Faculty of Art
What can popular culture – in the forms of memoirs, films, music, theatre, performance art, video games, and drag performances – tell us about the place of Asian Canadians in local, national, continental and transnational contexts? How and why has the cultural representation of “Asian Canadian” changed over time? What are the material implications of such changes?
ACAM_V 250 – Asian Canadians in Popular Culture examines popular culture as a site in and through which Asian Canadian identities and collectivities are produced. The depiction of Asian Canadians in diverse realms of popular culture, including pop culture created by Asian Canadians themselves, will be used as an entry point into our examination of Asian Canadians’ socio-economic conditions, histories and political communities. Particular emphasis will be placed on the role of popular culture in producing Asian Canadians as racialized, gendered, classed and sexualized subjects, as well as the complicated agency in negotiating, contesting, consuming, reproducing, repurposing and otherwise participating in popular culture. We will also consider the transnationalisms of Asian Canadian popular cultures and their relationships to multiple nation-building projects, diasporic and migratory circuits, and global socio-economic and political formations.
In 2024W, ACAM_V 250 will be taught by a new instructor, Allen Baylosis! Allen Baylosis (he/him) is currently pursuing a PhD in Gender, Race, Sexuality, and Social Justice at the University of British Columbia. His research focuses on contemporary aesthetic performances, popular art and culture, theorizing through the lens of performance studies, transnational queer mess materialism, and the Filipinx diaspora. He holds an MA in Performance Studies (New York University) and a BA in Speech Communication (University of the Philippines Diliman).
*Please note that ACAM 250 does not go towards the minor because it’s not a 300/400 level class.
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