Thursday, February 27 / 4 P.M. / Free
McCune Conference Room / 6020 Humanities and Social Sciences Building

Asian and Pacific Islander Americans constitute the fastest-growing racial group in the United States. They are also one of the most religiously diverse. Through them Asian traditions such as Hinduism,
Sikhism, Confucianism, and Buddhism have been introduced into every major city and across a wide swath of Middle America. And as many Asian and Pacific Islander communities have adopted Western traditions, they have brought new forms of practice and new cultural content to American versions of Protestantism and Catholicism. The contributors to this volume provide an essential inter-disciplinary resource for the study of Asian and Pacific Islander religions.

Courtesy of the UCSB Bookstore, copies of Revealing the Sacred in Asian and Pacific America, co-edited by Jane Iwamura and Paul Spickard (Routledge 2003) and also Pacific Diaspora: Island Peoples in the United States and Across the Pacific, edited by Paul Spickard (University of Hawaii Press 2002) will be available for purchase and signing at this event.

Jane Naomi Iwamura is Assistant Professor of Religion and American Studies & Ethnicity at the University of Southern California. She has published articles on Asian American religions and religious experience, as well as Asian religions and popular culture, which have appeared in Semeia, Amerasia Journal, and the volume, Religion and Popular Culture in America (Forbes and Mahan, eds). She is also the co-organizer of the Asian and Pacific American Religions Research Initiative (APARRI).

Paul Spickard is Professor of History at the University of California, Santa Barbara, with affiliate appointments in Asian American Studies and Religious Studies. He holds an A.B. from Harvard University and an M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley. He has taught at ten universities in the U.S. and abroad. He is the author or editor of ten books and many articles on the comparative history and sociology of race and ethnicity and related topics. Among the books are Mixed Blood: Intermarriage and Ethnic Identity in Twentieth-Century America (1989), Japanese Americans (1996), We Are a People: Narrative and Multiplicity in Constructing Ethnic Identity (2000), and Racial Thinking in the United States: Uncompleted Independence (in press).

This event is cosponsored by the Departments of Asian American Studies, History, and Religious Studies and the Interdiscplinary Humanities Center.

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