LSU Science Café: Asians on the Third Coast, an Anthology

Dong Phuong Bakery, Governor Bobby Jindal, Krewe De Bhangras, ‘Manila Men’ in St. Malo, and Camp Livingston (a Japanese American internment site in Alexandria) are some of the known and unknown aspects of the Asian presence in Louisiana. Join Science Café to explore the major themes in the LSU anthology Asians on the Third Coast: Other Races, Other Cultures in Louisiana, and discover both the rich story of Asians and Asian Americans in our state and the challenges involved in narrating their lives. As immigrants coming to the U.S. from Jordan to Japan, Asians have changed Louisiana culturally, politically, and gastronomically as much as Louisiana has changed them.

Madoka Kishi is a Professional-in-Residence in English at LSU. Her first book, The Suicidal State: Race Suicide, Biopolitics, and the Sexuality of Population, was published by Oxford University Press in November 2024. She has also translated Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick’s Touching Feeling (Takanashi-shobo, 2022) and co-translated Judith Butler’s Parting Ways (Seido-sha, 2019) and Lauren Berlant’s Cruel Optimism (Kadensha, forthcoming 2025) into Japanese. She is currently translating Eve Sedgwick’s memoir A Dialogue on Love (Hakusuisha, forthcoming 2027) and writing a book about Sedgwick’s life and thought (Seikyusha, forthcoming 2028).

Pallavi Rastogi is the J.F. Taylor Endowed Professor of English at LSU. She is the author of Postcolonial Disaster: Narrating Catastrophe in the Twenty-First Century (Northwestern University Press, 2020) and Afrindian Fictions: Diaspora, Race, and National Desire in South Africa (Ohio State University Press, 2008). She recently published a co-edited collection with Nalini Iyer, Teaching South Asian Anglophone Diasporic Literature (Modern Languages Association, 2024). Rastogi serves as associate editor of The South Asian Review.

Photo credit: Stephen Saks Photography/Alamy Stock Photo

LSU Science Café is presented in partnership with Campus Federal Credit Union and WRKF.

The event is open to the public, and advance registration through Eventbrite is recommended.

LSU Science Café is in-person only (i.e., no live feed) but it will be recorded, and posted on our YouTube channel.

Please print your registration ticket or have it readily available on your electronic device upon arrival.

Doors open at 5:00 PM. Event begins at 6:00 PM.

Event Venue & Nearby Stays

Varsity Theatre, 3353 Highland Road, Baton Rouge, United States