AARW Course TimelineJS

In collaboration with Reckonings, students in Dr. Denise Khor’s Fall 2023 course, Asian American Cinemas developed a publicly available timeline following the history of our partner organization Asian American Resource Workshop (AARW). AARW is a member-led, nonprofit organization representing pan-Asian communities in Greater Boston. Since their founding in 1979, AARW has worked to create “a future that honors all Asian Pacific Islander communities” through “political education, creative expression, and issue-based and neighborhood organizing.” (Learn more about AARW here: www.aarw.org.) AARW’s archives are held by Northeastern University Archives and Special Collections. The students’ research and technical process was guided by Dr. Khor, Arpita Joyce and Kevin Lam from AARW, Greg Lord from Reckonings, Molly Brown from NU Archives and Special Collections, and service-learning teaching assistant Cailin Roles. Dr. Khor’s students worked with both the Omeka S archive platform and TimelineJS, creating an interactive timeline that highlights important dates and pairs them with both historical documents and media. Explore the AARW Through the Years interactive timeline here.

Molly Brown also showed items from the AARW collections and Arpita Joyce spoke about AARW’s media and community advocacy at the November symposium “Remember! Asian Americans and the Archive,” organized by Dr. Khor. This day-long event was the inaugural symposium for Asian American Studies at Northeastern University, designed to bring together scholars, student activists, and community organizers to think about the politics of the archive and its role in shaping what is forgotten and what is remembered.