2013-2014 Lucie Cheng Prize awarded to Jungha Kim of the University of Pennsylvania

The UCLA Asian American Studies Center and Amerasia Journal are pleased to announce that Ms. Jungha Kim, Department of Comparative Literature and Literary Theory, University of Pennsylvania, is the recipient of 2013-2014 Amerasia Journal Lucie Cheng Prize for her essay, “ ‘I’m Still at War with Myself…in This Beautiful Terrible City’:  Transnational Adoption and Endless Labor in Jane Jeong Trenka’s Fugitive Visions”.  Ms. Kim was nominated by her advisor, Professor Josephine Park.

Ms. Kim is currently a Ph.D. student, working on transnational Asian American literature.  Her winning essay offers an original reading of Jane Jeong Trenka’s adoptee memoir Fugitive Visions (2009), deftly blending in psychoanalysis and spatial theory to a rigorous analysis of the text.  Delving into Trenka’s personal story and her feelings of alienation as a transnational adoptee returning to South Korea, Ms. Kim’s discussion of Fugitive Visions skillfully navigates subjective perspectives and transnational frames, addressing individual experiences and broader geopolitical structures.

The Lucie Cheng Prize recognizes exceptional graduate student essays in the interdisciplinary field of Asian American and Pacific Islander Studies.  The winning article is published in Amerasia Journal, with $1,500 awarded to the recipient.  The award-winning submission for the 2012-2013 Cheng Prize, “Recalling the Refugee: Culture Clash and Melancholic Racial Formation in Daughter from Danang,” by Ms. Linh Nguyen of the University of California, San Diego, appears in the current issue of Amerasia Journal (39:3, 2013).

The Lucie Cheng Prize honors the late Professor Lucie Cheng (1939-2010), a longtime faculty member of UCLA and the first permanent director of the UCLA Asian American Studies Center.  Professor Cheng was a pioneering scholar who brought an early and enduring transnational focus to the study of Asian Americans and issues such as gender, labor, and immigration.

For more information about the Lucie Cheng prize, see: http://www.aasc.ucla.edu/ajprize/