PI: Ethan Trinh (Dr. Trinh’s Foundation)

This digital humanities project documents the lived experiences of Asian LGBTQ+ immigrant and refugee communities in Atlanta. By using queer walking meditation (Trinh, 2020) and guided by Vietnamese Buddhist ethics of compassion, presence, and interbeing, the project gathers 10 oral histories along with participant-created drawings, poems, and symbolic artifacts through 3 sessions. Each session will illuminate how individuals make sense of their arrivals, homes, queerness, languages, families, and politics amid structures of anti-immigration policy, monolingualism, heterosexualism, and whiteness. Methodologically, the project draws on vulnerability as method (Trinh, forthcoming) and new materialist theories of spacetimemattering (Barad, 2007) to honor how stories, bodies, places, and histories come into relation. AI-assisted tools such as multilingual transcription and emergent memory mapping will support rather than replace nor erase these relational narratives, tracing how identities and memories unfold across Atlanta’s neighborhoods. This work expands identity scholarship in Applied Linguistics and engages Chicana feminism (Anzaldúa, 2018) on borderlands, nepantla, and multiplicity. These frameworks guide the interpretation of participants’ stories and artworks, ensuring that AI remains response-able (Barad, 2007) to cultural complexity and community care.