Angel Island: After 100 Years

This New York University Asian/Pacific/American Institute panel will bring together scholars and co-authors Erika Lee and Judy Yung of Angel Island: Immigrant Gateway to America and artistic director and choreographer Dana Tai Soon Burgess of the performance “Island” to commemorate and rethink the histories of those who passed through Angel Island.

Free and open to the public. Please RSVP to A/P/A Institute by Thursday, October 28, 2010.

Featured Panelists
Erika Lee
Co-author of Angel Island: Immigrant Gateway to America
Judy Yung
Co-author of Angel Island: Immigrant Gateway to America
Dana Tai Soon Burgess
“Island” Artistic Director, Dana Tai Soon Burgess & Co.
Moderated by Jack (John Kuo Wei) Tchen
Founding director of the A/P/A Institute at NYU

From 1910 to 1940, the Angel Island immigration station in San Francisco served as the processing and detention center for over one million people from around the world. The majority of newcomers came from China and Japan, but there were also immigrants from India, the Philippines, Korea, Russia, Mexico, and over seventy other countries.

This panel will bring together scholars and co-authors Erika Lee and Judy Yung of
Angel Island: Immigrant Gateway to America and artistic director and choreographer Dana Tai Soon Burgess of the performance “Island” to commemorate and rethink the histories of those who passed through Angel Island.

Like its counterpart on Ellis Island, the immigration station on Angel Island was one of the country's main ports of entry for immigrants in the early twentieth century. But while Ellis Island was mainly a processing center for European immigrants, Angel Island was designed to detain and exclude immigrants from Asia. The immigrant experience on Angel Island-more than any other site-reveals how U.S. immigration policies and their hierarchical treatment of immigrants according to race, ethnicity, class, nationality, and gender played out in daily practices and decisions at the nation's borders with real consequences on immigrant lives and on the country itself.

Angel Island: Immigrant Gateway to America is officially sponsored by the Angel Island Immigration Station.

Erika Lee is Associate Professor of History and Asian American Studies at the University of Minnesota. She is the author of At America's Gates: Chinese Immigration during the Exclusion Era, 1882-1943. ?

Judy Yung is Professor Emerita of American Studies at the University of California, Santa Cruz. Her books include Island: Poetry and History of Chinese Immigrants on Angel Island and Unbound Feet: A Social History of Chinese Women in San Francisco.

Dana Tai Soon Burgess is the director of Washington DC’s premiere Asian American dance company the Dana Tai Soon Burgess & Co. His choreography has been presented and commissioned by the Smithsonian Institution, Asia Society (NY), the Kennedy Center, Lincoln Center, La MaMa, NY and the United Nations. His work has been performed extensively throughout the United States as well as in Bulgaria, Canada, Colombia, Ecuador, Egypt, Germany, India, Israel, Korea, Latvia, Mexico, Palestine, Panama, Peru, Russia and Venezuela. In 2008 and 2009, Burgess presented Hyphen, a modern dance exploring the meaning of being a hyphenated American and whether the hyphen connects or separates. He is currently an associate professor of dance at the George Washington University in the Columbian School of Arts and Sciences.