A Year on Angel Island: Homepage
The public is invited to hear speakers on topics relating to immigration, exclusion and belonging in Fall 2022 and Spring 2023. Sign up for our newsletter for updates. Check out associated courses, exhibitions, performances, and research resources too.
Spring 2023 Events
| Jan. 21 | National Angel Island Day with The Last Hoisan Poets de Young Museum, San Francisco Join The Last Hoisan Poets, Genny Lim, Flo Oy Wong and Nellie Wong, three descendants of Angel Island immigrants, to commemorate the 113th anniversary of the Angel Island Immigration Station’s opening on National Angel Island Day. This poetry program will also feature musical performances by the Del Sol Quartet. |
| Jan. 26 | Erika Lee: Angel Island: History and Movement Zoom Webinar 4pm-6pm Organized by Prof. Leti Volpp, Director of the Center for Race and Gender Erika Lee Bae Family Professor of History, Harvard University. |
| Feb. 2 | Elliott Young: Criminalizing Migration and Indefinite Detention: Chinese at Angel Island and McNeil Island Prison Zoom Webinar 4pm-6pm Organized by Prof. Leti Volpp, Director of the Center for Race and Gender Elliott Young Professor of History, Lewis & Clark College in Portland, Oregon |
| Feb. 21 | Last Hoisan Poets read Chinese poetry of Angel Island detainees Tilden Room, MLK Student Union, UC Berkeley 5pm-7pm The Last Hoisan Poets will read the moving poems that were carved into the walls of the detention barracks by immigrants incarcerated at the Angel Island Immigration Station. The poems will be read in the Hoisan-wa dialect of the immigrants, as well as in translation. Some of these poems were also featured as lyrics in the Angel Island Oratorio by Huang Ruo. |
| Feb. 23 | Nayan Shah: Bodily Defiance and Immigrant Detention Zoom Webinar 4pm-6pm Organized by Prof. Leti Volpp, Director of the Center for Race and Gender Nayan Shah Professor of American Studies & Ethnicity and History, University of Southern California. |
| Mar. 2 | Claire Meuschke: Lunch Poems LUNCH POEMS READING: 12:10 – 1 pm Morrison Library (located in Doe Library), UC Berkeley CRAFT TALK & CONVERSATION: 4 – 5:15 pm Location TBA Presented by the Arts Research Center & the English Department with support from Engaging the Senses Foundation, Dr. and Mrs. Tom Colby, the UC Berkeley Library, The Morrison Library Fund, and the dean’s office of the College of Letters and Science. |
Fall 2022 Speaker Series: Landscapes of Migration, Incarceration and Resistance
Fall Speaker Series: Landscapes of Migration, Incarceration and Resistance
HUM 20: Explorations in Art + Design at UC Berkeley (1-unit course)
Part of A Year on Angel Island
When: Fridays, 11:30 am to 1 pm
Where: Osher Theater, Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA), 2155 Center Street, Berkeley
Free, in-person, and open to the public. Most talks will be livestreamed and captioned. To register for live streaming, open the individual event page. Please see updates on COVID policies here.
Organized by:
Susan Moffat, Creative Director, Future Histories Lab
Executive Director, Global Urban Humanities Initiative
Lisa Wymore, Professor of Theater, Dance & Performance Studies
Faculty Advisor, Arts + Design Initiative
Come in person or via Zoom to hear artists, activists and scholars explore themes of exclusion, belonging, and resistance across geographies and genres including film, dance, theater, literature, visual arts, and music. The speaker series is part of the multi-genre project “A Year on Angel Island,” and we’ll use the former immigration station at this meaningful spot in San Francisco Bay as a jumping-off point for wide-ranging conversations.
A+D @ BAMPFA is a weekly public lecture series organized by the Arts + Design Initiative and co-curated by departments throughout the campus and local and national arts organizations. In Fall 2022, the series is co-curated with Future Histories Lab and will explore how the arts transform understanding about the past into possibilities for the future. See here or below for the list of speakers.
| Sept. 2 | Indigenous Memory and Nature Interact: Native Californian Stories Greg Sarris, Tribal Chairman, Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria (Coast Miwok) and Author In conversation with Beth Piatote, Associate Professor of Comparative Literature and English, UC Berkeley; Director, Arts Research Center. Watch video |
| Sept. 9 | Angel Island and Alcatraz: Site-inspired Dance, Theater, and Landscapes of Incarceration Lenora Lee, Artistic Director, Lenora Lee Dance Ava Roy, Artistic Director, We Players. Watch video |
| Sept. 16 | Preventing Erasure: Saving the Angel Island Immigration Station’s Buildings and Stories Ed Tepporn, Executive Director, Angel Island Immigration Station Foundation. Watch video |
| Sept. 23 | See Us: Portraits of Community in the Exclusion Era by Miki Hayakawa, Hisako Hibi, and Miné Okubo. ShiPu Wang, Professor and Coats Endowed Chair in the Arts, UC Merced, and Commissioner of the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery |
| Sept. 30 | Border-thinking Through Wartime Incarceration Environments Lynne Horiuchi, Architectural Historian Anoma Pieris, Professor of Architecture, Melbourne School of Design *Note: This talk will be available only via webinar and will not be held in person. Watch video |
| Oct. 7 | Rooted in Place: Radical South Asian Storytelling Blooms in Berkeley Barnali Ghosh, Artist, Community Activist, and Designer. Watch video |
| Oct. 14 | Rethinking Place in Asian American Histories of the United States Catherine Ceniza Choy, Professor, Asian American and Asian Diaspora Studies, UC Berkeley Watch video |
| Oct. 21 | Illegal: the Theater of the Angel Island Immigration Station’s Paper Sons Skyler Chin and Sita Sunil, Playwrights of Illegal Jeffrey Lo, Director of The Paper Dreams of Harry Chin; Playwright Watch video |
| Oct. 28 | Plague at the Golden Gate Li-Shin Yu, Director, Plague at the Golden Gate James Q. Chan, Producer, Plague at the Golden Gate Watch video |
| Nov. 4 | Undoing Time: Art and Histories of Incarceration Julio Morales, Artist and Curator Watch video |
| Nov. 18 | [CANCELLED] Poetry in Place: Interpreting the Angel Island Immigration Station Elizabeth Fair, PhD Student, UC Berkeley Department of the History of Art |
| Dec. 2 | Angel Island Oratorio: Chinese Exclusion, Music, and Storytelling Charlton Lee and Kathryn Bates, Del Sol Quartet Huang Ruo, Composer |
Other Fall 2022 Events
| Oct. 15 | On the Same Page x Chinese Historical Society of America (CHSA) present: San Francisco Chinatown Walking Tour |
| Nov. 15 | Colonialism is Terrible, but Pho is Delicious November 15, 2022, 7 pm Post-show discussion with Prof. Lok Siu, author of The Food Truck Generation (forthcoming) By Dustin Chinn, Directed by Oanh Nguyen UC Berkeley Night at the Aurora Theatre 2081 Addison Street, Berkeley Tickets for UC Berkeley students, faculty, staff, and the A Year on Angel Island community: $15 with code FHL15 Buy Tickets |
If you have relevant events you would like us to share, contact susannmoffat@berkeley.edu.
Stay updated with Angel Island project announcements: