AP Forum: Student Summer Research (Fall 2024—Session 3)

Each semester, APSI organizes several events under the banner of our Asia-Pacific Forum. These informal sessions are opportunities for students, faculty, and members of our community to gather and discuss topics of interest, including research projects and opportunities.

At this event, three returning students will share findings from their summer research. Lunch will be provided to registered participants.

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Lhamo Dixey—“Sacred Geometry, Sacred Geography: Wat Suthat, Bangkok, and Thai Temple Architecture”

This talk explores the profound connection between sacred geometry, cosmology, and political authority in Thai temple architecture, focusing on Wat Suthat in Bangkok, Thailand. I will explore the mandala, an ancient Tantric symbol that represents the universe and the flow of divine energies.

In Thailand, the mandala has been intricately woven into the design of temples, serving not only as a spiritual map but also as a means of consolidating royal power. Wat Suthat, constructed by King Rama I, stands as both a sacred and political monument, guiding practitioners toward enlightenment while reinforcing the king’s authority. Through this lens, we’ll uncover how Thai temples, like Wat Suthat, serve as powerful intersections of cosmological order, spiritual practice, and royal influence.

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Kenan Gu—“HIV NGO, Queer Community, and the Politics of Everyday Survival in Xian, China”

In the Euro-American context, discourse and activism surrounding HIV/AIDS have historically been closely linked with gay rights movements. From the outset, the public perception of the HIV/AIDS epidemic has been entangled with homophobic sentiments, often leading to the pathologization of gay identities and bodies. The trajectory of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in China followed a different path which nevertheless led to a similar end. Initially perceived in the 1980s as a foreign, “non-Chinese” disease, the epidemic gradually became localized. It wasn’t until the mid-2000s that the homosexual and MSM (men who have sex with men) population became de-marginalized and a central focus of public perception and state-led governance of the disease.

Given the significant yet problematic connection between homosexuality and HIV/AIDS identity in China, this research poses both historical and anthropological questions: How have MSM, gay, and broader queer communities been integrated into the discourse and governance of the HIV/AIDS epidemic in China? How have these gay and MSM individuals and communities experienced, negotiated, and resisted dominant discourses, as well as public health surveillance and governance, through community-building and interactions in our contemporary time, when political and social spaces for queer communities are shrinking? Through discourse analysis and a 6-week ethnographic study at an HIV/gay NGO in Xian, I aim to explore the politics of everyday struggles and joys, survival and hope, cope and resistance within queer and HIV/AIDS activism and culture in urban China.

Jiani Yu—“Technology and Space: Asian Massage Workers Practicing Resistance”

The massage industry is one of the few viable options for Asian migrant workers in the U.S. to sustain themselves. Despite facing statewide racial discrimination and oppression, often enforced through government-sanctioned police raids and regulations, Asian massage workers navigate workplace power dynamics by employing various tactics to reclaim and reterritorialize spaces of their own. This research, through interviews and observations, examines how their proficiency—or lack thereof—with technology further complicates these power dynamics within massage parlors and their broader social circles, especially in their interactions with clients.