To coincide with Smithsonian exhibit Righting a Wrong: Japanese Americans and World War II, NCSML is assembling a panel of scholars to discuss the historical significance of Japanese American military service and Japanese American incarceration, and the lingering issues of anti-Asian racism, housing inequality, and anti-immigrant sentiment that continue to plague our society today.

Panelists:
Dr. Elizabeth Lawrence is an assistant professor of history at Augustana College. She’s a historian of modern China with cross-disciplinary interests in heritage studies and material culture. Her research broadly explores how individuals and communities relate to the past and its material traces under specific historical conditions. She is working on a cultural history of the art of seal carving. Her book explains why this esoteric field on antiquarian calligraphic expression first emerged and how its practitioners secured for it a privileged heritage status despite the waves of iconoclasm that swept China in the 20th century. Other topics of interest include sexual violence in public memory and the intersection of nature and culture in the production of landscape. Dr. Lawrence previously taught at Ball State University.

Dr. Nordmann teaches Western Civilization in addition to courses in East Asian history at Coe College. His specialties include Meiji Japan, late 19th-century Korea, U.S.-East Asia relations and Asian-American history.

Ms. Vang is currently the Legal Director of Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Dubuque’s Immigration Legal Services program. She directs initiatives focusing on removing barriers to immigration legal services and providing affordable, quality legal services for immigrants and their families. Ms. Vang has been practicing immigration law for over 20 years. But her direct client legal representation emphases are reuniting families, assisting immigrants in navigating the complex immigration system and helping to advocate on behalf of immigrants’ rights. Ms. Vang oversees a legal team of four staff attorneys and three legal assistants that provide legal services in all 30 counties of northeast Iowa.

Ms. Vang’s professional career has spanned across various practices including non-profit leadership and management, state government policy and private practice. She has taught select courses on Asian American History Experiences at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Yer was a co-founder of the Wisconsin Asian Bar Association (WABA). Yer has held numerous leadership position in her professional career in the past 20 year and has received several awards recognizing her leadership and advocacy on behalf of immigrants and refugees.