Kalinowski\u2019s research focuses broadly on the role of stress on the health of Black women in the context of cardiovascular disease.<\/p>\n When she began her post-doctoral research, she realized that despite Black women showing high rates of hypertension in the U.S., and the known link between hypertension and cardiovascular disease, there were very few studies addressing this issue for Black women.<\/p>\n There were two main problems here, she thought. First: what stress factors contribute to this higher rate of hypertension? In other words, is stress influencing other health behaviors that can increase hypertension risk? Or is the stress itself causing the hypertension?<\/p>\n Second, what can be done about it? Can individual or community-scale interventions help to lower these rates?<\/p>\n At her most recent position as a postdoctoral fellow at the New York University School of Medicine, Kalinowski developed skills in behavioral health and cardiovascular epidemiology.<\/p>\n Her current studies look at biomarkers and qualitative stress measurements in women who have survived heart attack, to help understand the role of stress in their health.<\/p>\n Another study uses a mindfulness intervention in Black women with elevated blood pressure to determine whether a reduction in daily stress can mitigate risk of cardiovascular disease.<\/p>\n She hopes that her work will help bring women\u2019s issues, and in particular Black women\u2019s issues, more exposure in the medical community. Further, she plans to mentor rising generations of Black women in research.<\/p>\n \u201cThere weren\u2019t \u2013 and still aren\u2019t \u2013 a lot of examples of black women researchers,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n #IAmNotAVirus<\/strong><\/p>\n When the COVID-19 virus expanded across the globe in early 2020, sentiments expressed by world leaders, including then-president Donald Trump, spurred a wave of anti-Asian sentiment in America.<\/p>\n Jason Oliver Chang, director of the Asian and Asian American Studies Institute and associate professor of history, moved into action, speaking with the press and organizing within local communities.<\/p>\n \u201cWe felt like we were saying the same things to the media over and over,\u201d he recalls. \u201cAsians of all types became \u2018Chinese\u2019 and became victimized. Reports asked, why is this happening? Why is racism against Asians suddenly rearing its head?\u201d<\/p>\n So Chang and his Institute colleagues went to work with community partners. He worked with photographer Mike Keo to found the successful #IAmNotAVirus Instagram portrait campaign, to humanize the lives of Asian and Asian Americans in order to combat anti- Asian sentiment. Keo then became the Institute\u2019s first Activist-in-Residence, and he and Change to co-create and publicize a document of safety resources<\/a> for the black, indigenous, and people of color (BIPOC) community on college campuses. They also created a mental health workbook<\/a> for Asian Americans, in collaboration with the Asian American Literary Review<\/a><\/p>\n As a minority group in the United States, Asian Americans experience a double-edged sword of racism, says Chang. Some communities are seen as dangerous, with a \u201cyellow peril\u201d mentality; while others are held up as an ideal for immigrants, or a \u201cmodel minority.\u201d<\/p>\n Both stereotypes are harmful, he says, not only to Asian Americans, but to everyone.<\/p>\n Chang\u2019s recent work has taken a turn to the local with a focus on the rise of tobacco plantations across Connecticut, where, with colleague Fiona Vernal, associate professor of history and affiliate of the Africana Studies Institute, he has begun documenting the history of tobacco plantations in the state, and how they have intersected with different minority groups.<\/p>\n \u201cPeople automatically associate plantations with slavery and the South,\u201d Chang says. \u201cBut they are part of the fabric of Connecticut and the Northeast, too. Black workers from the South and the Caribbean traveled to work these plantations each summer, but less known are Asian workers from Boston in the 1940s and Southeast Asian refugees beginning in the 1980s also worked these plantations.\u201d<\/p>\n With Vernal, Chang received a grant from the New England Humanities Consortium for their project, titled Shade: Labor Diasporas, Tobacco, Mobility, and the Urban Nexus, which examines the relatively unknown history and evolution of settler and tobacco labor culture in the Connecticut River valley.<\/p>\n \u201cPlantations in Connecticut exist in a mythical space, yet the reality is that they have shaped who calls Connecticut home. Telling this story reveals the racialization of Hartford as a Black, Brown, and Asian American city and how it has dealt over the years with its race issues,\u201d notes Chang.<\/p>\n If there\u2019s one thing this year has made clear to him, he says, it\u2019s that Asian and Asian American Studies needs to work more on community organizing and policy. To that end, Chang is leading the charge to bring Asian American and Pacific Islander studies to Connecticut High Schools through new policy<\/a> in this legislative session.<\/p>\n \u201cThis year has signaled to me that what we were doing before this is not adequate,\u201d he says. \u201cScholarly outputs alone aren\u2019t having the impact that we want them to. We need to have stronger relationships with communities and direct energies into public-facing work.\u201d<\/p>\n A Speculative History<\/strong><\/p>\n Dexter Gabriel was clad in his academic regalia and walking to his graduation ceremony to receive his Ph.D. when he got the news that he\u2019d just had his first really big publication.<\/p>\n But it wasn\u2019t a scholarly paper or monograph. It was a story, and it had been accepted at Tor, once of the most prominent speculative fiction \u2013 including sci-fi, fantasy, horror and alternate history \u2013 publishers in the world.<\/p>\n Until then, he says, he\u2019d not really seen a likeness between his scholarly historical work, on the history and geography of activism in the U.S. abolitionist movement, and his speculative fiction work, which he mostly did as a hobby. But he began to see the parallels.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen we have gaps and silences in history, we speculate,\u201d says Gabriel, assistant professor of history and faculty affiliate of the Africana Studies Institute. \u201cSo in a sense, they influenced each other.\u201d<\/p>\n For awhile, Gabriel kept his scholarly and creative writing worlds apart, using the pseudonym P. Dj\u00e8l\u00ed Clark to publish fiction.<\/p>\n \u201cI would finish some academic work, then reward myself by sitting down and writing a story,\u201d he says. \u201cI\u2019d send off a story, then forget about it.\u201d<\/p>\n![\"Assistant](\"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/Jolaade-Kalinowski-200x300.jpg\")
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