think that there's a quest for identity, especially for groups such as South Asian Americans who are underrepresented in the whole community, but even within the Asian American community don't have that same voice or that same visibility. And I thought that your explanation about words and stories and their impact on your life was very compelling. And so, I wanted to talk a little bit more about your experiences throughout your time at different institutions. You spoke earlier about how you went to the University of Wisconsin, Madison, and University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. And now you're at UVA. Could you tell us a little bit more about the institutional working atmosphere of Asian American Studies in the 90s and early 2000s, and then also your perspectives as a South Asian American person in those spaces?

Shilpa Dave 19:36
Yes, I think it's interesting, because in the 1990s, we saw a flourishing of Asian American Studies programs that were developing on the East Coast and in the Midwest. It really was a lot of the people who had first studied Asian American Studies, from the 1960s and the 1970s, who had been trained [in the field]. And [later] then [the field of Asian American studies and the faculty] were moving out to different parts of the country, and different programs and different departments. We [Higher education] were hiring faculty to teach in these areas, and they were being seen as important. So, the 90s was great for Asian American Studies.

And, I was lucky when I came to the University of Michigan, that's when they were starting up a [Asian American Studies] program. And we were seeing across the Big 10 universities in the Midwest, there was this understanding that there was a need and desire for people to learn about other cultures and [an increase in] domestic diversity within the United States. And they started to have that become part of the academic enterprise. Part of an academic degree was to have people take classes in these areas [such as Asian American Studies]. For graduation [in college], that was usually a class that everyone had when they were graduating. It wasn't just the universities who were saying we wanted to do this; it was being pushed by industry. Employers were saying, we have interactions with people from other countries and we're global companies now too. We want to work with people from across the world. And we need people who understand internal communities and domestic communities in the United States, but also global communities, as well.

When we talk about the relationship between what we learn in class, and the ways in which we're thinking about our economy and industry and our national identity, they are very much intertwined. It's not just one group pushing this. It's a process of different sectors coming together. I think that's important. I saw this in the Midwest, and when I was finishing up my PhD, I went to work at Oberlin College as an Assistant Dean on the student affairs side who worked with the Multicultural Resource Center. Part of what I was learning was thinking about how what we learn in the classroom relates to student activism.

The students – they were amazing because not only were they advocating for Asian American Studies classes but if they couldn't get it in the classroom, they were creating conferences where they researched and saw who was working in different areas across the country. And they would invite them in for a conference. And that was an Asian American Studies conference that they did. And then they also did a Korean American Studies conference too. This was in the late 1990s. And so, for me, who had studied Asian American literature and Asian American Studies in the 90s, and was seeing it in an academic field, this was a way to also see how students were learning about different kinds of issues that they were interested in. And if they couldn't find it in the classroom, they created it themselves. And to me, that was very inspiring. I was able to help foster that. I would see students at meetings at 11 o'clock at night, saying, "Oh, we've got to put together this conference". And, you know, I was lucky enough that eventually I was in a position where I could help fund some of that. And I remember I also let them know that it wasn't always just on them. So, there were times where I rented a van, and I picked up a drama troupe or I picked up speakers from the airport and got to meet a lot of great people who are doing wonderful work. [It was] not just writers, not just historians and academia, but people who were in different industries, including the arts, who were doing everything from spoken word to drama to performance and singing. And to me that has been vital to Asian American Studies – to show how performance and the arts and the cultural arts is important, as well. Another way of telling our stories is that if you can't do it yourself, you can also support it – I think is really important too. The public-facing showcasing of Asian American studies is great because it's another way of learning that's not always in the classroom but could lead people to the classroom.

I saw that in the Northeast, because afterwards, I was teaching in the classroom. I went to public schools, but I was teaching at private schools. And the difference, I think, between private schools was that they were smaller, so you had smaller classes. But you could also innovate a little bit more, you could teach different kinds of classes that might have less students in it. But you could really find students who were very interested in certain types of issues. So, when I was a visiting professor at Cornell in the early 2000s, there were a lot of students who were taking Asian American Studies. Again, a lot of Asian Americans were going to Cornell. It was the first time where I taught an Introduction to Asian American Studies, where 99% of the students in the class were Asian American. That had never happened to me before. When I was a visiting Assistant Professor at the University of Wisconsin Madison, my alma mater, I taught an Intro to Asian American Studies. It was about a 60–70-person class. And I would say maybe 20% of the student body were Asian or Asian American, or students of color. And the rest were white students. They were taking it because it fulfilled a requirement. And I was happy to teach it because I was in a position where I got to teach a class that I never got to take when I was there. But it was also educating a larger population. When you go to Cornell and you see all these Asian Americans, it's a different kind of relationship, and it's a different kind of vibe. But what I found was that even though they were all Asian Americans, they still didn't know about all their history, or the literature, and it gave me an opportunity to teach them about their own and each other's histories. So that even if you were Chinese American, you could learn about what was happening in the Korean American community. And then if you were South Asian American, you could learn about what was happening in the Japanese American community. You could start to see the threads what Asian American Studies is, bringing together a lot of different groups under the guise [theme] of migration, under the [theme] of immigration, under law, and how we were grouped together. What it really taught me was how we think about Asian American Studies as a pan-ethnic movement. And when I went to Boston and when I was teaching at Brandeis [University], there started to be smaller groups, and there were a lot of Asian Americans, but I wasn’t necessarily seeing them take Asian American Studies. And so, the other thing was, how do you reach students who may not see these classes as for them, or they may think that they know their history? That was also an interesting position, where you had some students who were like, I'm going to take this class, but because it was an elective, they chose to do it – it wasn't required.

And by the time I came to University of Virginia in Charlottesville, and this was in 2013, Asian American Studies had been taught here, and there was a larger population of Asian American students, but they weren't necessarily seeing Asian American Studies as a class for them. They are interested in different areas. They were interested in the cultural clubs. And they were interested in going into certain professional tracks, like pre-health or they wanted to go into the business school. So, they're very ambitious to do all these things, and didn't necessarily see how an Asian American Studies class might benefit them. And so that was, I think, the challenge. And it still is the challenge today. After the pandemic and after all the xenophobia around Asians and Asian Americans, we’re starting to see a new generation of students that are saying that this is important. And, a university that is saying, oh, maybe we can have larger classes and we can have more faculty being hired to teach these kinds of classes, because there's more interest.

The only thing I would say is that I think Asian American Studies is not just for Asian Americans, it's for everybody. And that's what growing up in the Midwest, even teaching in the Northeast and the East Coast and coming down to Virginia in the Southeast, is something that I really want to make a point of [saying]. I am still trying to get South Asians into Asian American Studies here. And I do get a few who take classes. But I also try to advocate to student groups, because as I've learned before, it's the student groups that – if you can't get into a class or if it doesn't fit into your schedule – they are other ways to bring people [together] to learn about this history. I want the student groups to be open to that too. But I also think that it's not always on them. It’s important to structurally have offices and people to support students on the student affairs side, as well as structurally support faculty, who can bring in these different kinds of programs and different kinds of academic and historical and literary and sociological kinds of issues, as well. I think a great Asian American studies program would be one that is able to combine both. How do you advocate for students is a good question, right? But I think first you need to see that vision and think about how that manifests itself because once you start to ask for that, you're asking for it [Asian American Studies] as a comprehensive program for students and thinking about student education at different levels.

Christina Huang 32:47
I feel very inspired hearing about all the work that you've done across the country, and you must have been such an inspiration to so many students, and radically changed their experience of higher education. You went so above and beyond to engage with students and guide them through this Asian American Studies program, but also to explore their identity and understand their background and history. And I'm very curious, because you have so much experience, and you've done so much uplifting in different programs across the nation. How do you recommend current students or future students in institutions that don't have programs to start and sustain themselves?

Shilpa Dave 33:25
That's a good question. I think it depends on the institution. I think it's still looking for allies where you can find them. Allies can be other Asian Americanists, but they can be other people too. You can look for support from African American Studies departments, Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies departments, American Studies, Latino Studies, and Native and Indigenous studies, too. I think you want to build bridges for people who have done that work, and with other communities, if they're not there. It's not all about having your separate narrative. It's about thinking about storytelling in general and then thinking about how your story can fit in with what is happening at the place that you're at.

In the past, when we were thinking about how to develop a faculty cohort, you wanted to bring in people at different levels. One of the things that, I think, is sometimes hard for students to understand is that you not just want faculty, but you need faculty at certain and different ranks. When you come in, and you bring in an assistant professor who's on the tenure track, they have a lot of pressure from the institution to publish, to go up for tenure, so that they can then do different things. So, you want the new young professors, because they are doing cutting edge work, and they're exciting in the classroom, and they bring all the new stuff. But you also need people who have tenure – they still have publication issues [demands] – but they can be a little bit more outspoken, because they don't necessarily have to go out for review right away. They can advocate a little bit more strongly. And then you also want people at the Dean’s level, who make the decisions about where there are hiring practices or lines that are available, too. Even though you may have someone who believes that we need the funding, you need the wherewithal for people to say, yes, we want to bring people in. And sometimes what happens is you bring in one person, and that's not enough, because that's a lot of pressure to put on one person. You need to have a cohort of people coming in, I usually say three is usually a good idea. So, on the academic side, if you're establishing Asian American Studies as an academic field, some of the key areas that you could look for people are in literature, culture, media, or art, some of those areas. You also need someone who's a historian, so someone who can teach classes about Asian American history too. And then lately, we have a lot of people are doing more quantitative work. So, psychology, sociology, those kinds of areas where you can have sort of data analytics, as well as qualitative to how is this a cultural phenomenon that's going on.

The other thing is that you need someone who's either working in, diversity, equity and inclusion, a multicultural center, a student center, or a Dean of students [affairs]. All these different kinds of folks on the student life side, who are working and helping to support student clubs, student activities, and thinking about how they can support students in their different areas.

And you need a critical mass, but you also need a group of people who is committed to this and from different levels. For an undergraduate level, I would also say, first years are coming in, and they're learning and becoming energized that there's this community. But honestly, it's the second- and third-year students who end up doing a lot of the work. And by your fourth year, you're like, “Oh, my gosh, I'm graduating. I need to get a job or decide what I'm going to do too.”

There's a constant kind of training that you must do as a constant kind of work. So, you want to have a core group. But you also want a group, I would say, for students to have a subcommittee, that's about institutional history, that's preparing the next generation. And if you can't do that, as a student group, that's what you want to ask for your student affairs folks to do is – to do leadership institutes. And remember, there are national organizations of Asian American student groups too, so you can find out what other students are doing at their campuses, as well. There used to be the Midwestern, and there was ECAASU and MAASU. And I don't know if they're still going on. I think they are. And there's different ones for different communities, like KAASCON for the Korean American community used to be there, but I think the pandemic had slowed things down. And so now people are starting to get back together again, too.

Divya Aikat 39:48
Yeah, thank you. I think those were some important tips that you gave, because there's a lot of strategy needed to operate around these institutions. And at least in our work, we had to learn a lot of things and learn how faculty members get hired and how programs get made. So, there is a lot of background to it. And you spoke about – from the undergraduate organizing side – how there's often a core group of students who are pushing for this mission. And one thing that really struck a chord with the work that we do, is that people in their second and third years are really getting into this work and doing the bulk of it. But one thing that we found is normally, undergraduate students are there for only four years. And so, with these movements that might wax and wane, there might be a big push at one point that may fade away later. Do you have any advice about how undergraduate students can keep this push for Asian American Studies going beyond their four years and pass the baton on to others who can continue that work, even though they may not still be at the school?

Shilpa Dave 41:02
I think that's a good point. I also wanted to let you know to not forget graduate students, students who are at institutions that have PhD programs or have master’s programs. And you don't necessarily have to be in a history program or in a literature program; you can also be in a master's program in the law school or getting a JD, or getting an MBA. You can bring in different levels of students who have different kinds of expertise. And oftentimes, with grad students, the wonderful thing is that they're coming from elsewhere. So, you get an infusion of people coming from other places who can talk about what happened there, too. And that's one of the ways that you build coalitions too is across the years, including not just undergrads, but graduate students, as well. As for keeping the institutional history, I think, having podcasts like you're doing is great, having exhibits about the history of places that you're at – so doing a deep dive at your university's history, going to their historical archives to see what the history of Asian Americans at that institution has been (and not just during Asian American Heritage Month). But also, at other times, you could bring in different themes. So, where you could say, look here at what this institution has done. Here's people who were in different generations.

I think another opportunity, especially for institutions that have been around for many years, is to contact the alumni. Because there are alumni out there. And they can be very helpful not only in getting their oral histories and getting their point of view, but then that brings sort of a different kind of recognition to the work you're doing. Because once you start bringing the alumni in – the university thinks about this, too – they can also be donors. And if you get a group of alumni, or you get a high-profile alumnus who says, “Wow, there are a lot of students who are really advocating for this,” they can also donate money to create and help create programming, or chairs or other kinds of things, as well, particularly at public universities, but even at private universities. And most schools have an active, robust alumni program, especially those that have sports programs. And I know, UNC has a large alumni community, right? So does University of Virginia. The school has been around for over 200 years. So how do you work with those groups?

And as undergraduates, you are only going to have a few years. So, knowing that, what you always need to be doing is to make sure that not just two people are doing the work; you need to have a committee. And again, when you're in the spring semester of your third year, as you're moving into your fourth, you're still going to be around, but your focus might be doing other stuff. Then, you need to be looking for people to train, to help, to work with you, to pass on your knowledge. But also introduce them to how you look at things. The hardest thing is recruiting people because it is a lot of work to do that. And it's a lot of work on the undergraduate side. And it shouldn’t be on students. But my experience at every place I've always been – it's the students who the administration listens to the most. You have more influence than you think. Faculty, staff, and administrators always want to hear what the students are saying. They always want to hear your voice. And so even though I've been at different places, I can advocate your voice is stronger than mine. I encourage all of you to use it because you do have more connections in that way and the idea, especially in higher education, is that we are there for the students.

Christina Huang 46:26
Yeah, I think that's often forgotten about the power of student voices. And I love the way you frame it – that student voices are so powerful because the institution is for the students. And something that you brought up that I thought was interesting was that you can't just have one person. This is a lot of work. You mentioned that students that were planning conventions at 11pm at night. I can imagine how exhausting that must be. And as someone like yourself, who was a trailblazer in the Asian American Studies field, specifically as a South Asian American woman, what keeps you motivated, to keep advocating for and representing Asian Americans over the years?

Shilpa Dave 47:15
I'm inspired by my students. My book came out of a class that I taught where we started discussing things. My articles oftentimes are inspired by class – I bring up a topic in class or a student brings up a topic in class, and we all go, "Oh, that's interesting". And that helps motivate me. Sometimes I think, when we see what students are interested in, we go out energized, because of your passion, your fire. And we're like, okay, we can do this. As you said, this is hard work; it's not easy work. But at the end of the day, I believe it's worth it. I've been doing it for a long time. And I've seen waves where it's very successful, and we get a program going and it's been there for a long time. And I've seen waves where you start something and then the faculty that you hired; they go to another institution. And so, you must start over again, as well.

Part of it is how do you build something that lasts? And sometimes it will, sometimes it won't. But every place that I go, every place that I've been, it's always been my students who have said that this is worth it. And it's not everybody. It's usually a cohort, a small group, who says that this is something that I want to do. I was recently at an event up in New York City. And, you know, it was an audience event. And I had asked a question, and someone came up after me, and they said, “I took your class 15 years ago. And I just want to tell you that I think about it in my work every day.” To me, that's the best compliment I could ever get. For me, if I can help [inspire] one person to take what they've learned to help them apply it in other areas of their life. That's the best compliment that a faculty member could ever get is that you helped one person. And we're in a community and we're in a nation where it's easy to always say, "Oh, we don't have this," and "we don't have that", and there's a lot of negativities. But I also think it's important for us to collect those stories of positivity, where someone has had a positive impact on you. And I can name my graduate mentor, and even my undergraduate mentor. There are Asian American, or African American, or white American, or in different areas of my life, who said, “What you're doing is important.” So, you need to have that reinforcement. For students, they need to know, and I need to tell them more, that what they're doing is important. And then [to let them] know that what you're doing sometimes-- you may not see the results of it, or you may not reap the benefits of it, but maybe somebody coming after you will.

What I love about SAADA so much and why I'm so committed to SAADA—the tagline is we're telling our stories. Storytelling is a powerful medium because it not only grounds us in the present but is a way of saying that this is a moment that we need to capture and that what we're doing matters. It links us to the past, and there is a long legacy of people telling their stories. That's how we come together as communities and as individuals. And it's also a gesture towards the future, saying that we know that these are stories that we think will be important to future generations to learn about us too. As a community, what holds us together are the stories that we tell, and the stories that we listen to. It's not just about talking, it's about what are we listening to.

A lot of the battles that we have right now are about the stories that are being told. Some people want news stories, other people want to keep on telling the same stories. Other people want to suppress certain kinds of stories, too. That's how powerful a medium and idea storytelling is. So how do we tell them? And that's where media comes into text is going to become important. Again, culture, arts, because that's a very important medium for telling our stories.

Divya Aikat 53:06
Yeah, thank you for sharing. I think that the way that you highlight the importance of the student perspective, and then that strong community bond and learning from one another, really, really hits home to us in the work that we do because... so much of it is just learning from other people. Seeing what they've done and trying to implement that. You spoke to us yesterday about how when you served as the Acting Director of the Oberlin Multicultural Resource Center, you were focused on student affairs and the student perspective. And now you're a prominent faculty member at UVA. And so, since you've worked heavily with both sides and you still do, how would you recommend that students and faculty better connect with each other and find common ground in movements and pushes for Asian American Studies such as these?

Shilpa Dave 54:05
I think the first thing is to talk to faculty. For students and faculty to find a place where they can come together. There are faculty who want to do this work. And then there are faculty, because of all sorts of other reasons, may not be able to give the time that you might need. What you want to find is that happy medium, because faculty are caregivers or have things that are happening in their personal life or their research; or maybe they have writing deadline, or they might be tired, if they're the only one who's carrying a program. What you want to do is find allies, and part of that is to invite a faculty member to a meeting, and if it's late at night, then invite them to lunch [laughs] or a breakfast meeting. Maybe invite a few and say, “This is what we're doing.” And it could be faculty members who you feel that you have a connection to.

What you start to do is you look to see to see what their work is in. And perhaps, you know, work with them as a research assistant to find some interesting things and common ground too. I think that's the key area too. I think it's important that you learn from each other. Oftentimes, the best ways to get a movement started, for activism to happen, is the personal relationships you develop. If you're supporting other groups, if you're working with allies or pan-ethnic groups, part of this is thinking about what your personal relationship is with a particular group too. And if you can get someone from, you know, Native and Indigenous Studies, who's also saying, “Yes, we're going to support you,” and you're going to support their group too. That becomes important because that will carry through.

So how do you develop those? Part of that is going to other programs that are not just Asian American Studies. Sometimes it's important, and I know this, students have told me that sometimes, when you need a faculty member to do sometimes you just want them to show up. Right? Sometimes they need to know that if you could just come right, that would be great. And I know that it's not that we want you to speak or do anything; we just want you to come. That becomes important. And then sometimes some faculty will say, “What can I do?” And sometimes I say that to students to is, “How would you like me to help?” And sometimes they reach out and sometimes they don't want too as well. That's your prerogative. And how do students think to reach out to faculty members? Sometimes I've had students who are like, “Oh, we just want to do it ourselves.” Because sometimes it's hard to talk to adults that aren't related to you. Especially post-pandemic, we're still figuring out our social etiquette. And now as I work, I've been in administration for a while, so I don't teach as many classes as I used to. So even at my own university, I teach a couple of classes, but they don't necessarily see me in the classroom as much as people outside do. So those are a couple of things that you could do. Remember, faculty want to hear from students – most of them do – that's why we're here. And the best thing to do is to ask: some will say yes, and some will say no. But you don't know until you ask.

And I think that's an important question because the work that you're doing, your family may not understand. You know, I've been doing this for a while, but my family, although I, you know, have interviewed and they have copies of my book, they haven't necessarily read it. In fact, they have not read it [laughs]. Or they sort of know the idea behind it. So, if you believe strongly in this, and you found a group of people who do as well, the other thing is letting people know that it's important to you, without necessarily having them understand it. It’s that's the hard thing sometimes where, especially with your parents, where you can be like, “I want to go for my degree in Asian American Studies.” And they might be like, “Well, what are you going to do with that?” Sometimes people are like, “Oh, why aren’t you going to law school? Why aren't you going into this? Why aren't you going into that?” And part of that is, if you believe in something, you want to find people who help you believe.

So, there's a larger institution, it's the Association for Asian American Studies. And one story I wanted to tell was, as a South Asian, as a graduate student I was the only South Asian American in my cohort for Asian American Studies, who was doing this work. I went to this conference when I was a graduate student, the Association of Asian American Studies, where I was presenting on a work by a South Asian American author, Bharati Mukherjee. I was nervous, because I was presenting on this academic work, and it was my first conference. And there were all these professors who came, whose work I had read, and I was completely intimidated. And I went, and had my paper presentation at the conference, because that's what professors. We go and we give presentations about the work.

And I went into this room, and I was with my fellow graduate students. We had put together a panel and gone to present. And I presented on Bharati Mukherjee, and you know, people clapped. And afterwards, they came up to me and said, "This is so important.” And I never felt so validated as I did when I went to that conference and people were saying that this was important. And I don't think there were other people outside the field who understand, the way that people in the field do. And so, if you have a professor of Asian American Studies, who's telling you, “You are doing important work,” they mean it.

When I'm at my own institution, I must explain and justify my work, except to my students – they understand. But in that community [of Asian American scholars], they are people from all over the nation and all over the globe. They understand. And so, when I talk about building support, faculty need that too, but the support you're building, as activists and as leaders on your own grounds, that's where you get that. Your student groups are a place where you get validation, because the people who join and the people who take leadership positions, they believe in it, too. And so, we’re all looking for that. And the way that you can include faculty is to say, we value you. Sometimes faculty do feel like their work isn't always understood. So, when I talk about students inspiring me, it is because that becomes my community on my campus, when sometimes even my colleagues don't know what I'm doing.

Christina Huang 1:03:13
That was so beautifully said and it also like segues to our last question with you. What does it mean to you to be part of this Asian American Studies movement as a whole? [both laugh] That’s a hard question.

Shilpa Dave 1:03:34
I think, you know, it goes back to what I was saying before. To me, it's part of the larger storytelling project of our nation. And saying that my experiences are validated. My experiences are important in the building of this community that we call the United States, this community that we call the world – that every individual has a story to tell. And people are contributing to the larger project, and you don't have to be a celebrity, you don't have to have 100,000 followers. Part of what I'm trying to do is to let people know that there are different ways to contribute, and there are different ways to build. And our voices are as important as the next person's voices. Not only are they important, but they have something significant to say about the ways in which – for Asian American Studies – we think about change, we think about generational shifts, we think about history. And we think about the idea of what it means to be a mother or a daughter or a grandmother; what it means to be a scientist or a teacher or an artist. That we bring a particular kind of point of view that helps expand the way that we think about our everyday experiences and about humanity in general.

And so, Asian American and our individual identity, yes, it's part of a larger identity, but it's also specific to a particular kind of movement in terms of the way people migrate from place to place, and the ways in which we define what is home to us. It can be fulfilling on an individual basis, where you meet people who have similar and different kinds of stories to yours. But the idea is that you're all doing something together; we're all part of building something. I was taught in graduate school that– and this comes again from Stephen Sumida and Gail Nomura who were builders; that was what they were, they were program builders. And there are other people who are good, who are the researchers. There are other people who are good, who are the communication folks. And so, I think the idea is, you need all those people in your team. What being part of this Asian American Studies movement taught me is how to build something, and who you want on your team. And if you can't build it in one place, that doesn't mean you can't build something in another place. It can be at the university, but if it's not there, it's going to be someplace else too, as well. And that's where you find your people again, who are interested in a particular way. So, for me, you know, I've been working with a community arts theater, and that's where I've really felt like I could really build something too. It's not necessarily Asian American, but it is people who are interested in diversity, equity, and inclusion, who want to bring in different kinds of storytelling. It's been very fulfilling for me.

And I'm continuing to fight because I think that different places are at different stages and in different parts of the country. And there's some established programs, there are some programs that are starting to bloom, there are other places where ones have bloomed and there are things left to do, and then there are places where people have different kinds of visions, and they're competing visions within Asian American Studies. So that can also be the internal politics that sometimes becomes difficult. Well, I was trained, and I grew up again, in a more pan-ethnic kind of view. But there are some people who weren't. And it gets hard sometimes to work with different people to get you all going in a similar direction. So, with every notion of like, “we want to build this,” there can also be internal issues, too. And I think that's the other thing to navigate, which I didn't talk about as much, but there are those. And we we’ve had those, like, “Oh, how come our story isn't being told? Why is it always this?” [laughs] And thinking about South Asian Americans. You know, there are certain people who went in the 90s. I remember, were like, “Oh, well, that's not really part of Asian American Studies,” or, “We don't have to know those histories, because it doesn't relate to the histories that we already know.” I think that's changed a lot. And so, as one of the people who says this is how it's important to teach South Asian American Studies and how you want to bring it in, but some people leave it out.

So even within Asian American Studies, we have all these different groups. So, although we have an umbrella term, I think it's important to recognize the differences too. So that’s what brings us together under this pan-ethnic umbrella, this umbrella group, because no one is ever born Asian American. You become Asian American. And I think that is how my journey has been – one of how I've become Asian American. And yes, I'm also South Asian American, which also has lots of different groups within [laughs] – including multiple languages and religions and countries, just as much as any others too. So, there's this great way of thinking about it – we can think outward and upward. But also internally, we have lots of differences too that we can look at the minutiae. So where do we meet in the middle where we can say, I recognize this, and these are important stories, even if it's not my story?

Divya Aikat 1:11:07
Yeah, thank you so much for sharing. You've given us so many tips, so many ways that we can reimagine our Asian American space at UNC and move forward with the work that we're doing. And then just generally... your story is inspirational. And we're glad to have the opportunity to be able to speak with you and record this because I think that this will be such a wealth of knowledge for future students, too. So, thank you for sitting with us today.

Shilpa Dave 1:11:41
Oh, well thank you for inviting me.

Christina Huang 1:11:43
Everything was so helpful. And I think it really nailed down what Divya and I were looking for – how do we inspire other students to get involved? And I think access to higher education – policy and how it works – is very difficult to get access to, but you broke it down so nicely for us and painted such an eloquent picture of us. This is a bigger picture. It's about Asian American Studies, but it's entirely something bigger than itself.