*I am no longer affiliated with UBC as a researcher or graduate student as I have started my Ph.D. in American Studies and Ethnicity at the University of Southern California. Please reach out to me at amquach@usc.edu if you would like to connect.*

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I am a gender and sexuality scholar specializing in Southeast/East Asia, Asian North America, and transpacific Cultural Studies. In addition to my research as a historian, I also am a musicologist researching Electronic Dance Music (EDM), queer Asian or “gaysian” rave subculture and Sensory Studies.

I was raised in what is now known as Vancouver on the traditional, ancestral, and unceded territories of the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm, səlilwətaɬ, and Skwxwú7mesh First Nations. I am an uninvited settler on this land. I come from a family of immigrants to Canada who were immigrants to Southeast Asia, having lived in Southeast Asia for generations. My mother’s family is part of the Stateless Chinese population in Brunei Darussalam and part Malay, and my father is Chinese-Vietnamese from Vietnam. I am sometimes told I am not “Chinese” enough to be Chinese, yet not “Southeast Asian” enough to be Southeast Asian. Drawing from my identity as part of the Sinophone diaspora, I am interested in understanding migration and its relation to self-identity. Questions about what is “Chinese” across the Sinophone diaspora are particularly interesting.

My professional research thus far has focused on sex, gender, and sexuality in Colonial Singapore/Malaya and its intersections with intimate labours (sex workers and domestic workers). I am fascinated by questions of gender identity and how people situate themselves within the transpacific through migration. More importantly, what is lost in migration and what is renegotiated as part of the diaspora identity?

My MA in History looks at where national narratives and military conscription were used to mould masculinity for the sake of national security in the new countries of the region. Specifically, I will focus on Singaporean Officer Cadet School (OCS) singlets as a military garment and how they develop into a (Queer) fetish garment. By textualizing OCS singlets, my goals are to critique the establishment of national masculinity. I also seek to use Cultural Studies and Object Oriented Ontology (OOO) as a method of activating the OCS jersey as a historical actor. Do people wear the OCS jersey? Or does the OCS jersey wear people?

I am also an ethnomusicologist studying Electronic Dance Music (EDM) and queer Asian subculture. Particularly, my research area is in raves and EDM festivals. I am interested in how rave subcultures for gay and Asian men (gaysians) have evolved into something that helps them affirm their identities while giving them the expansive space to explore and grow their sense of self. Of particular interest is how music informs our worldviews as well as how rave ideology in the form of Peace, Love, Unity, and Respect (PLUR) can be used to multiply the way people understand human relationships both on the intimate and platonic level. I am also interested in particular components of the subculture such as “homepas/homepars,” drug usage, and costume design/dress also blend into Gaysian identity. Within this area of research, I ground my work in Sensory Studies and consider how the human senses are engaged in a historical and musicological context to create rave spaces.

• Sex, Gender, the Body, and Sexuality
• Modern East and Southeast Asia
• Asian North American Studies (Queer Asian North America)
• Sound Studies
• Cultural Studies
• Performance Studies
• Ethnomusicology
• Auto/Ethnography

Current Research Projects:

1) An Epistemology from the Closet: Activating Queer Archives in Singapore through the Officer Cadet School Singlet as Fetish

In 2016, a Singaporean art exhibit titled Queer Objects: An Archive for the Future invited the Singaporean Queer community to bring in objects that they thought represented a Queer Singapore. The exhibit however was asked to remove two objects by the police: a dildo and a butt plug. They were apprehended for violating Section 292 1(a) of the Singaporean Penal Code, which forbade the public viewing of obscene materials. However, based on the vagueness of the penal code, it may be argued that any item can be made obscene. Additionally, up until 2023, Section 377A made gay sex illegal. Thus, the Queer Singaporean archive, time, history, and by extension, Queer people have always been policed, and have had to find other ways to survive outside and beyond the eyes of the state.

This thesis introduces a methodology in which we might be able to envision messy, Queer archives built around desire, affect, memory, and sexual fantasy. In light of Section 377A being repealed, how might archives be different if obscenity was introduced back into the archive? I construct an affective, sticky archive of Queer history centered around the experiences of Queer cisgender men, as well as transgender and non-binary individuals in Singapore from 1990 to the present day who have undergone mandatory National Service (NS) military conscription: a pivotal experience that denotes the change from “boy” to “man.” I specifically focus on men who score high on fitness and intelligence tests and get accepted into the Officer Cadet School (OCS). As part of OCS, enlistees are given specific coloured singlets or tank tops that denote their class and rank over other individuals who did not make it into OCS. Within the cultural fabric of Singapore’s internet space, this has become the topic of sexual fetish for Queer people, being heavily circulated on internet forums, pornography, and the resale marketplace.

With Queer Objects: An Archive for the Future as a background and taking prompt from Munoz’s invocation of cruising, I “cruise” the internet to find the archive that is tender, and wishes to be seen and loved. I gather autobiographies and lived experiences to weave an “autoarchive” to demonstrate how Queer Singaporeans have documented their histories. These include grassroots Queer oral history projects, personal correspondence with Singaporeans, as well as discussion posts and sexual fantasy/stories on internet forums about OCS, NS, and sexual experiences during and after NS. The OCS singlet becomes a method to think through masculinity, colonialism, nationalism, sexual racism, and gender performance in Singapore. In closing, I expand the practice of history through Elizabeth Freeman’s reparative notion of erotohistoriography, and what we consider “historical” through thinking of cruising and the act of sexual fantasy writing as not ahistorical, but rather as, reparative of trauma, emotional, as dreaming of a Queer future, and as a way of demarking queer existence in an otherwise silent history of queerness in Singapore.

2) “You Make Me Feel Good, I Like It”: North American Queer Asian Rave Culture, Gaysian Identity, and Finding Utopia.”

Using auto-ethnography and interviews, I am working on developing research regarding contemporary music festivals/raves. Specifically, I am looking at raves and their relation to identity construction for gay Asian men or “gaysians.” I look to investigate the gaysian experience of raves and what draws people into significant events such as Electric Daisy Carnival (EDC), Dreamstate, Tomorrowland, and VELD. Within these spaces, one’s queer identity, coupled with music, drugs/alcohol, and rave culture in the form of “Peace, Love, Unity and Respect” (PLUR) and “homepas” are blended to create a distinct community identity. This is also tied into how sensory experiences at raves help people find “utopia.” By applying Sensory Studies and Cultural Studies methodologies, I look to illustrate how gay Asian men find community and identity in crowded spaces and create a broad global network.

Academic Work:

Published:

• Quach, Aydin Man Chun, and Timothy Nguyen. 2023. “Where You Are: Community and Space Making Through Shuffle Circles at EDM Events”. Journal of Festive Studies 5 (1):356-91. https://doi.org/10.33823/jfs.2023.5.1.194.

Works in Progress:

• An Epistemology from the Closet: Activating Queer Archives in Singapore through the
  Officer Cadet School Singlet as Fetish (Writing in Progress)
• “You Make Me Feel Good, I Like It”: North American Queer
  Asian Rave Culture, Gaysian Identity, and Finding Utopia.” (Writing in Progress)
• Ill Lit by Moonlight: Chinese “Male” Sex Workers and their European Male Patrons in Colonial Singapore (Accepted for Review)

Unpublished:

• Undergraduate Thesis – From Chinese Men to Chinese “Boys”: Unearthing Masculinities and Intimate Labour in Colonial Singapore

Editorials:

• Through our eyes, with our voices: How Arts students are creating space to heal and be proud of their Asian identities (Part I)
• Through our eyes, with our voices: How Arts faculty are creating space to heal and be proud of their Asian identities (Part II)
• Through our eyes, with our voices: How Arts Staff are engaging and embodying their Asian identities in the workplace (Part III)
• Through our eyes, with our voices: Making space for joy (Part IV)

Presentations and Talks:

• 2024. “Where is “home” for the Queer Asian Diaspora?: Towards a Theory of Diasporic Joy and Resistance in “Gaysian” America in the 2020s.” Panel Presentation. Association of Asian American Studies Annual Conference. Seattle, Washington, USA
• 2023. “Untangling History Through Holding On To Intimacy: A Snapshot of Chinese Gay Sex Work in Colonial Singapore.” Paper Presentation. Southeast Asian Graduate Student Association (SEASGRAD) Conference. University of California Riverside, USA.
• 2023. “Making Queer Archives, Writing History, Doing Epistemological Justice.” Roundtable Discussion. Junior Scholars Queer Symposium. Singapore.
• 2023. “You Make Me Feel Good, I Like It”: North American Queer Asian Rave Culture, 2023 Gaysian Identity, and Finding Utopia.” Paper Presentation. DC23: After the Pandemic Conference. University of Huddersfield, United Kingdom.
• 2023. “Touching Intimacy: Feeling Masculinities and Intimate Labour in Colonial Singapore.” Paper Presentation. Hong Kong University History Symposium. Zoom.
• 2023. “From Chinese Men to Chinese ‘Boys’: Unearthing Masculinities and Intimate Labour in Colonial Singapore.” Paper Presentation. University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa School of Pacific and Asian Studies (SPAS) Graduate Student Conference, Intersecting Asias: Reflections on Connections and Mobility. Honolulu, Hawaiʻi, USA.
• 2023. “Why Study History”: Sensory and Emotional History as Method for Historical Care, Choice, and Imagination. Paper Presentation. Ritsumeikan University/UBC Year End Graduate Conference. Zoom.
• 2023. “Tasting Durian, Hearing Noise, Sensing Ghosts: Applications in Teaching Sensory and Emotional History.” Paper Presentation. UBC Asian Studies Graduate Conference. Vancouver, BC, Canada.
• 2023. “Stolen Childhood: Mui Tsai (妹仔) and Transpacific Child Labour Trafficking” The University of British Columbia, Department of Asian Studies (Course: ASTU 201). Vancouver, BC, Canada.
• 2023. “Sensing Southeast Asia: Historical Aesth/ethics of Sensory and Emotional History.”
  Paper Presentation. Shifting Tides Graduate History Conference. Parksville, BC, Canada.
  2022. “Asian Migration into North America” The University of British Columbia, Canadian Studies Program (Course: CDST 250A). Vancouver, BC, Canada.
• 2022. “Whose Canada? Anti-Asian Racism, Intergenerational Migration, and ‘Asian Canada,’ “Canadian Studies Program (Course: CDST 250A). Vancouver, BC, Canada.
  2022. “Article 377A and the History of Colonial Domestic Workers in Singapore,” The Historyogi Podcast. Singapore.
• 2022. “UBC Jumpstart Get Connected – LGBTQIA+ Welcome Night,” The University of British Columbia. Vancouver, BC, Canada.
• 2022. “What I Wish Educators Knew Before Class Started: Re-examining Academic Experiences Through Student-led Seminars,” The University of British Columbia. Vancouver, BC, Canada.
• 2021. “Cultural Diversity and Intercultural Competency as a Mode of Activism,” UNESCO International Youth Forum on Cultural Diversity. Illo Illo City, Philippines.

• University of Southern California Ph.D. Fellowship (2024-2029), University of Southern California
• Theodore E Arnold Fellowship (2023-2024), The University of British Columbia
• Tina and Morris Wagner Foundation Fellowship (2023-2024), The University of British Columbia
• UBC History Department Teaching Assistant Award (2023), The University of British Columbia
• UBC Institute of Asian Research Fellowship (2022-2024), The University of British Columbia
• Joseph Armand Bombardier Canada Graduate Scholarship-Masters (2022-2023), Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC)

Committee Chair: Dr. John Roosa (UBC Department of History)

Second Reader/Committee Member: Dr. John Paul (JP) Catungal (Institute for Gender, Race, Sexuality and Social Justice)

Third Reader/Committee Member: Dr. Kelly Midori McCormick (UBC Department of History)

Additional Advisor: Dr. M Gillian Carrabré (UBC School of Journalism, Writing, and Media, UBC School of Music)