What Does Being "Chinese" Mean in the Diaspora? + Asian Joy | Aydin Quach | #96 #aapiheritagemonth

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Today's episode features Aydin Quach(he/they).
MA student in History @UBC and Ph.D. in American Studies and Ethnicity @USC

We talked about:

1. What does being "CHINESE" mean in the Diaspora?
2. Aydin's upbringing as a Chinese Canadian growing up/living in Vancouver, Canada
3. Harmonizing Chinese/Asian identity with Queerness
4. Asian Joy and our right as immigrants/descendants of immigrants to have that without guilt 

His Bio

I was raised in what is now known as Vancouver on the traditional, ancestral, and stolen territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm, səlilwətaɬ, and Skwxwú7mesh First Nations. I am an uninvited settler on their land. I come from a family of immigrants to Canada who themselves were immigrants to Southeast Asia, having lived in Southeast Asia for generations. My mother’s family is part of the Stateless Chinese population in Brunei Darussalam and my father is Chinese-Vietnamese from Vietnam.   Drawing from my own identity as part of the Sinophone diaspora, I became interested in understanding how those who have complex migration histories understand their own identity. This is how I first got into the discipline of History and considered it as a prism through which I could develop and magnify my research questions. Questions around what is “Chinese” across the Sinophone diaspora are of particular interest to me.  This extends of course as well to other intersections of my identity as well such as my position as a Queer Asian individual in academia.

Research Areas

- Sex, Gender, the Body, and Sexuality 
- Modern East and Southeast Asian History
- Migration Studies 
-Queer Theory
- Sensory Studies
- Musicology
- Music History
- Cultural Studies
My research primarily pertains to the research of culture, sex, gender, and sexuality both in a historical lens as well as a contemporary sense. I am interested in how culture develops and how culture shapes our perceptions of self. I bounce back and forth in my research between the historical past and the present as part of an ongoing effort to research how identity and culture are intertwined. Below you will find a briefing about my current projects.

CURRENT PROJECTS

Hardening Men: Masculinity, Nationalism, and Leadership in Post Colonial Southeast Asia (Singapore, Malaysia)I am interested in how manhood and masculinity are constructed through military service. Moreover, how is masculinity co-opted into being an issue of national security for newly created countries in Southeast Asia?

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