Relevant Activism: Contexts, Challenges, and Possibilities for Asian American Students

175 p.Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2009.Using case study, women of color feminism, and autoethnography, this research project investigates how twelve undergraduate and graduate Asian American student activists at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign experienced racialization; negotiated the expectations of external campus groups and institutional forces; and engaged the process of becoming "Asian Americanized." This dissertation proposes a rethinking of activism based upon Asian American students' realities. The students' realities require activism that is, first and foremost, relevant---not romanticized. Students struggled to make their activism relevant by embracing critical thinking, mentorship, learning, research, belonging, and relationships. Thus, "relevant activism" points to what Asian American students are doing in their localized contexts to enact change toward social justice. It is a process that the student activists are committed to, in their own ways---even as they continue to learn, struggle, and grow.U of I OnlyRestricted to the U of I community idenfinitely during batch ingest of legacy ETD