Visiting faculty
Spring 2012 semester
(Hover over the photo to learn more about each professor.)
Lori Kido Lopez is a doctoral candidate at the Annenberg School for Communication and
Journalism at the University of Southern California. Her research investigates the wide
range of Asian American media activism taken up by the traditional advocacy organizations,
fans, advertising agencies, online communities, and media producers.Lori Lopez. Teaches ASAM197 Special Topics: Contemporary Asian American Media at Scripps.
Karin T. Mak was born and raised in St. Louis, Missouri as a daughter of immigrants
from Hong Kong. Karin left the Midwest to pursue a degree in Media Studies at Pomona
College. She worked for several years on immigrant and workers' rights campaigns in
California. In 2003, she received the New Voices Fellowship to work with Sweatshop
Watch, a Los Angeles-based non-profit advocating for workers' rights. In 2008, she
earned an M.A. in Social Documentation from the University of California, Santa Cruz.
Karin's films have screened in Hong Kong, New Yorkm Rome, and Los Angeles. Her most
recent documentray Red Dust won best documentary short at the Los Angeles
Women's International Film Festival. Karin continues to pursue independent filmmaking
while also working at the Asian American Resource Center at Pomona College.Karin Mak. Teaches ASAM86 Social Documentation and Asian Americans at Pitzer.
Genevieve Erin O'Brien is a Vietnamese/Irish/American artist, culinary adventurer,
community organizer, popular educator, incidental academic and occasional nanny to
artists, activists, and academics alike. O'Brien lives and works in Los Angeles and
Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. She holds an MFA in Studio Art/Performance from the School
of the Art Institute of Chicago. O'Brien has been conducting research for a new body
of art work in Vietnam as a Fulbright Fellow in 2009 and 2010. O'Brien uses performance,
video and installation to explore notions of "home" and "homeland". As a mixed race
child of Vietnamese immigrant mother and an Irish-American father, she investigates
issues such as war and memory, transnational identity and belonging, and multiple
identities and its attendant baggage. Using food, humor, narrative and conceptual
structures, she develops work that is invested in collective healing from trauma,
whether personal or inherited to further social justice and cultural understanding.
In 2008, The Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago presented O'Brien's conceptual
performance, Peace Salon as part of the 12x12 series showcasing emerging artists.
Her conceptual and durational performances, as well as installations and videos
have been presented at galleries and public venues in numerous cities including Ho
Chi Minh City, Vietnam and across the US in Los Angeles, Chicago and Washington DC.
Called a "modern day Virgil" by the LA Weekly, O'Brien's one woman shows address
hate crimes, homophobia, and violence against women, with sensitivity and humor.
As a community activist and popular educator, O'Brien has developed programs for
Sisterfire, Southern Californians for Youth, the UCLA Labor Center's Summer Internship
Program, and APALA (Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance). She was a founding member
of Arts In Action, a political and cultural arts collective space in the heart of Los Angeles.Genevieve Erin O'Brien. Teaches ASAM30 A Taste of Asian American Food Politics at Pitzer and ASAM 160 Asian American Women's Experiences at Scripps.
