Person Talking, HH:MM:SS

Thang, 00:00:01

All right. Hello, hello. Welcome. Thank you so much for being with us today to hold this conversation, we're so excited to have you. First, could you please begin by introducing yourself and your role at Duke University?

Dr. Storti, 00:00:15

I'm so happy to be invited to participate in this project. I'm Anna Storti, and I am an Assistant Professor of Gender, Sexuality and Feminist Studies. I was hired as part of a cluster in Asian American and Diaspora Studies. I have affiliations with Critical Asian Humanities and Asian and Pacific Studies Institute. I'm really excited for the conversation.

Thang, 00:00:39

Yeah, thank you so much. So we want to just dive first into your research. Could you talk a little bit about what your research is at Duke and if you have any current projects that you're working on and are excited about?

Dr. Storti, 00:00:51

Yeah, so I have two main projects, one that has been in development I think officially since the moment I applied to my Ph.D. program. But I think it's also been something that's been in the works since I was born in a certain sense. And so that's a project that is on violence broadly. And then a second project that I'm, I think, a little more excited about is about vice. And so generally, my research is trying to think about the connections between race, gender, sexuality, empire, pleasure, aesthetics, and violence all through the lens of [the] Asian diaspora. So I find myself thinking and being really moved by what is happening in real time. So I'm someone who is invested in the contemporary moment. And what that means is, I think, mostly about the time surrounding the millennial and the turn of the century into the 21st century. I was trained and I got my Ph.D. in a Women's Studies program that is now no longer called a Women's Studies program. It's Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. But what that means to have a Ph. D. in gender studies is that you're kind of always going to be an interdisciplinary scholar. And so, by not being rooted in a discipline, I've had a certain type of freedom and flexibility in terms of trying to figure out the methods that I pursue in order to answer a question that I have. So I've actually really enjoyed that as an orientation towards the work that I'm interested in, because it's always about the questions that I'm invested in. And once I sit with the questions, I'm able to think about the best way forward.

So, my second project on vice is likely going to focus on ethnography. I'm someone who is a child of Filipino immigrants, and I was able to witness my grandparents particularly attend casinos. And they would also play mahjong in the backyard and in the garage all the time. And I noticed there that there was a lot of kind of external stigma over what it meant to gamble. But there was also a beautiful form of sociality that I was able to witness. So the second project I'm just really excited for because I’m planning to just spend time in the casinos that my grandparents spent time with, which are casinos that are mostly frequented by Asian immigrants. So, that's going to be an ethnography.

But the first project is the one that I'm working on and I'm currently trying to finish up the manuscript to submit it to a press and turn it into a book and it's kind of loosely based on my dissertation. The archive is the same as the dissertation, but it takes a very different framing. So currently, the title is Tensions: Asian America, Multiracialism, and the Intimacy of Violence. I change the title, like every few weeks. It’s had a lot of different variations. But right now, I'm really thinking about this concept of tension. It's been a term that I think is so similar to other terms that I think about, like intimacy and violence. It’s a term we tend to use a lot to describe friction, social frictions, but also that has a certain bent towards thinking about racial and sexual tensions. And so what I do is I have assembled an archive of Asian American people with white heritage and then I use the different kinds of case studies that surround that identity marker as an analytic with which to understand the kind of sexual undercurrents of white supremacy. And so I find myself thinking about things like racial fetish. One of the questions I think that is whispered by many is, “Why is it that so many white men partner with Asian people?” And I think rather than trying to tackle that question, I'm trying to think about the reproductive product of that very contested couple form, so the Asian person with white heritage. And so something that I've been able to track is that I think prior to Loving v. Virginia and the kind of legalization of interracial relationships and also after the so called end of the Vietnam War, there has been a biracial baby boom, which is a term coined by Maria P. P. Root. And I think against the previous peril of racial mixture and interracial relationships, there’s since then been a steady celebration of racial difference, interracial relationships, racial mixture in a way that I always think is a little suspicious. I'm not at all against anti-miscegenation, or anything like that, but I do think it's interesting to think about how these narratives of progress that are attached to mixed race people, and interracial relationships in particular, are used as this harbinger for a post-future harmonious racial society. So, in order to end racism, the logic goes, one needs to just partner with a different race, and then you'll have different babies and that's the sign that things have progressed. But this concept of racial harmony in the future is really interesting. I think all you really need to do is if you know anything about music or if you’ve talked to a Sound Studies person, they'll tell you that harmony is actually contingent upon contention. Right? It's like two different sounds fusing together and there's a chord through that. But I think that tension is actually what I'm trying to think through. So against the kind of like Keanu Reeves characters, or Emily Mariko, or Vanessa Hudgens—who was just seen a couple of weeks ago photographed with the Bongbong Marcos as she assumed the role of Global Tourism Ambassador—against those narratives of racial hybrid who's going to be mixed with white, and specifically not with Blackness, or Indigeneity, how that kind of racial formation is utilized as a sign that the world is becoming more progressive, more cosmopolitan. And there's always this national specificity to it. And so I've, unfortunately, found interest in the cases that are not those like celebratory ones, because I feel like it's really important to track the shifting terrains of white supremacy. And so I've been able to see how there's a lot of complicity. There's a lot of ways that whiteness has, to me, been a very porous type of material, materialized, or not even just the material, but a concept, a way of being, a philosophy, a religion, also, that can be adopted, and that can subsume people who are ostensibly not white. So whiteness is something that people of color can enact. And so I've been able to track cases that range from Daniel Holtzclaw who is… are either of you familiar with that case?

Thang, 00:08:20

You've talked about it before.

Dr. Storti, 00:08:21

Yeah, yeah. There’s cases of really, really violent people who do very violent things that I think the media might understand as stereotypically white male behavior, but they're performed by Asian people with white heritage. And so I'm interested in that confluence between racial passing, racial identity, the feelings of not belonging and authenticity that mixed race subjects feel, but what people have sought to do in order to ease the tensions that are always going to be stemming from white supremacy, and what I understand to be the permanence of war and particularly in periods of war. And so there's cases where people have sought to, kind of in order to ease the tensions and not feeling like they belong, they will commit more violence. So, I feel like half of the book is about those bad cases. And then the other half of the book is with people who I think are doing really wonderful, life giving, performative practices that are always informed by like queer of color or trans of color or radical coalitional politics that are trying to contend with what it means to be someone who carries two very different legacies, two different racial legacies, colonial histories, imperial legacies, and what happens when those legacies kind of collide within one body. And I think in having those conversations, thinking through that tension, there are people who actually like don't reify white supremacy, but are really thoughtful of about how their body moves within the world and tried to find anti-carceral ways to relieve the tensions that, again, stem from these bad, big things like racial capitalism and white supremacy. So those are generally two of the main projects that I'm working on. Within both, I end up thinking about people who are artists, performers, and then a couple other writers and different case studies of cultural figures.

Alice, 00:10:31

Thank you for sharing about your research. We wanted to ask about, kind of, taking a step back, beyond just your research and your work currently. Where did you grow up? What were some of the experiences that shaped who you are today, your personal growth and your values? Who is Dr. Anna Storti?

Dr. Storti, 00:10:56

That is the question.

Alice, 00:11:00

Question of the hour.

Dr. Storti, 00:11:01

I’d just love to know sometimes. But it's a really lovely question and I appreciate you all asking and being interested in that. I was born in Anaheim, California. Yeah. Which is… are you also from Anaheim?

Alice, 00:11:13

I’m from Fullerton.

Dr. Storti, 00:11:13

Okay, Fullerton. I was born off the Kaiser which used to exist on Lake View off the 91.

Alice, 00:11:25

Yes.

Dr. Anna Storti, 00:11:25

And I went to Cal Poly Pomona for… yeah. So I know the 57 very well. So I was born in Anaheim, when I was two, and I was born to my mother who moved to the United States from the Philippines, from Manila, in 1986, just a couple of days before the People Power Revolution took over, which I always think is very important to think about her own feelings towards America and also the Philippines. Then my dad is an Italian American who is a 2.5 generation? He was born and raised in California, he moved across Southern California and my mom, when she first touched down in the United States, landed in SFO, and then she moved down. And she was working across Southern California and moving from places like Compton to Westminster. So I was born in Anaheim. At two years old, my family moved to Huntington Beach, California. And so I lived there from two to 12 years old. And that was formative because it's the ages. And I was someone who, in terms of race and belonging, always felt not necessarily like I belonged. But I didn't… not because there weren't other people who didn't look like me. There were people who looked like me. And there were families who looked like me. There were less than there are now. But I was raised with my parents. And then my mom was kind of the person who brought a lot of her family members over to the states. They've since kind of moved around. But I was raised with my grandparents, my mom's siblings, including a brother and two sisters, and so there was a lot of Filipino people around me. And while I was living with my parents in Huntington Beach, I split time between there and my grandparents' home. My Lolo and Lola’s home in Westminster, which is a very different part of Orange County. And so it was nice to kind of… I feel like that my life has always been, and I don't know if it's just meta because I'm mixed or whatever, but it's like I always just move across different terrains. And so my parents divorced when I was… they had split up right after my brother was born, when I was almost nine years old. And so at that time, I mean, it really was a formative moment for me because I think divorce is—it can can be a formative moment. And it was also when my brother was born. And so I was the eldest daughter. I assumed the stereotypical roles the eldest daughter assumes, and so I was like a mini-mom. I was also someone who, from a young age, was someone who people went to to talk about how their life was going, which meant that I thought for a long time that I would be a therapist. I've really been interested in listening and I think that question of ‘who is Dr. Anna Storti’ is one who, I think a lot about listening and the practice of listening and I think that silence is a really beautiful thing that's quite loud. And so I've been trying to pay attention to that throughout my life. And I think because of that, I don't know if it's an orientation per se, but it's certainly something that has been something for me to hold on to, as I've sought to find deeper meaning and instances that can be quite troubling. And so, a couple of things that might not have anything necessarily to do with my academics is that I love sports. I love basketball. I am a jock. And so I think my first word was ball. Random. But I was always kind of like a, I was independent. I would go off by myself, I would get lost a lot… or not lost, but my family would not be able to find me and they would be very worried. And I was of the generation that my first cell phone was when I was in seventh grade. And it was my dad's hand-me-down big brick phone. It didn't even have snake on it. It didn’t have anything. But the battery life was great. So that time of early adolescence was, I mean, I feel like I've had a good childhood. But I think there's always ways that you can understand, okay, there are hard times because I think growing up and spending time in Huntington Beach can be challenging. There were a lot of white surfer boys who I had crushes on somehow, it was really my thing back in the sixth grade. Feeling like I wasn't ever someone who they were interested in made me feel a certain way. But then moving into high school, my family, my mom moved us, my brother and I, into Orange, California. We were in a part of Orange that is surrounded by Anaheim Hills and my grandparents were still living with us. My dad and I kind of had a falling out that we then resumed before I went to college. High school, I was boy crazy. I was someone who did not care about school at all. I was the point guard of my basketball team, I think that was something I cared about. I was in honors classes, I took some AP classes, but I was never interested in that. I did like psychology, and I got a four on my AP. I didn't do well on any of the other AP tests. School for me wasn't something that I really thought about. And I think that was always tough, or it wasn't necessarily tough, but my mom was a valedictorian. And both my parents are kind of in the realm of business for their careers. And once I decided to think about what I would major in in college, I found myself going to Cal Poly Pomona. It's an engineering school, so I was like, I'm gonna major in civil engineering and I was interested in environmental feminism, at the time, I was really interested in water. And I don't know if it's because I'm a Scorpio or not, but I was very interested in water and I thought that hydraulic systems were interesting, and I would have liked to kind of learn how they worked. But you know, a year into my first year in college, I, again, did not care at all about school. I had a lot of fun. I fell in love. My spring term, my first year, I took a class called “Media, Sex, and Violence” and I got a “D” which is so funny because that's kind of my expertise. I just didn't care. I didn't go to class. I lived on campus the first year and the school that I went to was a commuter school and it was a very different vibe than Duke University is and so I felt like I was at summer camp and it was hard for me to find any interest. I was also someone who worked throughout later years of high school and throughout college and so I just had other things to think about. Something happened my sophomore year, or before my sophomore year, and I think something is always happening. I don't even know how to even describe it, but there was a sense of my own not being pleased with how my life was going. I had come out to myself in my senior year of high school. I came out as bisexual. And then I fell in love with a woman the first day of—my first day of college, and I was like, “Oh, I'm still bisexual.” But then there was a lot of… it was hard for me to say that to any of my family members, so I wasn’t out to them. So I ended up calling my girlfriend by a male name. So, I would use the same first letter of her name and I would tell people that I had a boyfriend named Greg. I did not.

But I do think that that kind of made me feel as though I didn't really know where I was going. But then I found a great job working at a YogurtLand in Anaheim, California. And I progressed that summer into becoming an assistant manager. I used that as evidence that I should not be an engineer, and I switched to my business management major. And then in my third year of college, I stumbled into an Ethnic and Women's Studies class, it was called “Men, Women, and Society.” I was just immediately hooked. I felt like for the first time, that that kind of sense of listening that I explained was able to find language? And so I was able to articulate everything that I had been thinking into words, and it made me for the first time in my life feel like I had a purpose and that I could contribute something. And I think that that's a shift that I noticed, because it's, I think prior to that, the way that I experienced education, public education, was… it was about consumption, consuming information and regurgitating it and proving that you consumed it correctly and that you were able to then put it out on a plate for someone else in a platter for them to then consume. And then I made a shift towards thinking about what can I actually generate and what can I do with information, rather than just proving that I knew it. There’s something that knowledge can do. And it's that kind of, you know, I think it's that impulse towards social change or social transformation. So then I minored, to the dismay of my family. And then I majored, I double majored to the dismay of my family. But I was really good. It was the first in my school that I felt like I was learning and that I was excelling. And I was someone who volunteered to speak on queer panels. Growing up, I had a lisp, and I never wanted to talk. But I knew once I first started, and once I first became hooked on Ethnic and Women’s Studies that I think I thought that I wanted to be able to talk in front of people. And so I signed myself up for these panels and just talked in front of my peers and in front of faculty and staff at my college… How are we on time? Should I like wrap up the personal?

College is such an important time. And I think it's no wonder that I enjoy surrounding myself with the vibe of an institution because I know that so many things happen to people. And when I was in college, I found myself working so many different jobs. One of my favorite jobs was actually on campus. Most of my jobs hadn't been on campus. But this one, I was a social justice leader at the Violence Prevention and Women's Resource Center. So we did a lot of work with outreach, bystander intervention, event planning to think about violence prevention. I think it was always kind of shocking for me that within my first few months working at that position, I experienced sexual assault. And so, in addition to… in the midst of learning about how to think about prevention, I was still subject to violence. And I think that for very obvious reasons, I think that helped me think about violence in a way that was always about… I mean, I think healing is a way to describe it, but more than healing, I've been really invested in thinking about feelings that are quite fleeting, so feelings like relief and release, rather than a kind of pure healing. I think healing is, to me, a contested term. And so I thought about how do we live with trauma? How do we live with trauma that happens to our body, but also the traumas that we carry through generations, and that we might also feel through just spending time and being with people. I think that these things are kind of in the air, they're not necessarily confined to one's corpse or body. That experience, I was a member of the Queer People of Color Collective, and we did a couple of different types of outreach events on campus, but one of the ones that I was most drawn to was a spoken word night, open mic. And it was something that I was a student who did spoken word terribly. But I did it. And it was really rejuvenating for me to write and to perform. I was not good, but it was helpful for me. And then I think being in front of people and working with people made me realize that I think being a professor might be a nice thing to do. I had a professor, Dr. Anita Jan, who I took every one of her classes. She was someone who encouraged me to sign up for this program called the McNair Scholars Program, which is kind of like the Mellon Mays program, if you're familiar. It's an undergraduate research program that encourages type of support for undergrads who are either low income, underrepresented, or first generation students. And it gives them not only a support system, and actual training classes to think about taking the GRE or applying to graduate school programs, but also it allows you to conduct your own research study. And so my study was on femininity and queer spaces. It was great to just be able to, again, pursue a question. To kind of fast forward a bit. I applied to grad school. I got into grad school, and I finished grad school.

Thang, 00:27:23

Where did you go to grad school?

Dr. Storti, 00:27:24

I went to the University of Maryland, College Park, and I was deciding between there and the University of California, Santa Barbara. I grew up two hours south of Santa Barbara, and I wanted something different. And I don't regret the decision at all. I feel like I could have had a great time at UCSB, but I feel like I was able to have my intellectual thought nourished by people at the University of Maryland who were trained in queer of color critique and women of color feminisms. It was one of the first Ph. D. programs in Women’s Studies. So there was a lot of great history. I was able to learn from professors who had been in the heat of 1970s feminist activism. What I loved most about my program was that there was a deep investment in pedagogy and so, oftentimes, when people get their Ph. D., they don't have an opportunity to learn how to teach. But I got to learn how to teach and learn different ways and strategies for utilizing the classroom, not as a space where you put students through the wringer and expect them to, again, regurgitate information. I care so little about whether or not students exit my classes with dates and names. I want to be able to create an environment that furnishes students with a plethora of different skills, and even more than skills, an analytical lens where they can go into the world and pay attention to dynamics of power and difference. And so in Maryland, I was able to think through that.

I think without doing so much more of the personal, I mean, you can always ask follow-up questions… but something that I've recently come to learn and that has been quite impactful for me and my self understanding is my therapist. I have such a great therapist right now. I've had so many bad ones. But I have a really wonderful one. And I think I'm at the point in my life where I, and I think that things can change, I'm not trying to fit this into a narrative of what it means to be like a model citizen at all… but I'm at the point in my life where I'm working a lot. I'm on the tenure track. And so my social worlds are not as social as they once were. I do a lot of things that are social, but I don't feel like I have the time for it. And I've also lost a lot of friends in the midst of grad school and I think just being a person right now, lost not not in terms of death, but in terms of friend breakups. And so I have a therapist who has been able to think with me about my own desires to think about healing in a certain type of way. But she recently let me know that I'm probably an HSP, which is a highly sensitive person, which is actually less to do about sensitivity in an emotional sense. But it's a form of neurodivergence that, when one enters a room, they can pay attention to very many subtleties. And I think that makes a lot of things make sense as to why it is that I am the way I am. But also, why it is that I am attuned to the things that I'm attuned to and approach things in the way that I hope to approach them. But yes, you can feel free to ask follow up questions.

Thang, 00:31:21

Thank you for sharing. I wanted to learn more about… So right now we’re at… you’re at grad school and so then I wanted to jump to your hiring process that brought you to Duke. If you could talk to us a little bit more about that.

Dr. Storti, 00:31:38

Wow. I mean, it feels like it was so long ago and also just yesterday. I graduated from my Ph. D. … I was set to defend my dissertation, April 1, 2020. And so, so much of the onset of lockdown coincided with when I was preparing to fly to D.C. to defend my dissertation. Of course, I couldn't fly to D.C. And so I was the first person in my program to defend a dissertation on Zoom. Because I graduated within that moment, I just had no idea and I honestly did not think I was going to land a faculty position. Of course, I had some people who I think weren't as helpful as they thought that they were trying to be because at the onset of the pandemic inflicted anti-Asian racism and violence, I had some colleagues who were like, ‘Well, you'll get a job now because Asian American Studies.’ So that's not helpful. That's not helpful. But it did seem once… So I graduated, finished in spring of 2020. That summer, I had been doing creative writing, I had wrote some poetry. I was trying to think outside the bounds of landing a position in academia. But then the fall rolled around, and I was working as a postdoc at Dartmouth. I was living up in Vermont at the time. And so I was teaching a class in Dartmouth, virtually, and jobs were kind of popping up. Not just ones in Asian American Studies. I applied to so many jobs, I applied to way too many jobs, jobs that I had no qualifications. I applied to like history jobs. I'm not a historian, but, you know, I was like, “Oh, maybe.” But the hiring process for Duke was… it was always a very exciting position for me. I had always, my partner and I have always talked about how California, the Mid-Atlantic, and including North Carolina, were places where we would like to spend time. And so the position came up. I did not think I ever had a chance at it, but I applied to it. And I think that application was due in October, I had had a handful of other interviews and campus visits. And I had other things scheduled. By the time I did my campus visit here, which was in February, and it was virtual. So it's two days. Virtual. I really had to prep my body and my voice for two days talking to people on a screen. I had an assortment of teas and I had to do stretches. And I think that that's always something I tell people who are going to do a long extended interview process is to think about your body as you're going through it. But the campus visit was a great time. I was able to talk with a lot of different types of people. Again, the way that it worked was that it was a cluster hire and so there was a large search committee, and then the search committee kind of consulted the hiring department. So in my case, Gender, Sexuality and Feminist Studies. And so, they conducted interviews according to their standards. And so, in addition to various meetings with my future potential colleagues, the Deans, and the search committee, which was like an hour-and-a-half long interview, I had to give a research talk. And my research talk was the whiteness inside Asian America, like a rapist cop and his rapist and his racist form. And so I think that that's kind of, you know, it's a title, you know, and I think it could make people feel a certain way. But I always, from the time I gave the talk to now, I feel like Duke has been a place where I've been able to have the kind of, the ways that I approached questions supported, if not encouraged, which is something I didn't necessarily feel when I attended interviews and job talks for other institutions.

So, at the end of that two day interview process, I had to do what we all do which is suffer through the grueling process of waiting. I think that I had been preparing my documents since July of 2020 and then I did a lot of applications in September, October, November, December, into the new year. And by the time you're, you know, off the high of the interview, and then you just have to wait a week, or maybe even longer. It’s really terrible to have to wait and wonder, especially when you want it. But then I got an email from Esther Kim Lee asking if she wanted to talk. And so I reached out to my two different professors who are on my committee, Alexis Logan and Yvonne Ramos, who are kind of my coaches throughout the job hunt. And they were like, “This is probably a good sign.” I was like, “I just don't know.” But it turned out I was offered the job and it was so exciting because, first of all, I never thought it could happen. And I'm that kind of person who doesn't like to jinx anything. So, I'll have feelings and thoughts and desires, but I won't vocalize them just because you never know. I like to be steady, as much as possible but I also get very excited. And so my partner could tell that Duke was a thing that I wanted. We were just very excited about that and I knew that I was going to accept it. But I had had, I had a couple of other things in the works that aligned, at least in a certain sense more with what I thought that I would, how I thought I would be as a faculty member. So I had something with a Cal State School and I had to think about, “Should I go through that entire process?” I had another campus visit with a different institution on the West Coast that I had to think about, “Is it worth it? Should I elongate this?” I think so much of what I had learned from those early moments of the pandemic were, first of all, a lot of people were offered positions and then they were revoked. So I was really afraid that, who's to say, you know? After so much student activism, Duke has gone this far, but would they actually go through with it? And so I decided to back out of the other places that I was under consideration and accept the job. I signed on March 15, 2021, which is the day before the Atlanta shootings. I think so much of it felt so important to be able to think about this nexus of sexual desire, legacies of racist, colonial and imperial notions within, again, this frame and arc of the Asian diaspora and feminism. So the hiring process was grueling, but I'm happy with the outcome.

Thang, 00:39:29

And we’re happy you’re here. It all worked out, it all worked out. I know you talked briefly about the student activism that brought you here but could you talk a little bit more about what it means to be a faculty hire as part of that cluster higher where so much of it was dependent upon the student struggles and activism of the past 20 years or so? Not only that, but also what does it mean to build relationships with students knowing that you're, that you're part of this memory, that you're part of this genealogy now?

Dr. Storti, 00:39:59

I think that, I mean, to keep it so simple, it makes it make sense. It makes it worth it. I don't care for work too much. I like my work a lot. But I think to really think about the things that I care about and the things that I value, in addition to what I want to contribute to, it’s always, for me, emerged through student activism. I was someone who was a version of a student activist in college. I say version because I do think there's so many different ways to be active. And so I do think that much of my work was more arts-based activism. But, for me, growing up and being at an institution when I was in college that was mostly, I think it was like 30% white instead of, I think here, it's 70% white. And so a lot of the students that I was friends with, we were kids of immigrants or undocumented, working, coming from middle class, lower income families that meant essentially that the things that we were bonding over were not necessarily about those identities, but what those identities meant. And so having that collective conversation informed why I think it matters that we tried to work towards social transformation. So landing at an institution and being welcomed in an institution, and within a position where I'm only here because of the work of student activists, I don't think we should get it twisted, right. I think a lot of people who have Ph. D.s do what they need to do to be competitive on the market and have the type of questions. But the positions just aren't always available, particularly if you are not part of a discipline. And when your work is interdisciplinary. And so I think to be part it has informed my every kind of encounter on campus. I think the reason why I'm here is not to necessarily produce the most cutting edge research, of course, I like doing that kind of stuff, but I think our world is really in need of people who are going to come through with innovative solutions for all the problems of the world but it's also in terms of trying to prioritize the collectivity, the coalitional politics of that. The ways that, I think those are sexy terms that get thrown out, but to me, what that means is that there's going to be struggle, there's going to be ways where you might love each other, but you don't like each other all the time. There's friction, there's disagreement, but there's also an immense amount of care that comes through joining together for something like Asian American Studies. Right? To do that work. I'm someone who's from California, I’ve always had the opportunity to take Asian American Studies classes, Ethnic Studies classes, Gender Studies classes. There were a lot of, you know, it was majority non-white as an institution and to imagine what it might mean to be at a place like this one and to not be able to learn just simply what it is about your history, right? Or even cultural production and pop culture. Or even like, you know, econ or poli sci that has something to do with people of color, I think it’s a disservice and I think that institutions are understanding, or at least are being forced to understand to force to reckon with what it means to actually serve the communities that they're purporting to serve. And so I think that that's students and I don't know, my sense of institutions in general are that, especially academic ones are that, you know, it's like a capitalist society. It's a world. Duke is a world. And I think, of course, it's a university and so it supports knowledge but I know the way that people are being pressured to work, students are being pressured to work. I mean, I think everyone who's within the institution is being pressured to work in a certain way. And one of the… I guess, I don't know if it's a positive but one thing to me that at least seems like it matters is the work to try to make things better, which is to say more livable, more about thinking holistically because to study Asian American Studies isn't necessarily only about learning about our histories, but it's… I mean, Asian American studies as a field is so cool, because it thinks about race and ethnicity relationally. It thinks about how Asian America, Asian people in America, the Asian diaspora can, again, function as this lever with which we can kind of turn to be able to, if you turn it this way you might be able to see a bigger picture about what environmental justice might look like. So… does that answer the question?

Thang, 00:45:29

Yeah, yeah.

Alice, 00:45:24

I think diving a little bit more into the classes that you teach, interacting with students in the classroom, what is your experience like? What has it been like teaching? I think you started in the spring of 2022 with “Race, Gender, and Sexuality.” What does it mean to teach one of the first AADS classes for new minors?

Dr. Storti, 00:45:47

I know. So my first class was in fall 21. It was “Asian American Feminisms” which was a first year seminar. And so that's been the only class I've had that hasn't been full. And I think it's like, you know, it's a first year seminar and it was actually really wonderful. And I think that was maybe the first class that had AADS on the course catalog. I mean, it stuns me that that's even something that I could say I'm a part of. I love that it was a class on Asian American feminisms because the students who took that class were Asian identified and Latinx identified and that's it. And so we had a class of students of color who were just starting college and we were able to have really meaningful conversations about, again, how Asian American Studies can be this analytic with which to understand larger interlocking systems of oppression. But in terms of the other classes I've taught so far, I've taught “Race, Gender and Sexuality” twice and I've taught “Intimacies” which is a new class that I put into the kind of permanent catalog for Gender, Sexuality and Feminist Studies. I noticed that there was, I wanted at least students who were to move through GSF in whatever way they moved through it, to be able to contend with the state and scale of the nation. But thinking through it, again, through this, keyword of intimacy, which is, again, such a sexy term that I think people use. It’s part of so many different book titles within the realm of, again, American Studies, Queer Studies, and Ethnic Studies. But the classes that I've been able to take I've been surprised at how excited students seem to be taking the classes and I've been really moved by seeing people fill up the classes and take the waitlist. My first time teaching “Race, Gender, and Sexuality” in spring of 2022, it’s capped at 18, which is the standard seminar cap, and I had a couple of people on the waitlist. So I was like, “Okay, I want… you all are welcome, we'll move it to 25.” But then the registrar got mad at me because I just gave everyone permission numbers, and they're like, “You can't do that.” So I got in trouble for that. But I think I should be able to offer classes. So I'm like you can sit in but of course, students are so busy, they're not gonna sit in. They don't need to. But it seems like there's excitement over these topics. And I tried to, throughout my classes, I tried to kind of get a sense of how students are feeling at multiple points throughout the semester. I think it's standard practice to do a midterm evaluation. I tried to make it so that students can let me know at any point what's working for them and what's not working for them. “Race, Gender, and Sexuality” is something that I've… It's like a version of classes that I've taught before. The previous two times I've taught it, I’ve thought about the notion of memory, the intersection of how one can think about their own life through the lens of memory which means not only about their own physical memories, but how the body is an archive, the body can store memories, but also they can store memories of not only of yourself, but of people who you come from. And so it had been trying to think about ways that you can access that, those memories, which may not be readily available or also maybe not encouraged to remember. But in the fall, I'm teaching a version of “Race, Gender, and Sexuality” that is trying to think about what it would mean to stop violence. What is a world without violence and so I think the opposite of violence would be non-violence and violence is in that word. And so I really want to go through this intellectual journey to think about what is there beyond violence or what is a life without violence through the lens of QTPOC folks and the things that they create. And the “Intimacies” class, that one has been really fun, it’s the first time I've taught it this term. And I get, I think almost everyone's a senior in that class except for a couple of people. And it's been really exciting for me to see the ways that… I don't really go in with an underlying agenda, I just hope that students learn something. I think that critical thought is so useful, and it sticks with you. Knowledge is power, ignorance is bliss but I think once you begin seeing the hierarchies of things, working the dynamics, you kind of never stop seeing them, which is like, sorry, but I think it's useful to see these things. And so it's been fun for me to see how students have been interested in the concept and practice of intimacy in ways that kind of shift week to week. Right? I think in the beginning, so the class is called “Intimacies: Sexuality, and the Nation State.” And in the beginning, I think that there was maybe a desire for like, “Where’s the like sex, where's the sexuality and intimacy?” Because I think the way that it's kind of commonly understood as a euphemism is for sex and sexuality, but intimacy has, like we've collectively come to consensus throughout the term, and I think it might change depending on who's in the class is that it's something that isn't just bound to sex and sexuality. But it's a way of being that is actually a form of being, it's a political statement, it’s an intention, it’s something that constantly needs to be calibrated and revisited, it makes us think about things relating kind of spanning notions of consent to non-normative family structures. So the classes have been, and I think the freedom to teach what I want to teach has been so, again, meaningful for me to be here. I can't wait to think about what I teach in the future. I would love to have a larger class sometimes because I feel bad when students don't get to take the class and they want to take the class. I think it has something to do with the U.S. rankings where I think the rankings depend on how many classes you offer that are smaller, so seminars are capped at 18 for that reason. In the spring, I'm teaching with Dr. Calvin, a joint class called “New Directions In Asian American Studies” and it's going to be undergrad and grad. So we always say, it's like an opportunity for us to read all this cool work, but also with students. I think that that's something that for me, to be a faculty member at Duke means that you have three different hats that you kind of wear. So you're a researcher, you're a professor, and you also do service. And so they say that, if you're on the tenure track, do all the things excellent because Duke is excellence. You really got to publish to get tenure. And I think that I really like writing, I don't mind publishing, but I don't want to not teach. And I care deeply about my teaching and the impact that I think I could have because I know that my life changed drastically when I had professors that were able to like, there's not one way to do it but just kind of treating you as a human. Thinking about what you can learn from different generations. When I first started teaching as a Ph. D. student, I think I was teaching millennials as a millennial. And I'm no longer teaching millennials. I think that could look different. So when I was in college, there were people in my class, like my peers who were like 50 years old, it was just a very different vibe. But I do think that it's necessary to just kind of learn from students, insofar as they also are learning from you. And I try to create that.

Thang, 00:54:08

What were your visions and hopes and dreams for the Asian American Diaspora Studies program? And then now that you've become part of the program, what do you hope to do and where do you hope to lead this program later on?

Dr. Storti, 00:54:21

Yeah, I think that my own visions are… I don't know if I have visions that are just my own. I think my visions are, again, what do we want? Right? And I think that from the conversations that I've had about the “we,” and I know that the “we” is always this kind of fluctuating entity, I think that might look like a major. But in order to get a major, students would need to be able to feel as though it'd be worth it to major and I think majoring in something like that at Duke is not going to ever be that popular or even encouraged by parents. So my vision is to really communicate to Duke and mostly beyond Duke that Asian American Studies is something that is going to help us do what our mission is as members of this university, which is to make the world a better place. I think that's what a lot of people want to do, even people who I very much disagree with. I think that there's also some people who aren't invested in making the world better. But I think that that notion of making the world more livable, more equitable, is something that a lot of people possess. I disagree with many people who approach it in the directions that they approach it. But I think Asian American Studies is a tool to approach that call in ways that are attuned to sustainability and non violence and pleasure and joy and care. And so when it comes to the program of AADS, I think a way to do that is by modeling it. I think modeling it is actually quite a useful thing. And so bringing ways that students could have more leadership roles, diversifying the ways that power is distributed within the institution. I think depending on your perspective… I always think students have all the power. And I think that it should be like that, students be able to because, you know, it’s a university. You should be able to say what you want to say and get what you think is right. But there's different ways where decision making doesn't really lie within students. And I do think that some sort of cohesive, collective entity which would align with not only the current, maybe administrative visions of the program which is to kind of be a leader within the field, in general, but particularly within the region, which is a region that is showing a vast growth of Asian-identified folks. But we can never forget why we're here, right? It’s not like we made it, thanks student activists in the past and present, but we're gonna do this thing now. And so I think it's always about pushing. To think about growth, not in the sense of numbers and quantity, but thinking about the ways that we might think about building bridges with different communities, of course like within the institution, but also especially outside of the institution. What would it look like to think about what it means to be people who are going to have Duke on our resumes for the rest of our lives? What does it mean to carry that legacy? We talk a lot about names and needing to change names. The Classroom Building is an example of that, but what about the institution like Duke? That name is not going to change. So what does it mean to carry that name, and have Duke Asian American Diaspora Studies be a thing? And I think it's, it always means having this kind of joint position of critique and an intention towards, you know, truly being anti-racist. Right? Thinking about what that means and the future, the shifting terrains of what the nation will look like, what the South will look like, what North Carolina will look like. And so, I think having a retreat might be useful. Some sort of retreat that's not just faculty. But it doesn’t have to be like—I mean it's activism, it's organizing. It doesn't just happen over one meal. It doesn't happen over one three hour meeting. It will not happen in one three hour meeting. And I think it's always about changing the pronouns that we use. Is “we” a pronoun? I'm so bad at English, sometimes grammar. But instead of like my vision, like what is our vision? And I think that's a question that I hope we can answer and we can also spend time thinking about, so it's not really an answer, I'm sorry, it isn't an answer.

Thang, 00:59:45

It can be both. And I think contending with the fact that everything is living, right, everything is gonna go through these, like you talked about tensions and like, it'll contract and it'll expand and it'll be guided by different visions by different people collectively, maybe singularly, who knows. It’s all about navigating that kind of space. And so I wanted to ask you about the tensions that you're talking about between perhaps students, past activists, current ones who may perceive that, who may disagree with perhaps the way that AADS is heading because once something has been, once people start struggling for something and it's achieved, you have that kind of big sigh of relief, but then afterwards, that tidal wave of motion hits you, and it's like, where do we go from here? Right, we're starting at this vantage point and we're looking out at this expanse of land and where do we go? And oftentimes, what happens is that when something becomes institutionalized, it loses that luster, it loses that genuineness that came out from the blood, sweat, and tears of student activists. Right? And so how are you, I guess my question is how are faculty members of the AADS program contending with this and how have you personally contended with this?

Dr. Storti, 1:01:06

Yeah, it's such an important question. And it's, I think, once something becomes institutionalized, it does become part of the institution. And so the possibilities become bound in a certain way. I think there's ways to exist outside those bounds, they’re always going to be understood as risky. I might be told that, you know, things that I am committed to aren't the things that I should be committed to for this stage in my career. And so when something becomes part of an institution in this world, that means becoming part of an institution that is going to be complicit in white supremacy, and capitalism. As a faculty member, who is a faculty member at Duke, I am complicit in these things. And I think when one understands complicity and is trying to think about it in a way that's not about being defensive, like, “I'm not complicit, I'm doing all these things and teaching these classes” but it's like, “No, we're complicit.” That's what it is, but what then? What comes after that? And so I think, when it comes towards thinking about the dreams and desires and the real solutions and successes of having it be institutionalized, I think it means doing something that Jose Esteban Munoz is this performance scholar who created this term called disidentification. It’s a beautiful concept. Just to keep it very short, to disidentify it is to think differently about resistance and complicity and assimilation is the term that he uses. So it's not that the only ways to resist are to be what tends to come to mind when you think about activism or protesting or organizing which are people in the streets at some sort of confrontation. But there's different ways to do that type of work. And so assimilation, on the other hand, is also something that's not just about being a model minority and falling in line and not pushing against. Sometimes assimilation is necessary for staying alive and for staying outside of violence or danger. And sometimes resistance is something that might look very different. And so when I think the work of what student activists should do moving forward is really a question of not, “should” it's more like, “Now what? What do we want?” Is this something where it's not about having courses and curriculum and space on Duke’s campus because of course, you know, ideally, you will all leave in a few years and be in different places. So leaving your mark through a program is one method. But there's also ways to, given that there is institutionalization now, that means there's funding and resources. So for me, someone who thinks about that kind of disidentification process where you're not just assimilating and not just resisting in these stereotypical ways, but it's—how can we actually redistribute resources in certain ways. And so it's utilizing and that's what I can do to think about what my own complicity is because it's like, “Well, I'm here now.” And I kind of like it because… I have my own thoughts about other things that we don't need to share here. But I think that there's the people who I have somehow been able to see within my first two years have, our values more or less align not overlap. And I want there to be more space for us to think about that together outside of the seminar or outside of the event or outside of the Q&A after a talk. Because nothing substantive… I think there's more substance that can be felt and had and nourished elsewhere. I think that's the… the hard part is now. What are the desires? And I think one method that I fall on for a solution, a way to think about how it's worth it is, “Okay, I'm gonna have access to some resources, what event can I put on? Who can I invite? Who doesn't tend to be invited to places like this?” That will create something that can make people feel something better than what they're already feeling. And so I tried to do that with Minor Aesthetics in the fall. I'm going to try to think about different ways to, again, bring in people who aren't necessarily only academics, but are people who do work that I think are actually leaders. And so I wonder how students might also think about that, which is like, students did this thing. Thanks. Can we have something to then do something? And, you know, redistribute.

Thang, 1:06:33

So I guess we'll head to the… we're nearing the end of this wonderful conversation, but I wanted to… we wanted to learn more about your reflections so far since this is your second year at Duke but also marks the first anniversary since the AADS program was officially designated. And so what reflections do you have so far?

Dr. Storti, 1:07:00

Yeah, I mean, I think it's booming in a way. I think we have nine minors declared which is great I think for especially after one year. My sense from my position as a faculty member is that there is a lot of interest and excitement, both in terms of students but also some of my colleagues. I think that there's a different sense of—not only an appreciation of what Asian American Studies is, but a sense of what it is. I think for a long time, and even to this day, some people don't really know what Asian American Studies is. I think there are folks who might think that it's about Asian people and understanding their experiences. Which happens, but there's so much more than that. And my sense is that more people are beginning to kind of understand that, and I want to be able to make more people understand that as well. But that requires people to be interested in it. And so my sense is that there's support and excitement. There is, overall, in terms of the state of academia in the States and maybe also more broadly, the humanities are not as… students don’t tend to… there's not as much funding and support for the humanities as opposed to other fields like STEM, which includes things like public policy as well. And I think that makes a lot of sense given the structures of the world. And so in terms of reflections, I wonder a lot about how things will shift in these next few years because we have folks graduating who were so immensely vital in getting us to this minor and then we have students who who came through when there was not even a minor and they were able to see a minor and then soon we'll have students who will always have had the opportunity to get a minor. I wonder what's going to happen because I think a lot can shift in a year, in a few years. And so, I think I’m not necessarily always on board with keeping the fire aflame, this huge flame all the way because I think that can be exhausting. Like I do think what you notice which is like this ebb and flow where there’s this intense tension and then there's a release and then there’s this intense tension. I think that it's important to feel out how we are collectively doing but also to prioritize sub-units where it's like: how are students feeling? How are faculty feeling? How are staff feeling? What does capacity look like? But I mean, generally, I think that one of my favorite parts of the job is being part of AADS. It’s not even technical like my home department, it's fully in GSF. But I don't know, I like it. It’s not even in terms of capacity and in terms of how I might be mentored to spend my time, I had been told to not do certain things, but the Converge event that took place. Was that February? It was beautiful. There's so many just stunning, impressive people who I get to interact with, and sometimes I get lucky enough to teach. And I get a lot of energy from that.  I want to find ways to not only support it in this weird power differential way, but to be like, “I'm a fan.” And I think that there's other there's other faculty members who feel that way as well. I think that we’re growing, right? We’re gonna have a senior search come to an end soon. We have people who are being hired who do Asian American Studies but weren't hired through the program and so it's really nice to see faculty in various places across campus be invested in the field. By invested I mean finding ways to move it towards ways that might be more sustainable and more aligned with what it is that, collectively, we hope to put through.

Thang, 1:11:46

Thank you. For our final question, we wanted to ask you, let's say that you're not bound to anything. All rules are nada, right? What course or courses, apart from the ones you’re teaching right now, do you think are… you really want to teach? This is something that you’ve always wanted to do and this is something you think students would love the most. Or even as yourself, if you were in the shoes of students, something you’d want to take?

Dr. Storti, 1:12:14

Yeah… I mean, I really do miss being a student, I miss taking classes, I would want to do something different. I think that I tried to incorporate that in my classes. In the past, I've done this when I taught a class called “Women, Art, and Culture.” But I did it in my “Intimacies” class. I had a day that was a workshop and it was called “Queer Survival and the Apocalypse.” And I think about the apocalypse, I think about the end of the world a lot. I think it's my anxiety. But it's also I think, our worlds are ending every day and they're beginning every day. And so by doing something different and experimental, I'd want to make it—more active oriented. And maybe instead of weekly reflections or monthly reflections and a final paper and a midterm, I don't test. Like, that's never something I'm going to do. But I wonder if like… and I did this with my “Asian American Feminism” class where the students made a collective zine. I would want to think about a class where we do something at the end. And that's kind of the product. Of course, I will do my work to contextualize and historicize and offer whatever information might be useful, but to work towards something that would be… that could be circulated. And I don't know if it would be about violence and thinking about survival. If it would be about a condensed semester long skillshare. But it would incorporate, I think, a lot of the work that people are doing now and the work that people have done historically, which is [to] create things and share them and circulate them in ways that are freely available, similar to the work that you're doing with this project of creating a hub. But I think it would probably end up being a year-long class. And so it'd be students would take a… I don't know if that would even be… but I guess no rules, right? So no rules means no grades, also. Everyone would get the grade that they or whatever. But I would want a certain level of… something big, something about changing, remapping what it means to maybe even be here. How can we be the best people and think about what it means to again think about what it means to have Duke on our resumes forever. I think that that says something because you all will be fine. You’ll get jobs and you will be contributing to the world. And I do feel like I'm interacting with leaders in some kind of way. Not in the boring, stereotypical way, but also sometimes that way. And so what could we do collectively to stir things up? And I don't know. For a while I thought about doing an assignment where students had to do a… It's called a culture jam but it’s a mini protest thing. But it doesn't seem like there's a lot of that happening on this campus. And I don't think it's encouraged. So something along the lines of really making people, some people, feel uncomfortable in a way that I think will actually make everyone feel more comfortable. But it's having those forms of confrontation. Yeah, I think the topic would have to be in terms of how do we relate to each other? So something to do with how do we listen to each other? How do we communicate? What are better ways that we can actually think about our own self-healing through writing, through the creative form, broadly construed? And also thinking about basing it through the work that people have done and community organizations. I will have to think about that. That's a great question. Without any rules, what would I teach? Without any bounds, what would I teach? Thank you for the question.

Thang, 1:16:24

Of course. Thank you so much for this conversation. Let’s end it.