Exploring America's Racial Consciousness (Livestream)

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Award winning poet and essayist Cathy Park Hong’s work weaves together personal stories, historical context, and cultural criticism to ultimately create an emotional and impactful exploration of Asian American personhood. Her widely praised book of essays Minor Feelings explores her experiences as an Asian American woman and is an essential text for reframing our understanding of race in America.

CIIS Public Programs and the Clinical Psychology Department are honored to feature Cathy Park Hong in this unique event. The evening begins with a special talk in which Cathy expands the ideas she shared in Minor Feelings. In her personal anecdotes of her Asian American personhood, Cathy brings to light the racist ideologies we all internalize and posits that the way forward requires an acknowledgement of harmful ideas and stereotypes that hold us all back from social and racial equity.

Following Cathy’s talk, CIIS Chair of Clinical Psychology, Stephanie Chen offers remarks linking psychological theories and concepts from notable Asian American thinkers and psychotherapists. Then, together they discuss Cathy’s work, and dive deeper into America’s racial consciousness, and psychology.

Join Cathy and Stephanie for an examination of what it means to be a racialized other, and ways that depth-oriented therapy offers a space for exploring and understanding how these structural dynamics impact individuals and communities.

Cathy Park Hong is an award-winning poet and essayist whose book, Minor Feelings, is a searching work that ruthlessly reckons with the American racial consciousness. Hong weaves together personal stories, historical context, and cultural criticism to ultimately create an emotional and impactful exploration of Asian American personhood. Minor Feelings is the 2020 recipient of the National Book Critics Circle Award for Autobiography. Hong is the author of several books of poetry and is the recipient of notable awards such as the Windham-Campbell Prize. In her moving talks, she offers a fresh and honest perspective on race and Asian American identity, discusses how poetry and writing can be a means for understanding ourselves and our world, and comments on the ways politics and culture are influenced by art—and vice versa.

Dr. Stephanie Chen is a 1.5 generation Chinese American, immigrant and cisgender-female licensed clinical psychologist and professor who practices, teaches, presents, and writes from a depth-oriented, multicultural, and liberatory lens. Stephanie has many years of clinical experience in providing direct clinical services to children, youth, adults and families in community mental health, hospital, school-based and private practice settings. In addition, she has provided individual and group supervision to trainees and staff from different stages of their professional development. Stephanie has a particular passion and interest in exploring cultural identity development and formation, sense of belonging, immigration and acculturation, and issues related to inter- and transgenerational, familial, and cultural roots of trauma, healing, and growth. Lastly, she completed a certification in psychedelic-assisted psychotherapy with CIIS which she applies to her teaching, research and clinical endeavors.

Accessibility Information 
If you need to request accessibility accommodations, please email publicprograms@ciis.edu at least one week prior to the event. For more information, explore our Accessibility web page.

Recording Policy 
Ticket holders will have access to an ad-free replay of the event for one month after the live event, after which unlimited viewing with ads will be available. Portions of the audio will also be released on our podcast. Only registered ticket holders who choose to watch live can participate in the chat and Q&A.

Refund Policy 
All tickets and add-ons purchased for this event are nonrefundable.