HMoob Studies in Critical Race and Ethnic Studies

This panel focuses on how HMoob, a Southeast Asian refugee group, adds to the field of Critical Race and Ethnic Studies. HMoob Studies sheds light on the collective HMoob memories of loss and healing resulted from imperialism, colonialism, and U.S. militarism explored in The Best We Could Do. This panelist discussion features two HMoob scholars whose work draws on community engaged methodologies and critical analysis of art, social sciences, and the humanities.

Mai Neng Vang (she/nws/they) is a doctoral candidate in the Educational Policy Studies program at UW-Madison with a broad research interest in the educational experiences of minoritized students. More specifically, she explores how students and young people organize and respond to inequities and advocate for transformative changes. Mai Neng is currently a research mentor for the HMoob American College Paj Ntaub participatory action research team, working alongside two researchers at the Wisconsin Center for Education Research and undergraduate student activists from the HMoob American Studies Committee. In her free time, Mai Neng enjoys crafting, going on foodventures, and gardening. In 2020, she published dejsiab: from my liver to yours, a book of poems that explores colonialism, patriarchy, hope, and healing through a critical Hmong womxn’s lens.

Chong A. Moua is a Ph.D. candidate in the History Department working on her dissertation that explores Hmong cultural production as homemaking and non-state forms of belonging. She also teaches Hmong studies courses in the Asian American Studies Program at UW-Madison: Hmong & Refugee Texts and Hmong Refugee History.

Co-sponsored by the Department of Multicultural and Gender Studies and the College of Behavioral and Social Sciences