Class
- Junior
Focuses
- Political Science
- Women's & Gender Studies
Project
-
The cognitive dissonance and resolution experienced among LGBTQ+ Christians and
outcomes
As a participant of the January Research Opportunity Program (JROP), Aliya plans to research the history of transracial adoption from Asian countries. The thesis of the project is that the adoptee experience is an incredibly nuanced and very niche within the greater AAPI community, and thus needs to be researched more deeply as a separate experience. The primary goal of this research is to prepare for a combined Women’s and Gender Studies Capstone and Honors Thesis that will take place next year. In addition to the work Aliya will complete during JROP, the project also plans to interview several adoptees in order to accompany and further support my academic research.
As a woman adopted from China, the topic of transracial adoption is one that Aliya has embodied her whole life. Therefore, this project presents the perfect combination of academic research and the exploration of personal identity. Aliya also believes that while Asian-American history is a subject that is woefully under-researched, the experiences of the adoptee community are even less widely known. The narrative of adoption is one that is controlled by the (primarily white) parents doing the adopting, rather than the children whose lives are forever impacted by a choice that was not in their control. Unfortunately, this omission of adoptees from adoption-related discourse results in a skewed narrative that ignores the deeper, and often traumatic, nuances of adoption-related to race, gender, nationality, and belonging. Now more than ever, in a time when conversations of social justice, activism, and solidarity within the AAPI community have begun to gain traction on the national level, these nuances must be acknowledged and explored.. Aliya believes that her personal stake in this subject will be the motivation both in the JROP experience and in her overall project, to create a final product that represents the combination of lived experiences and academic passions.
