A Year of Calm, Compassion and Continuous Commitment
A lot of things passed since our e-newsletter launched at the Institute’s 10th year anniversary in September 2022. We celebrated the hiring of our two new tenure-track faculty members Dr. Alifa Bandali and Dr. Rosanne Sia, who are already making immense teaching and service contributions on top of their ongoing research projects. At the November commencement exercises, we celebrated our two new Ph.D. graduates – Dr. AJ Lowik and Dr. Marika Yeo – and combined batches of new Masters, Undergraduate Majors and Minors who were not able to attend previous graduation marches.
The Institute gathered together in December to condole with and comfort our colleague Chris Patterson who lost his wife, Dr. Y-Dang Troeung (Associate Professor at the English Department) in late November. Y-Dang was an outstanding contributor to our unit as one of our Noted Scholars Speakers, her last major public talk, and to the Asian Canadian Asian Migration (ACAM) Program supported by GRSJ faculty. We paid tribute to Y-Dang through a two-part Book Reading Series of her major accomplishment, Refugee Lifeworld, led by our Graduate Students Association, and a posthumous book launch with two panel discussions held in March. Even before its launch, Refugee Lifeworld is already making waves in Asian American, Asian Canadian migration, refugee and critical disability studies. We look forward to continuing Y-Dang’s legacy and commitment to enhancing migration, refugee and disability studies education and research at UBC ACAM, GRSJ, English, and beyond.
Amidst a few incidents of classroom disruptions due to heavy snowfall and unruly transphobic guests, we remain grateful our community remained calm and safe, free from the worst types of cybersecurity and physical attacks experienced on other campuses. Still, we remain vigilant warning our faculty, staff and students to immediately report any troublesome observations and disturbances before they grow.
Beside our Noted Scholar Series, we supported many laudable events on campus, often in partnership with other ARTS units and community networks. Our main criteria for agreeing to such partnership and co-sponsorship requests are: synergy with advancing GRSJ mandate, mission and values; opportunities for our faculty, student and staff learning and professional development; record of past collaboration with the Institute; new opportunities for collaborative work and raising the Institute’s profile; familiarity with the people and programs of requesting parties within and outside UBC; and absence of any conflict of interests and schedules with GRSJ people, programs and projects.
We are looking forward to a major community media collaboration to show the award-winning documentary film, “She Said,” a film on how investigative journalists, reporters and editors pursued the truth to stop a serial predator. It highlights the courage of survivors, such as guest speaker Rowena Chiu, whose fortitude helped spark a national conversation and propel the #MeToo movement. Rowena will speak after the film showing on June 6, Tuesday at the UBC Robson Square downtown.
Looking ahead, our big accomplishment coming up in July 2023 is the work start at the Institute of our two new senior faculty hires – Professor Jasbir Puar (Rutgers University) and Professor Jemima Pierre (UC-Los Angeles) – made possible through support from the Presidential Academic Excellence Initiative (PAEI) in the field of Global Racial Studies. We hope to do a full feature of Professors Puar and Pierre in a future newsletter issue in September.
Speaking of September – the month marks our 11th Anniversary and Alumni Homecoming. We hope to celebrate this yearly event through talks, music, dance and performance. We welcome your ideas, suggestions and contributions to make this event a truly memorable one.
