On October 25, 2018, Fiona Ngô, associate professor in Asian American studies and gender and women’s studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, delivered a lecture titled “The Perfectible Refugee and the Welfare Queen: The Reordering of Race and Disability.” The lecture was held in East Pyne Hall, Room 010, and cosponsored by the Program in Gender and Sexuality Studies.

Ngô examined the arrival of refugees from Southeast Asia, the Caribbean, and Central America during the 1970s and 1980s, focusing on Congressional debate and testimony to trace how discourse of “self-sufficiency” figured in discussion of different populations.