The Department of Asian American Studies congratulates Professor erin K. Ninh on her award for Best Public Intellectual Special Issue from the Council of Editors of Learned Journals (CELJ)! Professor Ninh shares this award with her co-editor, Professor Shireen Roshanravan of Kansas State University, for the February 2021 issue of the Journal of Asian American Studies. For this special issue, Professors Ninh and Roshanravan designed "#Wetoo: A Reader" for Asian American college students on the topic of sexual violence. A selection of the pieces were then cross listed in the online arts magazine, Asian American Writers Workshop, with accompanying artwork by Catalina Ouyang. The journal editors from the CELJ awards committee shared their reasoning behind the selection of Professors Ninh's and Roshanravan's reader, stating:

“#Wetoo" fearlessly examines the prevalence of racialized sexual violence in and amongst Asian American communities, with attention to the interlocking systems of oppression that engender such violence. It remains accessible, approachable, even as it addresses complicated power relationships. Looking at a variety of expressive genre including poetry, fiction, memoir, and graphic novel, and utilizing a range of methods, including ethnographic narrative forms, it reaches out to a range of publics, including activists, students and scholars. Urgent, open, vulnerable and with a clarity of purpose, this issue truly embodies what the editors call “theory in the flesh.”

Thank you, Professor Ninh, for bringing these important subjects to light and making them accessible to such a wide audience! A list of the 2021 CELJ award recipients can be found on their website: http://www.celj.org/news