Three judges unanimously ranked number one Yang’s paper titled “Lost Island of Strangers from Another Shore: Historical Chinatown in Eureka.”
“You should be particularly proud, given that you were the only undergraduate student to submit a paper,” an awards official said.
“Lost Island of Strangers” makes use of newspaper archives and landscape studies as primary sources to evoke “the racialization of place” in Eureka’s historical Chinatown, according to the judges. Yang’s paper “makes a strong contribution to ethnic geography,” they said.
Yang will present her paper Friday, Apr. 15 at the Association of American Geographers annual meeting in Seattle and receive the award as an invited guest at the association’s banquet.
The paper began as a class project in HSU Professor Joy Adam's Geographic Research and Writing Class.
Yang will graduate from HSU next month and is eligible for a summer internship with the National Council on U.S./Arab Relations in Washington, D.C.
A native of Xi’an, China, Yang is scheduled this fall to enter the master of science Human Geography Research program at the London School of Economics and Political Science.
Humboldt State and China’s Xi’an International Studies University formed a partnership in 2006 for student and faculty exchanges, joint academic programs, mutual research and scholarship, and service projects. HSU faculty members teach on a regular basis at the new Humboldt College on the Xi’an campus. Last June, HSU and Xi’an awarded dual degrees in business and international studies to the college’s first graduating class of 15 students.