Narrative Stitching Across Contact Zones: Hmong American Student Cartographies of War, Migration, and Belonging
Rican Vue
Education Building Wisconsin Idea Room (Room 159), 1000 Bascom Mall
Please join Dr. Rican Vue for her talk through the Carl A. Grant Scholars Lecture Series. In this talk, she will examine how Hmong American Students narrate identity across layered histories through narrative stitching and draw on student narratives from every-campus encounters. These stories move across contact zones, linking geopolitical histories to everyday questions of recognition and, through these narratives, they reveal how belonging is forged and claimed.
What happens when students whose histories span war, displacement, and diaspora enter
institutions that rarely recognize those histories?
This talk examines how Hmong American students narrate identity across these layered histories through narrative stitching — the labor of connecting fragmented experiences across time and place. Drawing on student narratives that emerge in every-campus encounters, the talk shows how Hmong American students map relationships between family histories of war and migration and their contemporary experiences in higher education. These stories move across contact zones, linking geopolitical histories to everyday questions of recognition. Through these narrative practices, students produce cartographies of war, migration, and belonging, revealing how belonging in higher education is forged and claimed through narratives that connect diasporic histories across continents and generations.