The Cambodian Community History & Archive Project (CamCHAP) is a collaboration between California State University Dominguez Hills, California State University Long Beach, and the Historical Society of Long Beach. The founders and co-authors of the website are linguistic anthropologist, Dr. Susan Needham, and applied cultural anthropologist, Dr. Karen Quintiliani. We have each conducted research and worked in the Long Beach Cambodian Community since 1988. We started collaborating on a history of the community in 2002. Through our ethnographic, linguistic and applied research, we have been able to bring together multiple perspectives on the social, cultural, political and economic changes shaping the Cambodian experience, the City of Long Beach, and the fabric of American society in the wake of Southeast Asian refugee resettlement. Since Cambodians have drawn upon a 2000 year history to express and define what it means to be Khmer in America, we seek to understand how people differ in their experiences, struggles and interpretations of events and symbols. We therefore do not isolate people or events; instead we are interested in how people (Cambodian and non-Cambodian) vary in their experiences, struggles, and interpretations of each other. We are also interested in how people share beliefs and why certain aspects of culture are emphasized. We view the practice of culture as fluid and contingent. This is how anthropologists attempt to see the world – as multi-layered and shifting based upon social constructions of race, class, gender, nationality, and sexuality each of which bear upon how we experience our lives and each other.
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Project Directors
Susan Needham, Ph.D., Professor of Anthropology, CSU Dominguez Hills Karen Quintiliani, Ph.D., Chair and Professor of Anthropology, CSU Long Beach Project Staff
Julie Bartolotto, Executive Director, Historical Society of LB
Amy Ovando, Project Assistant Kassandra Chhay, Student Assistant, Anthropology, CSULB Violet Paley, Graduate Assistant, Anthropology, CSULB
Websight Design
Virak Seng, Web Designer & Programmer
Former Student Assistants
Joseph Bolinger, Videographer, Graduate Assistant, Anthropology CSULB Sarah Cote, Graduate Assistant, Anthropology CSULB Brian Delas Armas, Graduate Assistant, Anthropology, CSULB Elsie Heredia, Student Assistant, Anthropology, CSUDH Letticia Montoya, Project Assistant Adam Neilson, Graduate Assistant, Anthropology, CSULB Diana Ochoa, Student Assistant, Anthropology, CSUDH Prumsodun Ok, Videographer David Rapport, Student Assistant, Liberal Studies, CSUDH Alexxandra Salazar, Student Assistant, Anthropology, CSUDH Katie Stahl-Kovell, Student Assistant, Anthropology and Dance, CSUDH Adriana Vigil, Graduate Assistant, Anthropology, CSULB Julia Wignall, Graduate Assistant, Anthropology, CSULB
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