ACAM Dialogues Podcast

Join Nathan and Rhea in conversation with Chris Chueng, Vancouver journalist and author of “Under the White Gaze: Solving the Problem of Race and Representation in Canadian Journalism”. Chris speaks to how journalists can write stories that defy the white gaze, how readers can question who stories are for, and how to be a more conscious consumer of media. Nathan and Rhea also continue their new segment “The Watchlist” discussing Shogun, Late Bloomers, and Culinary Class Wars. 

This week, get to know your new ACAM Dialogues hosts: Rhea Mann and Nathan Ko. Rhea and Nathan introduce themselves to listeners, share their respective migration stories to so-called Canada, speak about their passions and interests.

The new podcast team also shared their plan for future episodes, and introduced a new segment: The Watchlist. This week Rhea and Nathan discuss Fly Me to the Moon, The Juno Awards, and Past Lives.

Tune in now.

To celebrate ACAM’s 10 year anniversary, this month we have a special conversation with Mary and Tosh Kitagawa - two Japanese-Canadian advocates who were instrumental in the creation of the ACAM program. Tune in as we speak with Mary and Tosh about fighting for recognition of the 76 interned Japanese-Canadian students, the necessity of speaking up, and how we might find community in the process.

Tune in now.

–

Guest bio - Mary and her husband Tosh Kitagawa are educators and advocates, best known for their campaign to recognize the 76 Japanese Canadian students who were forcibly removed from the University of British Columbia during internment.

⁠ACAM Welcome Back Party & Journal Launch⁠

Health—whether physical or mental well-being—is a crucial focus in many of our lives. Yet, it becomes even more complex within the context of diasporic communities. This episode dives into these intricacies, emphasizing the transformative power of centering joy.

For this month’s episode, we sat down with Dr. Benjamin Cheung who teaches ACAM 320B: Health amongst Asian diaspora in Canada to talk joy, cultural psychology, and his experience teaching the course.

Tune in now.

– 

Guest bio - Dr. Benjamin Cheung is a Lecturer and Indigenous Initiatives Coordinator in the Department of Psychology at the University of British Columbia.

Like many of us travelling for the first time, Isa’s first solo-trip to Asia brought about a lot of conflicting feelings, questions and thoughts — What privileges might our passports and accents afford us as we move through the world? What does it mean to be marked foreign or have to deliberately mark yourself foreign in places where everyone looks like you? What happens when we voyage to places and find ourselves caught in the middle of existing conflicts larger than ourselves?

Hoping to find some answers, this month she sat down with Chris Patterson, author of Stamped: an anti travel novel, and lead developer of “Stamped: an anti travel game” to discuss these hard questions around travel, privilege and identity.

Tune in now.

----------------------------------------------------------------

Guest bio - Christopher B. Patterson is an Associate Professor in the Social Justice Institute at the University of British Columbia. His research focuses on transpacific discourses of literature, games, and films through the lens of empire studies, queer theory and creative writing.

This week is part 2 of our mini-series looking behind-the-scenes at the creation of "The Paper Trail" exhibit, featured at the Chinese Canadian Museum in Vancouver's Chinatown.

As a part of the exhibit for the in remembrance of the 100 year anniversary of the Chinese Exclusion Act, two documentary short films, "Remembering Chinese Bachelors" & "Stories of Repeal and Reunion" were produced to highlight the narratives of those who were affected.

In this episode, we sit down with Daniel Chen and Victoria So, two INSTRCC research assistants who worked on the films to the questions: What was the process of making films for the exhibit? And how did the exhibit spaces get designed?

Gavin Luke / At First Light / courtesy of 

The Chinese Canadian Museum (CCM) opened in Vancouver’s Chinatown on July 1st 2023, 100 years after the passing of the 1923 Chinese Immigration Act (also known as the Chinese Exclusion Act). Its feature exhibit The Paper Trail to the 1923 Exclusion Act holds the identity documents that individuals of Chinese descent were forced to carry and the personal stories behind them. 

This week’s ACAM Dialogues podcast episode is part 1 of a series of two mini-episodes where we do a deep dive into the behind-the-scenes of the Paper Trail exhibit. In part 1, we speak to Naomi Louie and Andrew Sandfort-Marchese, who worked as members of the Archival Biographies Team at CCM to explore the questions:  What goes into the planning of something like the Paper Trail exhibit? And why does it matter?

Gavin Luke / At First Light / courtesy of www.epidemicsound.com

This episode is in remembrance of Y-Dang Troeung who was a beloved teacher, researcher, friend, mentor, advocate, colleague and community member in the ACAM orbit. Her first book, Refugee Lifeworlds: The Afterlife of the Cold War in Cambodia was published in August 2022, and her memoir, Landbridge: Life in Fragments was published posthumously. Prior to her passing in November of 2022, she also had been developing a course on public intellectualism with a few members of her cohort at the Peter wall Institute for Advanced Studies.

This episode contains interviews with MV Ramana, Olivia Lim and Lindsey Palmer, and is meant to be a part of a larger on-going dialogue about Y-Dang’s legacy as a scholar and teacher as we continue to examine her work and remember her.

This week's episode is a roundtable discussion with the ACAM student staff: Emily Law, Kaitlyn Lee, Vanessa Lee and Victoria Sin. We discuss identity, our migration stories, and the work we do at ACAM. We also have a message left by Szu Shen, ACAM's Program Manager for our ACAM voicemails on joy segment!

Our first episode of 2024 is an interview with Jane Komori, a postdoctoral research fellow in UBC’s history department. This week we discuss labor history in Western Canada, migrant ecologies, and food systems. We also have two messages left by Victoria Sin and Emily Law for our ACAM voicemails on joy segment.

https://history.ubc.ca/profile/jane-komori/