The discussion will take place on Monday, April 6 from 5:30-8 p.m. at the Mingei International Museum in Balboa Park. Cassel is a longtime CSUSM faculty member whose expertise is Chinese American history and literature. Yee was among the founding staff of Instructional and Information Technology Services (IITS) at CSUSM in 1990 before proceeding to earn a master’s degree in history from the university.

Titled “The Unexpected Story of the San Diego Chinese Community: From Small Chinatown to Thriving Ecosystem,” the talk will celebrate the impact and history of San Diego’s Chinese community from early Chinatown to the places that anchor it today. It also will include photos and a Q&A session with Cassel and Yee.

The event is presented by the House of China in Balboa Park, in collaboration with the San Diego Chinese Historical Museum and the Chinese School of San Diego. It includes a light meal.

The cost is free for House of China members, volunteers and students, and $15 for all others.

Advance registration is required because seating is limited. To register, text David Seid at 858-699-1900.

Media Contact

Brian Hiro, Communications Specialist
bhiro@csusm.edu | Office: 760-750-7306

It was just part of her normal daily life.

“I was diagnosed with cystic fibrosis before I was even born,” Ferguson said.

Also known as CF, cystic fibrosis is a genetic disorder that affects the body's mucus-producing glands, causing damage to the lungs, digestive system and other organs.

Ferguson still takes medication and has treatments, but medical advances allow her to live a relatively normal life as a college student in her second year at Cal State San Marcos.

In fact, Ferguson is doing so well that she is among the candidates for the AbbVie CF Scholarship, which honors students who are thriving with cystic fibrosis. Public voting accounts for about 30% of the evaluation. Supporters can vote for Ferguson online or by texting "VOTE23" to 35309 through Sept. 18. Winners will be announced Oct. 23. Other evaluation factors are based on academic record and extracurricular activities, an essay and a creative presentation.

Ferguson received a $3,000 AbbVie scholarship last year and is hoping this year to win the top award, a $22,000 “Thriving Student Scholarship.”

“AbbVie is a pharmaceutical company, and I have taken their meds in the past, so it was just sort of a household name for me,” Ferguson said. “To have a scholarship like that and be involved with a company like that is really nice.”

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, the predicted survival age for people with cystic fibrosis was about 28 years old. Ferguson represents a new generation of young adults with CF who, thanks to medical advances, are living significantly longer. Life expectancy has improved to about 68, according to the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation.

Ferguson has seen the improvements firsthand. The more than four dozen daily pills she took as a child is down to 20. She said CF primarily affects her lungs and digestive system, and she also has a mild case of diabetes related to it. In addition to the medication, she does an hour of daily treatment and closely watches her diet.

“I don’t even drink caffeine,” she said. “I can’t miss out on my health because it’ll plummet really fast.”

Ferguson has found a supportive environment at CSUSM. Disability Student Services ensured that she received a single room in campus housing, which was vital because of the daily treatment she requires. A literature and writing studies major, Ferguson was thrilled to land an on-campus job in Kellogg Library during her first year and she also started writing this fall for CSUSM’s student newspaper, “The Cougar Chronicle.”

“I’ve learned to manage things and understand what I can and can’t do,” Ferguson said. “And I haven’t really had a problem in a long time because of all my treatments and medications.”

Media Contact

Eric Breier, Interim Assistant Director of Editorial and External Affairs

ebreier@csusm.edu | Office: 760-750-7314

After all, years later she owns an MFA from San Diego State in filmmaking and is currently pursuing a second master’s degree in literature and writing studies from Cal State San Marcos. 

She’s earning the latter while also working full time as the administrative coordinator with the LTWR department. She’s also a wife and mom to three children. 

Creating art has always been inside Mendez, and her work reflects that. She will show her documentary “Bad Child” on March 4 in Arts 111 as part of CSUSM’s Arts & Lectures series.  

The 13-minute film will be shown at noon, followed by a brief discussion from Mendez. She’ll also lead a panel discussing the impacts of sexual assault, how trauma is expressed artistically and the many resources available to survivors. Staff from Student Health & Counseling Services and faculty and staff from the department of psychology and the School of Arts will sit on the interdisciplinary panel. 

As with most A&L events, CSUSM students, faculty, staff and alumni are free. Community members are $5. Tickets are available online. 

The topic is heavy. She wrote and produced it as a retelling of her personal sexual abuse as a child primarily at the hands of her step grandfather.  

“So the film is entirely my story,” Mendez said. “It goes through every kind of what I see as different stages of the outcomes. I was sexually abused as a child multiple times, so this is something that impacted me throughout my entire lifespan. The film goes through different developmental stages and how it affected me throughout that time.” 

The film also has interviews with psychologists who speak to the technical side of recovering and healing. Mendez included facts from her own research as well as statistics on recovery.  

Her own personal story is woven throughout the film. 

She sees the event as an opportunity to discuss a subject that still doesn’t get enough attention on college campuses, although she is quick to praise the work done by SHCS. 

“There’s a lack of people who talk to their children about sexual assault,” said Mendez, 42. “It's not discussed enough as kids are growing up. It's ignored. So I think a lot of young people get to college and they don't think about these risks, and they don't think that these things do happen. And then when they happen to someone they know, or they're aware that these things are occurring, they don't know what to do. They don't know how to help. They don't know how to positively contribute to such an important issue. And so those are all things I want to touch on.” 

Filled with expert interviews and personal narratives, the film touches on her experiences while also placing a hard emphasis on the importance of parental and caregiver support in the aftermath.  

Healing is an individual journey, one that could be made much longer and more difficult without the presence of support.  

That’s particularly important when the abuse happens to a child, according to Mendez. 

“How that event impacts you is greatly determined by the support you receive or don't receive when you disclose that event, it is so critical for someone who has had horrible things happen to them,” Mendez said. “After disclosure is supported appropriately, they (a victim/survivor) will likely have less severe outcomes compared to someone who might have had something happen and they tell someone, and the person doesn't believe them, or they tell them they're a liar. There's such a big impact.” 

The switch in pursuits to visual arts as an undergraduate student at a small liberal arts college in Portland wasn’t as much of a stretch as it seems because it aligned with Mendez’s interests. And when she took a film class in the SDSU MFA program in 2018, it sparked a passion for filmmaking, leading to a transition from fine art to film. 

While some people choose activities when they have free time, Mendez simply doesn’t have much. Instead, she makes time for her creative outlets partly by involving her family. 

Her first film — a short narrative about a girl and her grandma — was inspired by her childhood experiences – memories of making tamales with family and listening to music, which often sparked creative ideas. In the film, the girl goes into one of her grandma's rooms and starts using her sewing materials and tries to make herself a dress. At the end, the grandma comes in and offers to help her as a form of connection through action. 

Mendez finds inspiration from both real-life experiences and music, particularly non-lyrical film scores. Her art is personal, often reflecting childhood experiences and family dynamics as someone who grew up in Chula Vista but also lived in Florida, Connecticut and other parts of San Diego and L.A. 

In addition to making documentary films, she’s an accomplished painter. She painted her daughter for a decade in a series that explored themes of childhood innocence and the contrast between child and adult expressions. 

“That was obviously a very personal series,” Mendez said of her now 16-year-old daughter. “I was, in a sense, reexamining my own childhood through these pictures of her. And then when I went off and started making films, I did some animations, and all of those had to do with my childhood. And then the film about the dress. There were elements of my childhood that were put into that.” 

Her love for color and patterns is evident in all her work, from painting to filmmaking to her personal style. 

Mendez of course finds it challenging to balance full-time work, family responsibilities and creative pursuits. She has slowed down on creative work to focus more on family time, especially as her three children — one in high school and two in elementary school — have more activities. 

Mendez’s goal is to educate and inspire collective improvement in supporting victims and addressing sexual assault. Healing is a process, and it’s one that is different for every survivor. 

She reported her abuser during the making of the documentary, which took a long time to be processed. He was arrested the same week the film was completed in spring 2022, adding another level of emotional impact to the project.  

Just last month — three decades after the abuse began — he was sentenced to six years in prison. At age 87, he will most likely spend the rest of his life behind bars. 

The reporting process was challenging with delays and emotional tolls, but Mendez felt it was important to go through it at the pace it required. The documentary serves as a testament to her persistence. The long journey of reporting and seeking justice is over, but the healing continues. 

“I won't say there's a real resolution because I do feel like when someone experiences sexual assault of any sort, no matter how minor it is, it affects you forever,” Mendez said. “It'll affect you less if you handle it, you face it, you deal with it, you process it and process it and process it. I do believe it gets better, and some of that is shown in the film. It's not all just dark and negative. It’s more factual and just this is how it was and is. 

 “I want people to take something away from it as far as how can we be better? Just collectively, parents, teachers, mentors, people who are in those positions to receive that information, those disclosures. How can we as a community, as society, be more supportive and be better?” 

Mendez the chemist and/or mathematician never surfaced, and probably for good reason as her art has and will inspire others.  

But perhaps there’s something to order, problem solving and truth that chemistry and math provide that also speaks to who she is.  

Whatever she chooses to do with her career, it’s clear Mendez is one thing above all — resilient.  

“I want to focus on how to help people who have experienced that because when someone discloses sexual assault, the reactions that they receive to that disclosure impact the outcomes of that assault, sometimes more than the assault itself,” Mendez said. “It has such a profound impact on how someone heals or is able to cope that it is really critical that people have an idea of the language to use and how to address those situations.  

“And the reality is this does happen, or people have experienced it in their past. But it still affects them, of course.  To know how to interact with someone about those topics who has had those experiences, that’s really important.” 

Media Contact

Eric Breier, Interim Assistant Director of Editorial and External Affairs

ebreier@csusm.edu | Office: 760-750-7314

As a longtime professor of literature and writing studies at Cal State San Marcos, Lush is a member of the Western Literature Association and a past president of the organization. During the WLA’s annual conference in 2015 in Reno, Nev., she engaged in the standard hallway conversations with many colleagues from other universities, and in the process discovered that a few of them share her fascination with an increasingly popular sub-genre known as the weird Western. 

They agreed that it would make a ripe subject for a book, and over the next few years Lush and her co-editors collaborated on what became “Weird Westerns: Race, Gender, Genre,” an essay collection that was published last summer by University of Nebraska Press. 

Now, nearly a year after the book’s publication, Lush has an opportunity for an even bigger prize. “Weird Westerns” has been nominated for the Locus Awards as one of 10 finalists in the category of best nonfiction work. The Locus Awards are among the most prestigious in the area of science fiction writing, recognizing everything from bestselling authors to academic texts. They are presented by the Locus Science Fiction Foundation, which produces Locus: The Magazine of The Science Fiction & Fantasy Field.  

Lush will find out if her book won on June 26 during a virtual Locus Awards event, but she already feels like a winner. 

“The nomination was really exciting and unexpected news,” said Lush, who’s also the chair of the Department of Literature and Writing Studies. “Nominees are determined by readers of science fiction, so it means that the book is reaching a larger audience outside of academia. That’s always great when you know that the scholarship you produced is reaching a wider community.”  

A weird Western is a hybrid genre that fuses the traditional notion of the Western – think John Wayne and Clint Eastwood – with speculative fiction, an umbrella term that encompasses science fiction, fantasy or supernatural horror. Recent examples of weird Westerns that have gained currency in popular culture include the HBO series “Westworld” and the Disney Plus show “The Mandalorian.”  

In her book, Lush and her co-editors – Kerry Fine, Michael Johnson and Sara Spurgeon – compile essays that analyze a wide range of texts, films and TV series, exploring how they “challenge conventional representations by destabilizing or subverting the centrality of the heterosexual, white, male hero but also often surprisingly reinforce existing paradigms in their inability to imagine an existence outside of colonial frameworks.” 

Lush’s contribution to the book is based in part on research that she presented at CSUSM’s faculty colloquium, hosted by the Faculty Center, in fall 2016 by way of a lecture titled “Dangerous Liaisons: Romances Past and Present and the Myth of America.” Her book chapter also incorporates material from one of her upper-division courses, LTWR 334A: The Western, which Lush gradually has adapted from its foundation in early American literature and settler colonial studies to include more “weird” elements, as a means of making the teaching fresher and more relevant to the lives and experiences of her students.  

“Bringing in the weird Western was a way for me to show my students an up-to-date approach of, ‘Why does it matter to study these past texts?’ ” Lush said. “Well, partly because they inform the media that students consume now. So to understand a popular weird Western like ‘Firefly’ or ‘Westworld,’ you have to understand a little bit about that literary past.  

“The history of the genre of the Western is a very complicated one, and there are erasures. The volume that we published is really looking at how the weird Western can address significant erasures like roles for women, roles for people of color. And it was also a way to make sure that students are getting a holistic view of how communities get represented and written into, or written out of, different literary histories.”  

Lush and her co-editors had such a good experience collaborating on the first book that they’re now hard at work on a sequel. The tentative title for Volume 2 is “Hell Bent for Leather: Sex and Sexuality in the Weird Western,” and this summer the group will be evaluating proposals and draft manuscripts.  

“We're excited to continue this work,” Lush said. “I think there's a bigger conversation about weird Westerns out there that people want to have, and we're happy to help facilitate that. I hope that people find the work useful as a way to make conversations relevant around social justice issues in literature.”  

Media Contact

Brian Hiro, Communications Specialist

bhiro@csusm.edu | Office: 760-750-7306