2022 Race and Sexuality Proposals Funded

To Write a Home: The Significance of Digital Literary Magazines in Supporting Chinese American Queer Youth

Summary: This research aims to investigate how Chinese American queer youth use digital literary magazines as a non-institutional site of mutual care and queer education in the face of intersecting structural violences.

Biography: Aristotle X is a Chinese American undergraduate student at Columbia University. Their research interests include critical pedagogy, performance, and queer & trans youth. Their goal is to understand how queer & trans youth of color form emergent strategies of resistance and communities of care. Their past work focused on narrative analyses of testimonies against anti-trans legislation, transness in contemporary horror cinema, and teaching queer & trans performance studies. They were a 2021 American Civil Liberties Union National Advocacy Institute research mentee, where they documented testimonies against U.S. anti-trans legislation. They are currently a staff editor for The Columbia Review. They also work as an assistant debate coach, where they specialize in queer of color critique and performance studies.

Flipping the Script: A Visual Ethnographic Approach to Understanding Sexuality among Punjabi, Diasporic Youth in California

Summary: This project questions how young, diasporic, Punjabi adults of California define, experience, and forge romantic, healthy relationships and how these reciprocally inform their sexual scripts. Specifically, this multi-modal ethnography utilizes a participatory action research methodology by having participants provide first-hand video accounts by using Flip, an online platform, to document personal experiences responding to prompts exploring dating, intimacy, romance, and love resulting in a collaborative visual ethnography richer and truer to the real experiences of the participants.

Biography: As a diasporic, Punjabi, queer woman born and raised in California, Manu Multani has set her professional goals with the intention to emphasize the struggles of South Asian communities, but also seek, recognize, and name the solutions through which these communities resist. Currently, she is a Cinematography/Photojournalism student at Los Angeles City College and en route to completing her Ph.D. in Anthropology and Social Change at the California Institute of Integral Studies –exploring sexuality among youth in Punjab, India through documentary filmmaking. She has worked as a Health Program Planner for several years for the Department of Public Health in San Francisco engaging in local community discussions regarding public services such as hospital-based care, food insecurity, and homelessness resulting in expertise in the realities of social determinants of health and disparities. She considers this opportunity a great privilege to center human stories and community engagement through the lens of multi-dimensional sexualities. She is a two-time recipient of the Critical Language Scholarship for Panjabi in addition to the Hollywood Foreign Press Scholarship and Public Health Hero award. She has a Master’s in Global Health and a Bachelor’s in Philosophy. She currently lives between Los Angeles, California, and Punjab, India with her partner and pup. During their free time, they like to read culturally diverse cookbooks to integrate new spices and techniques into their own cooking.

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