About
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. As a member of the educational leadership (EL) stream, she focuses on undergraduate teaching, curriculum development, scholarship of teaching and learning, and other teaching and learning projects that primarily serve the interests of teaching faculty and graduate teaching assistants across units. Sheis also a Communication and Membership Coordinator of the Educational Leadership Network Engagement Team (ELNET)
Ayaka Yoshimizu teaches courses on Japanese literature, films, and media, and transpacific histories, politics, and cultures. Courses taught and coordinated at UBC include:
· Sex, Gender, and Sexuality in Japanese Literature and Films
· Introduction to Japanese Cinema
· Japanese Documentary Media (first time offering in 2020/21)
· Canada, Japan and the Pacific
· Introduction to Canada
Research
Research Interests:
Equity and inclusivity in classroom; decolonizing and indigenizing curriculum; international education; embodiment and performance as method and pedagogy; transpacific media, cultures and spaces; (forced) migration; cultural memory; sensory studies.
Current educational leadership projects include:
· “Indigeneity in Asia” curriculum development
· Development of PD resources and a network for UBC instructors with disabilities and illnesses (funded by the Equity & Inclusion Office)
Publications
Journal Articles:
“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. (https://pressbooks.bccampus.ca/meijiat150/)
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.
Creative Work
“homing.” In Maia Joseph et al. (eds.) Tracing the Lines: Writing in Honour of Roy Miki (pp.106-141). Vancouver: Talonbooks, 2012.