This document summarizes the proceedings from a research symposium held on June 29 th, 2006, on the impact of Welfare Reform on Asian American and Pacific Islanders (AAPIs). This population has not received adequate attention in most welfare studies, despite the severity of the problem facing some ethnic subgroups. The symposium’s goals are to review existing research, identify future research needs, and to develop a strategy to implement a research agenda. Included in this document are background information, abstracts of the papers presented during the symposium, recommendations for future research, biographical information and an annotated bibliography of selective publications.

Sensing Empire assembles a new literary history of the Mongol empire (1206–1368) by exposing the epistemological intersections between disparate cultural productions in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Stemming from an interest in medieval philosophies of mind and cultural phenomenology, the dissertation explores how Mongol imperialism formed and reformed notions of self and the world across Middle English, Latin, and Classical Chinese “contact” literatures. Through a methodology that centers the perceptive body as the locus for cross-cultural encounter, Sensing Empire demonstrates the intimacy of the Mongol empire as a medieval global network. This work challenges Eurocentric approaches to medieval studies as it contributes to the burgeoning fields of medieval affect studies, premodern critical race studies, and the Global Middle Ages.

The poor, women, immigrants, and racial minorities disproportionately bear the social, cultural, economic, and environmental costs of the land-use and natural resource planning processes. These negative social and environmental outcomes can be attributed in part to conventional policy and planning principles, which emphasize competitive, majoritarian, and utilitarian decision-making, but fail to adequately consider moral implications. In response to conventional planning, there are alternative planning theories that emphasize the importance of empowerment, cooperation, and transformation. Through the analysis of two exemplary case studies, the Gila River Indian Community and the Arizona Water Settlement Agreement (AWSA), and the Hawaiian island of Kaho’olawe and the Kaho’olawe Island Reserve Commission (KIRC), the author observes how innovative planning practices play out in real world policy and planning settings. The AWSA and the return of Kaho’olawe are first and foremost stories of activists and community leaders fighting for justice. Federal lawsuits acted as the equalizers that facilitated change and collaborative planning. The uniqueness of the AWSA and Kaho’olawe speak to the serendipitous confluence of historical, cultural and political context. Ultimately, equitable planning practices are the “rational” choice for government officials and agencies.