Virtual Talk: Refugee Archives across the Transpacific: Activating Anecdotes and Family Photography – A Conversation

Lindsey Nkem Announcement
Subject Fields
Art, Art History & Visual Studies, Asian History / Studies, Immigration & Migration History / Studies, Southeast Asian History / Studies, Social Sciences

Dear colleagues,

As part of our 2021-2022 Noted Scholars Speaker's Series, Entangled Knowledges: Practices of Dreaming, Reflecting, and Being Present, The University of British Columbia (UBC) Social Justice Institute is pleased to announce Refugee Archives across the Transpacific: Activating Anecdotes and Family Photography – A Conversation with Dr. Thy Phu and Dr. Y-Dang Troeung

Abstract: How do we document the undocumented? Policy documents, legal briefs, administrative files, and so on feature refugees as objects of study. This conversation, however, will aim to shed light on the resources that refugees draw on to activate their own, personal archives, to enrich, nuance, and even counter the seemingly objective reports associated with the so-called humanitarian regime. Thy Phu examines how domestic images might help trace connections and estrangements, the visual kinships that tie family members dispersed by war and other forms of violence. Y-Dang Troeung turns to a discussion of the archives of Cambodian refugee life, considering the logic of “Cambodia’s minor anecdoting” and the family anecdote as an interruption of this Cold War episteme.

This talk will take place on October 27, 2021 at 12.00PM PDT (Pacific Daylight Time). More information including the poster, speaker bios, and the registration link can be found here: https://grsj.arts.ubc.ca/events/event/refugee-archives-across-the-transpacific-activating-anecdotes-and-family-photography-a-conversation/

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The Social Justice Institute's 2021-2022 Noted Scholars Speaker's Series focuses on broader questions related to social justice and epistemic justice while featuring other knowledges outside Europe and North America's geopolitical borders. 

The Speaker's Series offers a dynamic space for exchange and introduces the work of scholars from The Social Justice Institute, UBC, locally, nationally and internationally; featuring scholars' critical ideas and creative work at radical edges of scholarly, artistic, and activist work. The interdisciplinary series fosters critical and creative dialogues on current questions, theoretical and methodological approaches and practice interventions around social justice, knowledge construction and oppression. Under the theme Entangled Knowledges: Practices of Dreaming, Reflecting, and Being Present, speakers so far have included Dr. Diana Taylor on performance, memory, and repair and Dr. Becki Ross historicizing the criminalization of sex work, racialised whorephobia, and fugitive queerness under settler-colonial rule. This semester we look forward to welcoming Dr. Dian Million (November 17, 2021) and Dr. Vernadette Gonzalez and Dr. Hōkūlani K. Aikau (Kanaka ‘Ōiwi) (December 1, 2021), as well as to speakers like Tara Meyer, Mara Viveros, Rita Wong, and Hortense Spillers in 2022.

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