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 March 5, 2002, 5:14 p.m.

Accomplished, enjoyed, witnessed, endured in the last five days: made frequent phone calls to Thuy in an office building in Manhattan to hash out the book proposal, the plotlines of our academic careers, and future rendevous in the Midwest; pieced together an argument about necessary challenges to Asian American studies as a field of inquiry and a teaching curriculum, including a close criticism of the familiar phenomenon in identitarian fields valuing political instrumentality over intellectual innovation or rigor; spent mindless hours and hours in transit from Oakland to Cleveland; squirmed in no little exasperation during Frank Wu's painful keynote speech, which offered the "revelation" that racism is not simply embodied by neo-Nazis, oh no, "nice," "middle-class" individuals with "good intentions" might say terrible things too; had a cup of hot chocolate with Lauren in Java Joint on the one block of Oberlin's "town;" bored a roomful of activist undergraduates with my presentation on the pedagogical implications of Asian American studies, but which was okay because no one else on the panel had any real notion about what we were supposed to discuss, so Jack's presentation (scribbled as a series of notes during the other papers) on tenure denial was right there with my own; watched a problematic video on "revolutionary love" in a problematically named "Third World House;" watched a happy three hours of Saturday night MTV with Lauren in the hotel room, skipping the party, thanks; wore my new QUANTIFY t-shirt to Lauren's panel on "APAs Queering the Arts," and found myself desperately wishing I could walk out during the tedious video presentations of the other panelists; conspired to get myself in the first car pool to the airport, even though my plane wasn't scheduled until late in the afternoon, because the airport had more of a "town" than Oberlin did; helped with the new issue at MRR and discussed the nostalgia for fascism in Europe with Casey and Arwen; polished off the call for papers and book proposal for the Asian American popular cultures anthology and the dissertation proposal for my patient committee; cut and paste a cover and page numbers for the Race Riot compilation zine.