Asian Diaspora Studies

B.A., Keio University
M.A., Simon Fraser University
PhD., Simon Fraser University

Ayaka Yoshimizu is Assistant Professor of Teaching at the Department of Asian Studies. She also teaches and coordinates Arts courses for the UBC-Ritsumeikan Exchange Programs. Ayaka teaches courses on Japanese literature, films, media, audiovisual translation, and transpacific histories and cultures. She is a Green College Leading Scholar in 2021-23.

Courses taught and coordinated at UBC include:
ASIA 254: Sex, Gender, and Sexuality in Japanese Literature and Films
ASIA 354: Introduction to Japanese Cinema
ASIA 463: Japanese Documentary Media
JAPN 465: Japanese Media and Translation
ASTU 201 & 202: Canada, Japan and the Pacific
CDST 250: Introduction to Canada

Areas of Disciplinary Research:
Transpacific media and cultures; (forced) migration; cultural memory; sensory studies; performance ethnography

Areas of Pedagogical Research and Projects:
Decolonial and anti-racist pedagogy; indigenizing curriculum; international education; embodied narrative as pedagogy; audio-visual translation as translingual & transcultural pedagogy

Book:
Doing Ethnography in the Wake of the Displacement of Transnational Sex Workers in Yokohama: Sensuous Remembering. Routledge, 2021.

Journal Articles:

“Unsettling Memories of Japanese Sex Workers: Carceral Mobilities of the Transpacific Underground at the Turn of the 20th Century.” Topia: Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies, 43, 2021: 24-43.

“Doing Performance Ethnography among the Dead, Remembering Lives of Japanese Migrants in Transpacific Sex Trade.” Performance Matters 4(3), 2018: 137-154.

Co-author, with Julia Aoki, “Walking Histories, Un/making Places: Walking Tours as Ethnography of Place.” Space & Culture 18(3), 2015: 273-284.

“Bodies That Remember: Gleaning Scenic Fragments of A Brothel District in Yokohama.” Cultural Studies, 29(3), 2014: 450-475.

“Nanay: Drawing a New Landscape of Diasporic Mothers.” Topia: Canadian Journal of Cultural Studies, 27, 2012: 153-172.

“Chopsticks, Phone-Bells and Farms: Fuyuko Taira’s Diasporic Spatial Practice.” Gender, Place, and Culture, 19(3), 2012: 313-326.

“‘Hello, War Brides’: Heteroglossia, Counter-Memory, Auto/biographical Work of Japanese War Brides.” Meridians: Feminism, Race, Transnationalism, 10(1), 2010: 111-136.

Book Chapters

“Sex Workers, Waitresses, and Wives: The Disciplining of Women’s Bodies in the Tairiku Nippo (1908-1920).” In Digital Meijis: Revisualizing Modern Japanese History at 150. Vancouver, BC: BCcampus, 2018. 

Aoki, Julia & Yoshimizu, Ayaka. “Walking, Sensing and Making Places: A Reflection on Ethnography of Walking in Yokohama and Vancouver.” Communication, culture, and making meaning in the city: Ethnographic engagements in urban environments (pp.111-125). Lanham: Lexington Books, 2017.

“Bodies That Remember: Gleaning Scenic Fragments of A Brothel District in Yokohama.” In Scene Thinking: Cultural Studies from the Scenes Perspective. Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2017. [Reprinted from Cultural Studies]

“‘Affective Foreigners Save Our Elder Citizens’: Media Discourse of Indonesian Migrant Workers in Japan.” In The Political Economy of Affects and Emotions in East Asia (pp.137-153). London; New York: Routledge, 2014.