Faculty of Art
Katie is a Han Chinese student and settler of Cantonese, Taiwanese and Vietnamese descent, born in the United States on the land of the Muwekma Ohlone Tribe of the San Francisco Bay Area and raised in Shanghai, Taiwan, Toronto and Vancouver. She is currently studying and working on the unceded, ancestral territories of the Musqueam, Tsleil-Waututh, and Squamish peoples. She is pursuing a Bachelor of Media Studies with a minor in Asian Canadian and Asian Migration Studies. Through her studies, she is interested in the intersection of media and technology and the community.
Why did you declare a minor in ACAM? What drew you to the program?
As someone who never had a place to call my hometown, like many, I was confused about my identity. As a kid, when I was living in Shanghai and Taiwan, I always felt proud of my American and Canadian background…more so than my Chinese blood. It wasn’t until I moved to Canada and then back to China that I learned to appreciate my complete identity. In my first year of university, I learned about ACAM through various channels. ACAM 350 was a core plus course in BMS and I learned more about ACAM from student class visits. After taking ACAM 350, I realized that there were so many other people with similar struggles and thoughts. I was able to talk about topics that I always wanted to talk about and was curious about. I was fascinated by each and every one of our discussions. When I learned that other courses I really enjoyed counted towards the ACAM minor, I knew this was a program I wanted to be involved in.
What is one piece of advice you would give your first-year self?
Don’t worry, let life take its course and everything will work out 🙂
Have you completed any projects through or related to an ACAM course? If so, could you share your experiences and, if possible, share a link to your project.
Over the summer of 2020, I took ASIA 495: Folklore with Adheesh Sathaye and created a short film documenting how my grandma’s food brought the family together during the pandemic. In the same summer, I also took HIST 480 with Henry Yu and explored the food in Chinatown through a pitch for a media project. The combination of these two courses and the projects created through the classes brought me a lot closer to my family during this pandemic than ever before. I was able to learn about their migration story and their experiences in Canada— things we never would have talked about without my ACAM courses. The film from ASIA 495 was a finalist and received honourable mention for the Emerging Media Awards. Here is the link to the film: https://youtu.be/36TBzf571b8
