Henry Yu

Associate Professor
phone 778 895 5088
location_on BuTo 1116, 1873 East Mall, Vancouver, BC, V6T1Z1, Canada
file_download Download CV
Regional Research Area
Education

Ph.D., Princeton University, 1995
MA, Princeton University, 1992
BA, History (Honours), 1989


About

As a history professor, Dr. Yu’s research and teaching has been built around collaborations with local community organizations, civic institutions such as museums, and multiple levels of government. He is passionate about helping British Columbians and Canadians undo the cultural and historical legacies of colonialism and to be inspired by the often hidden and untold stories of those who struggled against racism and made Canadian society more inclusive and just.

Dr. Yu was the Co-Chair of the Steering Committee of the 2007 Anniversaries of Change marking the 100th anniversary of the anti-Asian riots of 1907. Between 2009-2012, he was the Co-Chair of the City of Vancouver’s project Dialogues between First Nations, Urban Aboriginal, and Immigrant Communities (vancouver.ca/commsvcs/socialplanning/dialoguesproject). In 2015, Dr. Yu was appointed as the Co-Chair for the Province of British Columbia’s Legacy Initiatives Advisory Council implementing legacy projects following the province’s apology in May 2014 for BC’s historic anti-Chinese legislation. He also served on the Advisory Group for the City of Vancouver’s apology consultation process for Historical Discrimination Against People of Chinese Descent (HDC) from 2016-2017 that resulted in the City of Vancouver’s formal apology for its historical discrimination against its Chinese Canadian residents on April 22, 2018.

He is one of the Founding Directors of the Chinese Canadian Historical Society of BC in 2004; the Vancouver Chinatown Foundation in 2011; PCHC-MoM in 2013; and the Chinese Canadian Museum of BC in 2020.

Most recently, Prof. Yu was the Co-Chair of the Organizing Committee of the National Forum on Anti-Asian Racism convened in June 2021 and the Co-Lead for the Centre for Asian Canadian Research Engagement (ACRE) in the Faculty of Arts at UBC. Read his essay “The White Elephant in the Room: Anti-Asian Racism in Canada” explaining the history of anti-Asian racism and white supremacy  at Beyond UBC.

Prof. Yu was awarded the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal in 2012 and the Province of BC’s Multicultural Award in 2015 in recognition of his research and community leadership. In 2019, he was featured by the Georgia Straight as a “Trailblazer” as a “leading voice on Asian migration and discrimination in Canada.”

His book “Thinking Orientals” won the Norris and Carol Hundley Prize for Most Distinguished Book of 2001 from the American Historical Association (PCB) and his book “Journeys of Hope: Challenging Discrimination and Building on Vancouver Chinatown’s Legacies received the City of Vancouver Heritage Award. The Museum of Vancouver and the Chinese Canadian Museum multi-sited exhibits “A Seat at the Table: Chinese Immigration and British Columbia” which Prof. Yu Co-Curated with Denise Fong and Dr. Viviane Gosselin received the Canadian Historical Association Public History Prize in 2021 and the Canadian Museums Association Outstanding Achievement in Exhibitions Award in 2022

At UBC, Prof. Yu has served on a large number of committees, including searches for the Dean of Arts, for the Director of MOA, and most recently for the Associate Vice President for Equity and Inclusion, and chaired university-level as well as department committees on equity and inclusion. He has served as an expert witness in court cases and legal proceedings, most recently for the Cullen Commission, and on the selection committees for the Rhodes Scholarship and other prizes and awards.


Teaching


Research

Henry Yu is a scholar of migration, race and colonialism involved in the collaborative effort to reimagine the history of Vancouver and of British Columbia through the concept of “Pacific Canada,” a perspective that focuses on how migrants from Asia, Europe, and other parts of the Americas engaged with each other and with First Nations peoples historically.

Prof. Yu Co-Chaired the Organizing Committee for the National Forum on Anti-Asian Racism convened at UBC in June 2021 and helped co-author the Final Report as well as serving as the UBC researcher for two Angus Reid polls on “Anti-Asian Racism” and “Racism and Canadian High Schools”

Read “Our Own Not-So-Quiet Revolution” and Prof. Yu’s essay “Global Migrants and the New Pacific Canada,” written for the 25th Anniversary of the Asia Pacific Foundation. Also visit Henry Yu’s blog “Past Present” at http://henryyu.blogspot.com.

Prof. Yu has been the Principal since 2011 of St. John’s Graduate College, UBC’s international graduate college, and served as its Associate Principal from 2005-2009.

Prof. Yu is also the Director of the Initiative for Student Teaching and Research in Chinese Canadian Studies (INSTRCC), which began in 2005 as a long term commitment at UBC to the study of trans-Pacific migrations and the long history of interactions between Asian and European migrants and First Nations peoples in Pacific Canada. Watch a series of films that were made by Prof. Yu’s students at http://www.youtube.com/instrcc

Prof. Yu and his research team helped organize and create the online exhibit Chinatown Reimagined as well as providing research for the City of Vancouver Chinatown Transformation Team’s Cultural Heritage Asset Management Plan (CHAMP) adopted by City Council in June 2022.

Between 2015-2017, Prof. Yu served on the Historical Discrimination Against Chinese Peoples Advisory Committee to the City of Vancouver after City Council voted to consider a formal civic apology for the City’s role in legislating and supporting historical anti-Chinese racism and discrimination. The final report to Council was adopted on October 30, 2017 (found here and with the formal presentation to Council here), and Prof. Yu served on the subcommittee that wrote the text of the official apology, delivered by Mayor and Council in Chinatown on April 22, 2018. Prof. Yu has been involved in helping shape the fulfilment of one of the recommendations endorsed by Council to pursue UNESCO World Heritage Designation for Vancouver’s Chinatown. See “Vancouver to Apply for UNESCO World Heritage designation for Chinatown,” John Mackie, The Province, November 2, 2017

In May 2014, Prof. Yu had the privilege of bearing witness to the historical apology by the Provincial Legislature of British Columbia as Premier Christy Clark formally apologized for the province’s long history of anti-Chinese legislation. Prof. Yu had contributed to the drafting of the text in the Final Report outlining the historical context for the official apology, and was appointed in the Fall of 2014 as Co-Chair of the Legacy Initiatives Advisory Council which helped oversee and implement the series of legacy projects that followed the legislative apology.

In 2012, Prof. Yu was a member of the committee that organized the granting of honorary degrees from UBC for the 76 Japanese Canadian UBC students who were removed from the west coast in 1942. Many of these students were unable to complete their studies or to attend their graduation, and their belated recognition as UBC alumni was part of a remarkable ceremony in May 2012 on the 70th anniversary of their forcible removal from their school and homes. See http://japanese-canadian-student-tribute.ubc.ca/ for more. As one of the commitments made by UBC Senate to honour the Japanese Canadian students of 1942, the new Asian Canadian and Asian Migrations Studies program was launched in the fall of 2014.

Prof. Yu is committed to expanding the engagement between academic research and the communities which the university serves. He was the Project Lead for a $1.17 million project entitled “Chinese Canadian Stories: Uncommon Histories from a Common Past” (chinesecanadian.ubc.ca). Receiving $950,000 from the Community Historical Recognition Program of the Canadian Federal government, this project aimed to gather the ignored histories of Chinese Canadians and to use the latest in new media technologies to present a new understanding of our common history. As part of the project, Prof. Yu’s research team collaborated with the Spatial History Lab at Stanford University in creating state of the art visualizations of historical data. See them at the Stanford website.

Prof. Yu served between 2010-2012 as a Co-Chair, along with Susan Tatoosh of the Vancouver Aboriginal Friendship Center and Councillor Wade Grant of the Musqueam Nation, of the City of Vancouver’s “Dialogues Between First Nations, Urban Aboriginal, and Immigrant Communities in Vancouver,” a unique and important series of projects that aimed to promote engagements between communities that are often considered separately.

Each summer Prof. Yu takes students on a unique six week summer field course. In 2005, Prof. Yu and Jennifer Lau took students from classes at UBC and UCLA on a course comparing Asian migration and its effects on Vancouver and Los Angeles. Entitled “Eating Our Way from Vancouver to LA,” the course focused on food and restaurants as a way of understanding cultural change. In the summer of 2007, Prof. Yu took UBC students on a joint field course with University Scholar Program students from the National University of Singapore. Entitled “Eating Our Way Across Southeast Asia,” the 20 UBC and NUS students, along with Jennifer Lau and fellow UBC Professor emeritus Graham Johnson, literally ate their way through Hong Kong, Guangzhou, Singapore, Malacca, and Kuala Lumpur. The summers of 2009 and 2010 saw students from UBC and from NUS each spending two weeks in Vancouver and Singapore in group research projects comparing the two cities, and of course sampling the other city’s cuisine. Watch a film made by the students examining how the two cities have dealt with their historic “Chinatown” districts. In May-June of both 2012 and 2013, Prof. Yu and Wendy Phung took a set of students on an exchange with Hong Kong University, and with Alyssa Leung and Joanna Yang repeated the program in the summers of 2014 and 2015. In May of 2016, Prof. Yu along with Joanna Yang, Belle Cheung, and Zoe Lam organized a unique exchange class with students from UBC and Chinese University of Hong Kong, with UBC students visiting the UNESCO World Heritage Site in Kaiping, Guangdong, China. Click here.

Between 2017 and 2019, Prof. Yu and Jennifer Lu and Angela Ho organized summer field studies that examined Hong Kong, Singapore, and Penang as urban cultural heritage landscapes, combining the course work with funding from the Arts Research Abroad and Arts Undergraduate Research Awards to place students after their return to Vancouver into internships at local museums and non-profit organizations. The application of knowledge they had learned during their field studies directly into their work with community partners led to transformative projects, for instance at Burnaby Village Museum and at Museum of Vancouver, where student researchers helped create more inclusive and accessible spaces that reflected and welcomed the diverse populations of Burnaby and the Lower Mainland who visited the museums, or at Gulf of Georgia Cannery, where the “Fish Tales” project created by students created an innovative way in which residents of Richmond could share their own stories and see them reflected within digital engagement spaces that extended beyond the physical locale of the museum (a project that was recognized with a Richmond Heritage Award in 2022). Even during the pandemic, the annual field study continued in virtual and hybrid form, finally returning to physical site visits to Vancouver Island in 2022 in partnership with Prof. Imogene Lim of Vancouver Island University. The course in 2022 was pathbreaking in bringing UBC staff for the first time along for the ride with students, piloting a Professional Development Program that combined student experiential learning with a transformative program for UBC staff.

Community-engaged teaching and research remains at the heart of Prof. Yu’s approach as a scholar. A Founding Board Member of the Chinese Canadian Historical Society of British Columbia http://www.cchsbc.ca, Prof. Yu continues to serve on the Board of Directors and actively engages his UBC students in community history projects through CCHSBC. His essays are featured in two of the CCHSBC’s books, Tracing Memories, Finding Routes (2006) and Eating Stories: A Chinese Canadian and Aboriginal Potluck (2007), as well as in the introduction “1788” for CCHSBC’s documentary “Bamboo and Cedar” about engagements between Chinese Canadian and First Nations historically.

Prof. Yu and Prof. Peter Ward were co-investigators in a SSHRC funded project involving the creation of a digital database of the approximately 96,000 Chinese Canadians who paid the discriminatory Head Tax between 1885-1923. This project involved student research assistants Jason Chan, Mary Chan, Denise Wong, and PhD student Feng Zhang. This database enables Chinese Canadians whose ancestors were Head Tax payers to search digitally for their records. The fully searchable database can now be found at UBC cIRcle.

Watch a CBC news story with Prof. Yu explaining the Chinese Head Tax Digitization Project.

Read more about the Chinese Head Tax Digitization project in a story by Lisa Stedman of the Vancouver Courier from September 29, 2006 and an essay written by Prof. Yu for Library Archives Canada’s online collection on Chinese Canadian history. See one of the results of a Geographic Information Systems project undertaken by Edith Tam, Maria Ho, and Jeremy Alexander students of Prof. Sally Hermansen of UBC Geography. Prof. Hermansen’s students mapped the destinations of Chinese Head Tax Payers between 1910 and 1923.

During 2007, Yu was the Co-Chair of the Anniversaries of Change Steering Committee, representing a network of community and cultural organizations, educational institutions, and labour organizations coming together to mark a series of important anniversaries in the history of Vancouver and Canada. After a year-long series of events, the Anniversaries of Change partnered with the British Columbia Teachers Federation to obtain a grant from the Law Foundation of British Columbia to create teaching resources for B.C. high schools (see the intro to the “Pivotal Voices” resource from The Critical Thinking Consortium.

Prof. Yu spoke about the concept of “Pacific Canada” at Sam Sullivan’s Public Salon on June 5, 2013 in Vancouver BC.

Public-Salon-June-5th-2013-poster4-662x1024

In May 2005, Yu was chosen by the History New Network as one of its “Top Young Historians.”

In September 2007, Prof. Yu was featured in the Georgia Straight’s annual “Best of Vancouver” Issue as one of the city’s “Bright Lights”

In October 2007, Prof. Yu was honoured as an “Unsung Hero” in a “Spotlight on Leadership” event sponsored by the North American Association of Asian Professionals (NAAAP) held at the CBC in Vancouver.

In 2012, Prof. Yu was honoured for his work with a Queen Elizabeth Diamond Jubilee Medal.

In 2015, Prof. Yu received the Multiculturalism Award from the Province of British Columbia.

Prof. Yu lives in Vancouver with his four children and his wife, Ai Mizuta.

See Dr. Yu on Waterfront Cities with host Heidi Hollinger discussing Vancouver.

Listen to Dr. Yu on the CBC Radio series “Sold” discussing the history of Vancouver’s real estate with host Stephen Quinn

Research Interests

  • Global Vancouver
  • Trans-Pacific migration
  • Asian Canadian and Asian American history
  • Race and immigration
  • Social Science and Social Theory in US and Europe
  • Public History and History Education
  • Hong Kong and Canada Crosscurrents

Prof. Yu has served on the Editorial Boards for the American Quarterly, BC Studies, the Journal of Migration History, the Western Historical Quarterly, and Amerasia Journal. He is currently the Series Editor with Dr. Elizabeth Sinn of the “Crossing Seas” Book Series at Hong Kong University Press. For the 2016-2017 academic year, Prof. Yu was on sabbatical from UBC as the Stanley Kelley, Jr. Visiting Professor for Distinguished Teaching in Asian American Studies at Princeton University.


Publications

Books

Thinking Orientals: migration, contact, and exoticism in modern America. New York: Oxford Universtiy Press, 2001.

Within and Without the Nation: Canadian History as Transnational History, edited with Karen Dubinsky and Adele Perry (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2015)

Journeys of Hope: Challenging Discrimination and Building on Vancouver Chinatown’s Legacies, 希望之旅:挑戰歧視、宣揚溫哥華唐人街的歷史文化遺產, bilingual English/Chinese, author, translated into Chinese by Szu Shen (Vancouver: INSTRCC UBC and City of Vancouver, 2018)

A Seat at the Table: Chinese Immigration and British Columbia 卑詩省與華人的遷徙, Exhibition Catalogue (two versions, Bilingual English-Simplified Chinese and Bilingual English-Traditional Chinese), with curatorial essays by Denise Fong, Viviane Gosselin, and Henry Yu, translations by Szu Shen and Zoe Lam (Vancouver: Museum of Vancouver, Chinese Canadian Museum, and the Province of British Columbia, 2021)

 

Articles/Book Chapters

“The White Elephant in the Room: Anti-Asian Racism in Canada,” British Columbia History, volume 55 no. 1 (Spring 2022);10-13

“The Apotheosis of Tiger Woods Monetizing Racial Transcendence and Sexual Transgression for a Quarter of a Century,” in The Circus Is in Town: Sport, Celebrity, and Spectacle., edited by Jack Lule, David C. Ogden, Joel Nathan Rosen, & Lisa Alexander,  Jackson: University Press of Mississippi (2022):91-125.

“Reckoning with the Realities of History: The Politics of White Supremacy and the Expansion of Settler Democracy in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries,“ in Constant Struggle: Histories of Canadian Democratization, edited by Julien Mauduit and Jennifer Tunnicliffe (Montreal-Kingston: McGill-Queens University Press, 2021):390-422.

“Multi-sited Networks: The Underlying Analytical Power of Transnational and Diasporic Approaches,” in Chinese Diaspora Archaeology in North America, edited by Chelsea Rose and J. Ryan Kennedy (Gainseville: University of Florida Press, 2020)

“Re-Storying and Restoring Pacific Canada,” with Denise Fong and Sarah Ling, in Oral History, Education, and Justice, edited by Kristina R. Llewellyn and Nicholas Ng-A-Fook (New York: Routledge, 2019):13-31.

“The Rise and Fall of the Cantonese Pacific, 1850-1950,” in The Transcultural Streams of Chinese Canadian Identities, edited by Jessica Li, Preface by Vivienne Poy (Montreal and London: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2019):31-49

“Unbound Space: Migration, Aspiration, and the Making of Time in the Cantonese Pacific,” in Pacific Futures: Past and Present, edited by Warwick Anderson, Miranda Johnson, and Barbara Brookes (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2018)

“Who Are We? When Are We? A Migration History That Reframes Race, Ethnicity, and Immigrants at Canada’s 150,” in Shibao Guo and Lloyd Wong, editors, Immigration, Racial and Ethnic Studies in 150 Years of Canada: Retrospects and Prospects (Leiden: Brill, 2018)

“The Cantonese Pacific: Migration Networks and Mobility Across Space and Time,” with Stephanie Chan, in Lloyd Wong, Trans-Pacific Mobilities: The Chinese in Canada (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2017):25-48.

“Chinese Migrations,” in Michael Szonyi, editor, Companion to Chinese History (Oxford: Wiley & Sons, 2017)

“Asian Canadians,” in Eiichiro Azuma and David Yoo, editors, Oxford Handbook of Asian American History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016)

“Reviving a Lost Potential of the Chicago School of Sociology? A Century of Studies of Trans-Pacific Migrations,” Journal of Migration History 1:2 (2015):215–241.

“Conceptualizing a Pacific Canada Within and Without Nations,” in Karen Dubinsky, Adele Perry, Henry Yu, Editors, Within and Without the Nation: Canadian History as Transnational History (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2015)

“The Irony of Discrimination: Mapping Historical Migration Using Chinese Head Tax Data,” with Sally Hermansen, in Jennifer Bonnell and Marcel Fortin, Editors, Historical GIS Research in Canada (Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 2014) 225-237.

“Mountains of Gold: Canada, North America, and the Cantonese Pacific,” chapter in Chee-Beng Tan, editor, Handbook of the Chinese Diaspora (London: Routledge, 2011)

The Rhythms of the Trans-Pacific” and “The Intermittent Rhythms of the Cantonese Pacific”, in Connecting Seas and Connecting Ocean Rims: Indian, Atlantic, and Pacific Oceans and China Seas Migrations from the 1830s, D. Gabaccia and Hoerder, D. Leiden: Brill, 2011.

Nurturing Dialogues between First Nations, Urban Aboriginal, and Immigrant Communities in Vancouver”, in Cultivating Canada: Reconciliation through the Lens of Cultural Diversity, A. Mathur, Dewar, J., and DeGagne, M. Ottawa: Aboriginal Healing Foundation, 2011, pp. 300-308

Global migrants and the new Pacific Canada”, INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL, vol. 64, pp. 1011-1026, 2009.

REFRACTING PACIFIC CANADA: Seeing Our Uncommon Past”, BC Studies, p. 5, 2008.

Ethnicity”, in American Cultural Studies, B. Burgett and Hendler, G. New York: New York University Press, 2007.

Towards a Pacific history of the Americas”, AMERASIA JOURNAL, vol. 33, p. XI-XIX, 2007.

Then and Now: Trans-Pacific Ethnic Chinese Migrants in Historical Context”, in The World of Transnational Asian Americans, D. Yui Tokyo: Center for Pacific and American Studies, University of Tokyo, 2006

Is Vancouver the Future or the Past? Asian Migrants and White Supremacy”, Pacific Historical Review, vol. 75, pp. 307-312, 2006

Los Angeles and American Studies in a Pacific World of Migrations”, American Quarterly, vol. 56, pp. 531-543, 2004.

Tiger Woods Is Not the End of History: Or, Why Sex across the Color Line Won’t Save Us All, The American Historical Review, vol. 108, pp. 1406-1414, 2003.

Tiger Woods at the Center of History: Looking Back at the Twentieth Century through the Lenses of Race, Sports, and Mass Consumption”, in Sports Matters: Race, Recreation, and Culture, John Bloom and Michael Willard,  New York: New York University Press, 2002.

Writing the past in the present”, AMERASIA JOURNAL, vol. 28, p. XLI-LII, 2002.

Ethnicity and Race”, in Encyclopedia of American Cultural and Intellectual History, M. Kupiec Cayton and Williams, P. W. New York: Scribner’s Sons, 2001.

Asian Americans”, in Encyclopedia of American Cultural and Intellectual History, M. Kupiec Cayton and Williams, P. W. New York: Scribner’s Sons, 2001.

Asian Americans”, in The Oxford Companion to United States History, P. Boyer New York: Oxford University Press, 2001.

How Tiger Woods Lost His Stripes: Post-National American Studies as a History of Race, Migration and the Commodification of Culture”, in Post-National American Studies, J. C. Rowe Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2000.

On a stage built by others: Creating an intellectual history of Asian Americans”, AMERASIA JOURNAL, vol. 26, pp. 141-161, 2000

Mixing Bodies and Cultures: The Meaning of America’s Fascination With Sex Between ‘Orientals’ and Whites”, in Sex, Love, Race: Crossing Boundaries in North American History, M. Hodes New York: New York University Press, 1998.

The ‘Oriental Problem’ in America: Linking the Identities of Chinese and Japanese American Intellectuals”, in Claiming America: Constructing Chinese American Identities During the Exclusion Era, S. K. Wong Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1998.

Constructing the ‘Oriental Problem’ In American Thought, 1920-1960”, in Multicultural Education, Transformative Knowledge and Action: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives, J. A. Banks New York: Teachers College Press, 1996.

Orientalizing the Pacific Rim: The Production of Exotic Knowledge By American Missionaries and Sociologists in the 1920’s”, Journal of American-East Asian Relations, vol. 5, 1996.

Online Publications:

“Its the people not the buildings–Vancouver Chinatown’s future legacies: A UBC historian answers the question of what is intangible cultural heritage in one of the city’s oldest neighbourhoods,” Georgia Straight, June 7, 2022 https://www.straight.com/news/henry-yu-its-people-not-buildings-vancouver-chinatowns-future-legacies

“The White Elephant in the Room: Anti-Asian Racism in Canada,” Beyond UBC, 2021 https://beyond.ubc.ca/henry-yu-white-elephant

“Chinatown Reimagined,” Virtual Exhibit and Online International Forum, in partnership with the City of Vancouver Chinatown Transformation Team https://chinatownreimagined.ca, 2021

Cultural Heritage Asset Management Plan, Chinatown Transformation Team, City of Vancouver Planning, 2021-22. Research Collaboration with UBC INSTRCC. Passed by City Council of Vancouver, June 8, 2022: https://vancouver.ca/files/cov/chinatown-cultural-heritage-assets-management-plan.pdf and https://council.vancouver.ca/20220608ag/documents/cfsc1staffpresentation.pdf

National Forum on Anti-Asian Racism, Convened at UBC, June 2021 https://events.ubc.ca/national-forum-on-anti-asian-racism/

Final Report, published online December 2021: https://events.ubc.ca/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/UBC-National-Forum-Anti-Asian-Racism-Report_13-Dec-2021_web.pdf

National surveys conducted in conjunction with the National Forum on Anti-Asian Racism; Lead Researcher at UBC in partnership with the Angus Reid Institute on Survey on anti-Asian racism across Canada: https://angusreid.org/anti-asian-discrimination/ released in June 2021; second survey on the experiences and knowledge about racism among Canadian high school students https://angusreid.org/canada-school-kids-racism-diversity/ released in October 2021

“Bamboo Shoots: Chinese Canadian Legacies in BC,” (2015) Produced Open Schools for the Legacy Initiatives Advisory Council of BC. Historical Advisor: Dr. Henry Yu. Bamboo Shoots: Chinese Canadian Legacies in BC is an educational resource for teachers of Grades 5 and 10.This resource offers a rich gallery of historical photographs, and a wealth of archival documents and personal stories that accompany five lessons at each grade level. http://www.openschool.bc.ca/bambooshoots/

Fraser Corridor Heritage Landscape Project Report (2014-2015) “Assessing the potential heritage significance of placer gold mining and Chinese Canadian historical sites along the Fraser Corridor,” Prepared for: BC Heritage Branch, Ministry of Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations and Chinese Legacy BC, Ministry of International Trade and Responsible for Asia Pacific Strategy and Multiculturalism. Prepared by: Fraser Corridor Heritage Landscape Project, UBC & SFU. Report Authors: Douglas Ross, Henry Yu, Michael Kennedy, Sarah Ling, Denise Fong https://www2.gov.bc.ca/assets/gov/british-columbians-our-governments/our-history/historic-places/documents/fchl_project_reportfinal_2015-07-17.pdf

Websites: https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/governments/multiculturalism-anti-racism/chinese-legacy-bc/legacy-projects/historical-sites-artifacts/fraser-landscape

“Pivotal Voices: Exploring Identity, Inclusion and Citizenship: The 1907 Vancouver Riots,” 2008-2009, Learning Resource; Author(s): Christine Stewart, Donna Lee, Elizabeth Byrne-Lo, Jennifer Hales, Mike Perry-Whittingham, Paula Waatainen, Rick Beardsley. Lead Researcher: Dr. Henry Yu. Publisher(s): Co-published by The Critical Thinking Consortium, the British Columbia Teachers’ Federation and Anniversaries of Change with the support of the Law Foundation of British Columbia. Using the 1907 Vancouver Riots, students explore themes of identity, inclusion and citizenship from the perspectives of five key groups.

Websites: https://tc2.ca/shop/exploring-identity-inclusion-citizenship-1907-vancouver-riots-p-30

“How Tiger Woods Lost His Stripes,” Los Angeles Times, December 2, 1996. https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1996-12-02-me-4929-story.html


Awards

Outstanding Achievement, Exhibitions, Canadian Museums Association (with Co-Curators Denise Fong and Viviane Gosselin) for “A Seat at the Table: Chinese Immigration and British Columbia,” 2022.

Public History Prize, Canadian Historical Association (with Co-Curators Denise Fong and Viviane Gosselin) for “A Seat at the Table: Chinese Immigration and British Columbia,” 2021.

Essay “Re-Storying and Restoring Pacific Canada,” co-authored with Denise Fong and Sarah Ling, was a chapter in the edited volume, Oral History, Education, and Justice: Possibilities and Limitations for Redress and Reconciliation, edited by Kristina R. Llewellyn and Nicholas Ng-A-Fook (New York: Routledge, 2019), which was the recipient of a pair of prizes: 1) Winner of the 2021 Canadian Association of Foundations of Education Publication Award for Edited Book and 2) the 2021 Society of Professors of Education Book Award

City of Vancouver Heritage Award of Merit for Journeys of Hope: Challenging Discrimination and Building on Vancouver Chinatown’s Legacies, 2019

Featured as a “Trailblazer” by the Georgia Straight, 2019

Multiculturalism Prize, Province of British Columbia, 2015

Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal in recognition of community service, 2012

“Unsung Hero” Community Service Award, National Association of Asian American Professionals (NAAAP) and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) “Spotlight on Leadership” Awards, 2007

Chosen as one of Vancouver’s “Bright Lights” in the annual “Best of Vancouver” Issue, Georgia Straight, 2007

History News Network, “Top Young Historians”, 2005


Graduate Supervision

Denise Fong Ph.D. (ISGP) Sept. 2017 Co-Supervisor
Sharanjit Sandhra Ph.D. Sept. 2014 April 2022 Supervisor
Killim Park Ph.D. (ISGP) Sept. 2013 June 2018 Co-Supervisor
Sarah Ling MA (ISGP) Sept. 2011 Nov. 2018 Co-Supervisor
Lisi Feng Ph.D. (SCARP) Sept. 2008 March 2015 Committee member
Dai Kojima Ph.D. (Education) Sept. 2009 Nov 2014 Committee member
Lawrence Santiago Ph.D. (Geography) Sept. 2007 June 2014 Committee member
Justin Tse Ph.D. (Geography) Sept. 2008 June 2014 Committee member
Laura Madokoro Ph.D. Sept, 2007 Aug

2013

Co-supervisor
Shelly Ikebuchi Ph.D. (Sociology) June 2013 Committee member
Ruth Mandujano Lopez Ph.D. Sept.

2006

March

2012

Committee Member
Christine Peralta M.A. Sept.

2009

Sept

2011

Supervisor
Heidi Kong Ph.D. Sept.

2007

Co-supervisor
Jooyoung Choi M.A. Sept. 2007 Apr 2010 Supervisor

Select Recent Media Stories

Burnaby Now, “Burnaby Village Museum Partners with UBC to Share History,” June 1, 2018

Toronto Star, “B.C.’s Human Rights Commissioner launches inquiry into ‘hate in all its forms’,” August 18, 2021

CTV News, “Filling the gap in data on anti-Asian racism in Canada,” June 15, 2020

Globe and Mail, “Vancouver exhibit A Seat at the Table dives into history of Chinese-Canadians,” August 13, 2020

The Source, “An invitation to learn the story of Chinese Canadians in BC,”  June-August, 2020

Trek Magazine, UBC “A Seat at the Table: A new exhibit on Chinese immigration and British Columbia highlights belonging, racism, and resilience,” November 23, 2020

Vancouver Sun, “Stereotypes skew money-laundering debate, inquiry warned,” March 14, 2021

Globe and Mail, “Rise in anti-Asian hate crimes should highlight myths about how Canadians view themselves,” March 19, 2021

Bloomberg, “This is the Anti-Asian Hate Crime Capital of North America (Vancouver),” May 7, 2021

Office of the President, UBC, “Asian Heritage Month: A Conversation with Henry Yu,” May 13, 2022

Select Films

“Unarchived,” directed by Hayley Gray and Elad Tzadok (2022) National Film Board of Canada

“British Columbia: An Untold History, Episode 3 Migration + Resilience,” directed by Kevin Eastwood (2022) Knowledge Network Storyville

“Clash on Keefer,” directed by Chester Sim (2021) Telus Originals

“All Our Father’s Relations,” directed by Alejandro Yoshizawa (2016) CBC Gems

“From C to C: Chinese Canadian Stories of Migration,” directed by Jordan Paterson (2012) Knowledge Network Storyville

“Waterfront Cities: Vancouver (Season 2, Episode 13),” with Heidi Hollinger (2012) Knowledge Network

“1788: A History of Chinese and First Nations Relations in BC,” directed by Farzine Macrae (2008)


Henry Yu

Associate Professor
phone 778 895 5088
location_on BuTo 1116, 1873 East Mall, Vancouver, BC, V6T1Z1, Canada
file_download Download CV
Regional Research Area
Education

Ph.D., Princeton University, 1995
MA, Princeton University, 1992
BA, History (Honours), 1989


About

As a history professor, Dr. Yu’s research and teaching has been built around collaborations with local community organizations, civic institutions such as museums, and multiple levels of government. He is passionate about helping British Columbians and Canadians undo the cultural and historical legacies of colonialism and to be inspired by the often hidden and untold stories of those who struggled against racism and made Canadian society more inclusive and just.

Dr. Yu was the Co-Chair of the Steering Committee of the 2007 Anniversaries of Change marking the 100th anniversary of the anti-Asian riots of 1907. Between 2009-2012, he was the Co-Chair of the City of Vancouver’s project Dialogues between First Nations, Urban Aboriginal, and Immigrant Communities (vancouver.ca/commsvcs/socialplanning/dialoguesproject). In 2015, Dr. Yu was appointed as the Co-Chair for the Province of British Columbia’s Legacy Initiatives Advisory Council implementing legacy projects following the province’s apology in May 2014 for BC’s historic anti-Chinese legislation. He also served on the Advisory Group for the City of Vancouver’s apology consultation process for Historical Discrimination Against People of Chinese Descent (HDC) from 2016-2017 that resulted in the City of Vancouver’s formal apology for its historical discrimination against its Chinese Canadian residents on April 22, 2018.

He is one of the Founding Directors of the Chinese Canadian Historical Society of BC in 2004; the Vancouver Chinatown Foundation in 2011; PCHC-MoM in 2013; and the Chinese Canadian Museum of BC in 2020.

Most recently, Prof. Yu was the Co-Chair of the Organizing Committee of the National Forum on Anti-Asian Racism convened in June 2021 and the Co-Lead for the Centre for Asian Canadian Research Engagement (ACRE) in the Faculty of Arts at UBC. Read his essay “The White Elephant in the Room: Anti-Asian Racism in Canada” explaining the history of anti-Asian racism and white supremacy  at Beyond UBC.

Prof. Yu was awarded the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal in 2012 and the Province of BC’s Multicultural Award in 2015 in recognition of his research and community leadership. In 2019, he was featured by the Georgia Straight as a “Trailblazer” as a “leading voice on Asian migration and discrimination in Canada.”

His book “Thinking Orientals” won the Norris and Carol Hundley Prize for Most Distinguished Book of 2001 from the American Historical Association (PCB) and his book “Journeys of Hope: Challenging Discrimination and Building on Vancouver Chinatown’s Legacies received the City of Vancouver Heritage Award. The Museum of Vancouver and the Chinese Canadian Museum multi-sited exhibits “A Seat at the Table: Chinese Immigration and British Columbia” which Prof. Yu Co-Curated with Denise Fong and Dr. Viviane Gosselin received the Canadian Historical Association Public History Prize in 2021 and the Canadian Museums Association Outstanding Achievement in Exhibitions Award in 2022

At UBC, Prof. Yu has served on a large number of committees, including searches for the Dean of Arts, for the Director of MOA, and most recently for the Associate Vice President for Equity and Inclusion, and chaired university-level as well as department committees on equity and inclusion. He has served as an expert witness in court cases and legal proceedings, most recently for the Cullen Commission, and on the selection committees for the Rhodes Scholarship and other prizes and awards.


Teaching


Research

Henry Yu is a scholar of migration, race and colonialism involved in the collaborative effort to reimagine the history of Vancouver and of British Columbia through the concept of “Pacific Canada,” a perspective that focuses on how migrants from Asia, Europe, and other parts of the Americas engaged with each other and with First Nations peoples historically.

Prof. Yu Co-Chaired the Organizing Committee for the National Forum on Anti-Asian Racism convened at UBC in June 2021 and helped co-author the Final Report as well as serving as the UBC researcher for two Angus Reid polls on “Anti-Asian Racism” and “Racism and Canadian High Schools”

Read “Our Own Not-So-Quiet Revolution” and Prof. Yu’s essay “Global Migrants and the New Pacific Canada,” written for the 25th Anniversary of the Asia Pacific Foundation. Also visit Henry Yu’s blog “Past Present” at http://henryyu.blogspot.com.

Prof. Yu has been the Principal since 2011 of St. John’s Graduate College, UBC’s international graduate college, and served as its Associate Principal from 2005-2009.

Prof. Yu is also the Director of the Initiative for Student Teaching and Research in Chinese Canadian Studies (INSTRCC), which began in 2005 as a long term commitment at UBC to the study of trans-Pacific migrations and the long history of interactions between Asian and European migrants and First Nations peoples in Pacific Canada. Watch a series of films that were made by Prof. Yu’s students at http://www.youtube.com/instrcc

Prof. Yu and his research team helped organize and create the online exhibit Chinatown Reimagined as well as providing research for the City of Vancouver Chinatown Transformation Team’s Cultural Heritage Asset Management Plan (CHAMP) adopted by City Council in June 2022.

Between 2015-2017, Prof. Yu served on the Historical Discrimination Against Chinese Peoples Advisory Committee to the City of Vancouver after City Council voted to consider a formal civic apology for the City’s role in legislating and supporting historical anti-Chinese racism and discrimination. The final report to Council was adopted on October 30, 2017 (found here and with the formal presentation to Council here), and Prof. Yu served on the subcommittee that wrote the text of the official apology, delivered by Mayor and Council in Chinatown on April 22, 2018. Prof. Yu has been involved in helping shape the fulfilment of one of the recommendations endorsed by Council to pursue UNESCO World Heritage Designation for Vancouver’s Chinatown. See “Vancouver to Apply for UNESCO World Heritage designation for Chinatown,” John Mackie, The Province, November 2, 2017

In May 2014, Prof. Yu had the privilege of bearing witness to the historical apology by the Provincial Legislature of British Columbia as Premier Christy Clark formally apologized for the province’s long history of anti-Chinese legislation. Prof. Yu had contributed to the drafting of the text in the Final Report outlining the historical context for the official apology, and was appointed in the Fall of 2014 as Co-Chair of the Legacy Initiatives Advisory Council which helped oversee and implement the series of legacy projects that followed the legislative apology.

In 2012, Prof. Yu was a member of the committee that organized the granting of honorary degrees from UBC for the 76 Japanese Canadian UBC students who were removed from the west coast in 1942. Many of these students were unable to complete their studies or to attend their graduation, and their belated recognition as UBC alumni was part of a remarkable ceremony in May 2012 on the 70th anniversary of their forcible removal from their school and homes. See http://japanese-canadian-student-tribute.ubc.ca/ for more. As one of the commitments made by UBC Senate to honour the Japanese Canadian students of 1942, the new Asian Canadian and Asian Migrations Studies program was launched in the fall of 2014.

Prof. Yu is committed to expanding the engagement between academic research and the communities which the university serves. He was the Project Lead for a $1.17 million project entitled “Chinese Canadian Stories: Uncommon Histories from a Common Past” (chinesecanadian.ubc.ca). Receiving $950,000 from the Community Historical Recognition Program of the Canadian Federal government, this project aimed to gather the ignored histories of Chinese Canadians and to use the latest in new media technologies to present a new understanding of our common history. As part of the project, Prof. Yu’s research team collaborated with the Spatial History Lab at Stanford University in creating state of the art visualizations of historical data. See them at the Stanford website.

Prof. Yu served between 2010-2012 as a Co-Chair, along with Susan Tatoosh of the Vancouver Aboriginal Friendship Center and Councillor Wade Grant of the Musqueam Nation, of the City of Vancouver’s “Dialogues Between First Nations, Urban Aboriginal, and Immigrant Communities in Vancouver,” a unique and important series of projects that aimed to promote engagements between communities that are often considered separately.

Each summer Prof. Yu takes students on a unique six week summer field course. In 2005, Prof. Yu and Jennifer Lau took students from classes at UBC and UCLA on a course comparing Asian migration and its effects on Vancouver and Los Angeles. Entitled “Eating Our Way from Vancouver to LA,” the course focused on food and restaurants as a way of understanding cultural change. In the summer of 2007, Prof. Yu took UBC students on a joint field course with University Scholar Program students from the National University of Singapore. Entitled “Eating Our Way Across Southeast Asia,” the 20 UBC and NUS students, along with Jennifer Lau and fellow UBC Professor emeritus Graham Johnson, literally ate their way through Hong Kong, Guangzhou, Singapore, Malacca, and Kuala Lumpur. The summers of 2009 and 2010 saw students from UBC and from NUS each spending two weeks in Vancouver and Singapore in group research projects comparing the two cities, and of course sampling the other city’s cuisine. Watch a film made by the students examining how the two cities have dealt with their historic “Chinatown” districts. In May-June of both 2012 and 2013, Prof. Yu and Wendy Phung took a set of students on an exchange with Hong Kong University, and with Alyssa Leung and Joanna Yang repeated the program in the summers of 2014 and 2015. In May of 2016, Prof. Yu along with Joanna Yang, Belle Cheung, and Zoe Lam organized a unique exchange class with students from UBC and Chinese University of Hong Kong, with UBC students visiting the UNESCO World Heritage Site in Kaiping, Guangdong, China. Click here.

Between 2017 and 2019, Prof. Yu and Jennifer Lu and Angela Ho organized summer field studies that examined Hong Kong, Singapore, and Penang as urban cultural heritage landscapes, combining the course work with funding from the Arts Research Abroad and Arts Undergraduate Research Awards to place students after their return to Vancouver into internships at local museums and non-profit organizations. The application of knowledge they had learned during their field studies directly into their work with community partners led to transformative projects, for instance at Burnaby Village Museum and at Museum of Vancouver, where student researchers helped create more inclusive and accessible spaces that reflected and welcomed the diverse populations of Burnaby and the Lower Mainland who visited the museums, or at Gulf of Georgia Cannery, where the “Fish Tales” project created by students created an innovative way in which residents of Richmond could share their own stories and see them reflected within digital engagement spaces that extended beyond the physical locale of the museum (a project that was recognized with a Richmond Heritage Award in 2022). Even during the pandemic, the annual field study continued in virtual and hybrid form, finally returning to physical site visits to Vancouver Island in 2022 in partnership with Prof. Imogene Lim of Vancouver Island University. The course in 2022 was pathbreaking in bringing UBC staff for the first time along for the ride with students, piloting a Professional Development Program that combined student experiential learning with a transformative program for UBC staff.

Community-engaged teaching and research remains at the heart of Prof. Yu’s approach as a scholar. A Founding Board Member of the Chinese Canadian Historical Society of British Columbia http://www.cchsbc.ca, Prof. Yu continues to serve on the Board of Directors and actively engages his UBC students in community history projects through CCHSBC. His essays are featured in two of the CCHSBC’s books, Tracing Memories, Finding Routes (2006) and Eating Stories: A Chinese Canadian and Aboriginal Potluck (2007), as well as in the introduction “1788” for CCHSBC’s documentary “Bamboo and Cedar” about engagements between Chinese Canadian and First Nations historically.

Prof. Yu and Prof. Peter Ward were co-investigators in a SSHRC funded project involving the creation of a digital database of the approximately 96,000 Chinese Canadians who paid the discriminatory Head Tax between 1885-1923. This project involved student research assistants Jason Chan, Mary Chan, Denise Wong, and PhD student Feng Zhang. This database enables Chinese Canadians whose ancestors were Head Tax payers to search digitally for their records. The fully searchable database can now be found at UBC cIRcle.

Watch a CBC news story with Prof. Yu explaining the Chinese Head Tax Digitization Project.

Read more about the Chinese Head Tax Digitization project in a story by Lisa Stedman of the Vancouver Courier from September 29, 2006 and an essay written by Prof. Yu for Library Archives Canada’s online collection on Chinese Canadian history. See one of the results of a Geographic Information Systems project undertaken by Edith Tam, Maria Ho, and Jeremy Alexander students of Prof. Sally Hermansen of UBC Geography. Prof. Hermansen’s students mapped the destinations of Chinese Head Tax Payers between 1910 and 1923.

During 2007, Yu was the Co-Chair of the Anniversaries of Change Steering Committee, representing a network of community and cultural organizations, educational institutions, and labour organizations coming together to mark a series of important anniversaries in the history of Vancouver and Canada. After a year-long series of events, the Anniversaries of Change partnered with the British Columbia Teachers Federation to obtain a grant from the Law Foundation of British Columbia to create teaching resources for B.C. high schools (see the intro to the “Pivotal Voices” resource from The Critical Thinking Consortium.

Prof. Yu spoke about the concept of “Pacific Canada” at Sam Sullivan’s Public Salon on June 5, 2013 in Vancouver BC.

Public-Salon-June-5th-2013-poster4-662x1024

In May 2005, Yu was chosen by the History New Network as one of its “Top Young Historians.”

In September 2007, Prof. Yu was featured in the Georgia Straight’s annual “Best of Vancouver” Issue as one of the city’s “Bright Lights”

In October 2007, Prof. Yu was honoured as an “Unsung Hero” in a “Spotlight on Leadership” event sponsored by the North American Association of Asian Professionals (NAAAP) held at the CBC in Vancouver.

In 2012, Prof. Yu was honoured for his work with a Queen Elizabeth Diamond Jubilee Medal.

In 2015, Prof. Yu received the Multiculturalism Award from the Province of British Columbia.

Prof. Yu lives in Vancouver with his four children and his wife, Ai Mizuta.

See Dr. Yu on Waterfront Cities with host Heidi Hollinger discussing Vancouver.

Listen to Dr. Yu on the CBC Radio series “Sold” discussing the history of Vancouver’s real estate with host Stephen Quinn

Research Interests

  • Global Vancouver
  • Trans-Pacific migration
  • Asian Canadian and Asian American history
  • Race and immigration
  • Social Science and Social Theory in US and Europe
  • Public History and History Education
  • Hong Kong and Canada Crosscurrents

Prof. Yu has served on the Editorial Boards for the American Quarterly, BC Studies, the Journal of Migration History, the Western Historical Quarterly, and Amerasia Journal. He is currently the Series Editor with Dr. Elizabeth Sinn of the “Crossing Seas” Book Series at Hong Kong University Press. For the 2016-2017 academic year, Prof. Yu was on sabbatical from UBC as the Stanley Kelley, Jr. Visiting Professor for Distinguished Teaching in Asian American Studies at Princeton University.


Publications

Books

Thinking Orientals: migration, contact, and exoticism in modern America. New York: Oxford Universtiy Press, 2001.

Within and Without the Nation: Canadian History as Transnational History, edited with Karen Dubinsky and Adele Perry (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2015)

Journeys of Hope: Challenging Discrimination and Building on Vancouver Chinatown’s Legacies, 希望之旅:挑戰歧視、宣揚溫哥華唐人街的歷史文化遺產, bilingual English/Chinese, author, translated into Chinese by Szu Shen (Vancouver: INSTRCC UBC and City of Vancouver, 2018)

A Seat at the Table: Chinese Immigration and British Columbia 卑詩省與華人的遷徙, Exhibition Catalogue (two versions, Bilingual English-Simplified Chinese and Bilingual English-Traditional Chinese), with curatorial essays by Denise Fong, Viviane Gosselin, and Henry Yu, translations by Szu Shen and Zoe Lam (Vancouver: Museum of Vancouver, Chinese Canadian Museum, and the Province of British Columbia, 2021)

 

Articles/Book Chapters

“The White Elephant in the Room: Anti-Asian Racism in Canada,” British Columbia History, volume 55 no. 1 (Spring 2022);10-13

“The Apotheosis of Tiger Woods Monetizing Racial Transcendence and Sexual Transgression for a Quarter of a Century,” in The Circus Is in Town: Sport, Celebrity, and Spectacle., edited by Jack Lule, David C. Ogden, Joel Nathan Rosen, & Lisa Alexander,  Jackson: University Press of Mississippi (2022):91-125.

“Reckoning with the Realities of History: The Politics of White Supremacy and the Expansion of Settler Democracy in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries,“ in Constant Struggle: Histories of Canadian Democratization, edited by Julien Mauduit and Jennifer Tunnicliffe (Montreal-Kingston: McGill-Queens University Press, 2021):390-422.

“Multi-sited Networks: The Underlying Analytical Power of Transnational and Diasporic Approaches,” in Chinese Diaspora Archaeology in North America, edited by Chelsea Rose and J. Ryan Kennedy (Gainseville: University of Florida Press, 2020)

“Re-Storying and Restoring Pacific Canada,” with Denise Fong and Sarah Ling, in Oral History, Education, and Justice, edited by Kristina R. Llewellyn and Nicholas Ng-A-Fook (New York: Routledge, 2019):13-31.

“The Rise and Fall of the Cantonese Pacific, 1850-1950,” in The Transcultural Streams of Chinese Canadian Identities, edited by Jessica Li, Preface by Vivienne Poy (Montreal and London: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2019):31-49

“Unbound Space: Migration, Aspiration, and the Making of Time in the Cantonese Pacific,” in Pacific Futures: Past and Present, edited by Warwick Anderson, Miranda Johnson, and Barbara Brookes (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2018)

“Who Are We? When Are We? A Migration History That Reframes Race, Ethnicity, and Immigrants at Canada’s 150,” in Shibao Guo and Lloyd Wong, editors, Immigration, Racial and Ethnic Studies in 150 Years of Canada: Retrospects and Prospects (Leiden: Brill, 2018)

“The Cantonese Pacific: Migration Networks and Mobility Across Space and Time,” with Stephanie Chan, in Lloyd Wong, Trans-Pacific Mobilities: The Chinese in Canada (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2017):25-48.

“Chinese Migrations,” in Michael Szonyi, editor, Companion to Chinese History (Oxford: Wiley & Sons, 2017)

“Asian Canadians,” in Eiichiro Azuma and David Yoo, editors, Oxford Handbook of Asian American History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016)

“Reviving a Lost Potential of the Chicago School of Sociology? A Century of Studies of Trans-Pacific Migrations,” Journal of Migration History 1:2 (2015):215–241.

“Conceptualizing a Pacific Canada Within and Without Nations,” in Karen Dubinsky, Adele Perry, Henry Yu, Editors, Within and Without the Nation: Canadian History as Transnational History (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2015)

“The Irony of Discrimination: Mapping Historical Migration Using Chinese Head Tax Data,” with Sally Hermansen, in Jennifer Bonnell and Marcel Fortin, Editors, Historical GIS Research in Canada (Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 2014) 225-237.

“Mountains of Gold: Canada, North America, and the Cantonese Pacific,” chapter in Chee-Beng Tan, editor, Handbook of the Chinese Diaspora (London: Routledge, 2011)

The Rhythms of the Trans-Pacific” and “The Intermittent Rhythms of the Cantonese Pacific”, in Connecting Seas and Connecting Ocean Rims: Indian, Atlantic, and Pacific Oceans and China Seas Migrations from the 1830s, D. Gabaccia and Hoerder, D. Leiden: Brill, 2011.

Nurturing Dialogues between First Nations, Urban Aboriginal, and Immigrant Communities in Vancouver”, in Cultivating Canada: Reconciliation through the Lens of Cultural Diversity, A. Mathur, Dewar, J., and DeGagne, M. Ottawa: Aboriginal Healing Foundation, 2011, pp. 300-308

Global migrants and the new Pacific Canada”, INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL, vol. 64, pp. 1011-1026, 2009.

REFRACTING PACIFIC CANADA: Seeing Our Uncommon Past”, BC Studies, p. 5, 2008.

Ethnicity”, in American Cultural Studies, B. Burgett and Hendler, G. New York: New York University Press, 2007.

Towards a Pacific history of the Americas”, AMERASIA JOURNAL, vol. 33, p. XI-XIX, 2007.

Then and Now: Trans-Pacific Ethnic Chinese Migrants in Historical Context”, in The World of Transnational Asian Americans, D. Yui Tokyo: Center for Pacific and American Studies, University of Tokyo, 2006

Is Vancouver the Future or the Past? Asian Migrants and White Supremacy”, Pacific Historical Review, vol. 75, pp. 307-312, 2006

Los Angeles and American Studies in a Pacific World of Migrations”, American Quarterly, vol. 56, pp. 531-543, 2004.

Tiger Woods Is Not the End of History: Or, Why Sex across the Color Line Won’t Save Us All, The American Historical Review, vol. 108, pp. 1406-1414, 2003.

Tiger Woods at the Center of History: Looking Back at the Twentieth Century through the Lenses of Race, Sports, and Mass Consumption”, in Sports Matters: Race, Recreation, and Culture, John Bloom and Michael Willard,  New York: New York University Press, 2002.

Writing the past in the present”, AMERASIA JOURNAL, vol. 28, p. XLI-LII, 2002.

Ethnicity and Race”, in Encyclopedia of American Cultural and Intellectual History, M. Kupiec Cayton and Williams, P. W. New York: Scribner’s Sons, 2001.

Asian Americans”, in Encyclopedia of American Cultural and Intellectual History, M. Kupiec Cayton and Williams, P. W. New York: Scribner’s Sons, 2001.

Asian Americans”, in The Oxford Companion to United States History, P. Boyer New York: Oxford University Press, 2001.

How Tiger Woods Lost His Stripes: Post-National American Studies as a History of Race, Migration and the Commodification of Culture”, in Post-National American Studies, J. C. Rowe Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2000.

On a stage built by others: Creating an intellectual history of Asian Americans”, AMERASIA JOURNAL, vol. 26, pp. 141-161, 2000

Mixing Bodies and Cultures: The Meaning of America’s Fascination With Sex Between ‘Orientals’ and Whites”, in Sex, Love, Race: Crossing Boundaries in North American History, M. Hodes New York: New York University Press, 1998.

The ‘Oriental Problem’ in America: Linking the Identities of Chinese and Japanese American Intellectuals”, in Claiming America: Constructing Chinese American Identities During the Exclusion Era, S. K. Wong Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1998.

Constructing the ‘Oriental Problem’ In American Thought, 1920-1960”, in Multicultural Education, Transformative Knowledge and Action: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives, J. A. Banks New York: Teachers College Press, 1996.

Orientalizing the Pacific Rim: The Production of Exotic Knowledge By American Missionaries and Sociologists in the 1920’s”, Journal of American-East Asian Relations, vol. 5, 1996.

Online Publications:

“Its the people not the buildings–Vancouver Chinatown’s future legacies: A UBC historian answers the question of what is intangible cultural heritage in one of the city’s oldest neighbourhoods,” Georgia Straight, June 7, 2022 https://www.straight.com/news/henry-yu-its-people-not-buildings-vancouver-chinatowns-future-legacies

“The White Elephant in the Room: Anti-Asian Racism in Canada,” Beyond UBC, 2021 https://beyond.ubc.ca/henry-yu-white-elephant

“Chinatown Reimagined,” Virtual Exhibit and Online International Forum, in partnership with the City of Vancouver Chinatown Transformation Team https://chinatownreimagined.ca, 2021

Cultural Heritage Asset Management Plan, Chinatown Transformation Team, City of Vancouver Planning, 2021-22. Research Collaboration with UBC INSTRCC. Passed by City Council of Vancouver, June 8, 2022: https://vancouver.ca/files/cov/chinatown-cultural-heritage-assets-management-plan.pdf and https://council.vancouver.ca/20220608ag/documents/cfsc1staffpresentation.pdf

National Forum on Anti-Asian Racism, Convened at UBC, June 2021 https://events.ubc.ca/national-forum-on-anti-asian-racism/

Final Report, published online December 2021: https://events.ubc.ca/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/UBC-National-Forum-Anti-Asian-Racism-Report_13-Dec-2021_web.pdf

National surveys conducted in conjunction with the National Forum on Anti-Asian Racism; Lead Researcher at UBC in partnership with the Angus Reid Institute on Survey on anti-Asian racism across Canada: https://angusreid.org/anti-asian-discrimination/ released in June 2021; second survey on the experiences and knowledge about racism among Canadian high school students https://angusreid.org/canada-school-kids-racism-diversity/ released in October 2021

“Bamboo Shoots: Chinese Canadian Legacies in BC,” (2015) Produced Open Schools for the Legacy Initiatives Advisory Council of BC. Historical Advisor: Dr. Henry Yu. Bamboo Shoots: Chinese Canadian Legacies in BC is an educational resource for teachers of Grades 5 and 10.This resource offers a rich gallery of historical photographs, and a wealth of archival documents and personal stories that accompany five lessons at each grade level. http://www.openschool.bc.ca/bambooshoots/

Fraser Corridor Heritage Landscape Project Report (2014-2015) “Assessing the potential heritage significance of placer gold mining and Chinese Canadian historical sites along the Fraser Corridor,” Prepared for: BC Heritage Branch, Ministry of Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations and Chinese Legacy BC, Ministry of International Trade and Responsible for Asia Pacific Strategy and Multiculturalism. Prepared by: Fraser Corridor Heritage Landscape Project, UBC & SFU. Report Authors: Douglas Ross, Henry Yu, Michael Kennedy, Sarah Ling, Denise Fong https://www2.gov.bc.ca/assets/gov/british-columbians-our-governments/our-history/historic-places/documents/fchl_project_reportfinal_2015-07-17.pdf

Websites: https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/governments/multiculturalism-anti-racism/chinese-legacy-bc/legacy-projects/historical-sites-artifacts/fraser-landscape

“Pivotal Voices: Exploring Identity, Inclusion and Citizenship: The 1907 Vancouver Riots,” 2008-2009, Learning Resource; Author(s): Christine Stewart, Donna Lee, Elizabeth Byrne-Lo, Jennifer Hales, Mike Perry-Whittingham, Paula Waatainen, Rick Beardsley. Lead Researcher: Dr. Henry Yu. Publisher(s): Co-published by The Critical Thinking Consortium, the British Columbia Teachers’ Federation and Anniversaries of Change with the support of the Law Foundation of British Columbia. Using the 1907 Vancouver Riots, students explore themes of identity, inclusion and citizenship from the perspectives of five key groups.

Websites: https://tc2.ca/shop/exploring-identity-inclusion-citizenship-1907-vancouver-riots-p-30

“How Tiger Woods Lost His Stripes,” Los Angeles Times, December 2, 1996. https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1996-12-02-me-4929-story.html


Awards

Outstanding Achievement, Exhibitions, Canadian Museums Association (with Co-Curators Denise Fong and Viviane Gosselin) for “A Seat at the Table: Chinese Immigration and British Columbia,” 2022.

Public History Prize, Canadian Historical Association (with Co-Curators Denise Fong and Viviane Gosselin) for “A Seat at the Table: Chinese Immigration and British Columbia,” 2021.

Essay “Re-Storying and Restoring Pacific Canada,” co-authored with Denise Fong and Sarah Ling, was a chapter in the edited volume, Oral History, Education, and Justice: Possibilities and Limitations for Redress and Reconciliation, edited by Kristina R. Llewellyn and Nicholas Ng-A-Fook (New York: Routledge, 2019), which was the recipient of a pair of prizes: 1) Winner of the 2021 Canadian Association of Foundations of Education Publication Award for Edited Book and 2) the 2021 Society of Professors of Education Book Award

City of Vancouver Heritage Award of Merit for Journeys of Hope: Challenging Discrimination and Building on Vancouver Chinatown’s Legacies, 2019

Featured as a “Trailblazer” by the Georgia Straight, 2019

Multiculturalism Prize, Province of British Columbia, 2015

Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal in recognition of community service, 2012

“Unsung Hero” Community Service Award, National Association of Asian American Professionals (NAAAP) and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) “Spotlight on Leadership” Awards, 2007

Chosen as one of Vancouver’s “Bright Lights” in the annual “Best of Vancouver” Issue, Georgia Straight, 2007

History News Network, “Top Young Historians”, 2005


Graduate Supervision

Denise Fong Ph.D. (ISGP) Sept. 2017 Co-Supervisor
Sharanjit Sandhra Ph.D. Sept. 2014 April 2022 Supervisor
Killim Park Ph.D. (ISGP) Sept. 2013 June 2018 Co-Supervisor
Sarah Ling MA (ISGP) Sept. 2011 Nov. 2018 Co-Supervisor
Lisi Feng Ph.D. (SCARP) Sept. 2008 March 2015 Committee member
Dai Kojima Ph.D. (Education) Sept. 2009 Nov 2014 Committee member
Lawrence Santiago Ph.D. (Geography) Sept. 2007 June 2014 Committee member
Justin Tse Ph.D. (Geography) Sept. 2008 June 2014 Committee member
Laura Madokoro Ph.D. Sept, 2007 Aug

2013

Co-supervisor
Shelly Ikebuchi Ph.D. (Sociology) June 2013 Committee member
Ruth Mandujano Lopez Ph.D. Sept.

2006

March

2012

Committee Member
Christine Peralta M.A. Sept.

2009

Sept

2011

Supervisor
Heidi Kong Ph.D. Sept.

2007

Co-supervisor
Jooyoung Choi M.A. Sept. 2007 Apr 2010 Supervisor

Select Recent Media Stories

Burnaby Now, “Burnaby Village Museum Partners with UBC to Share History,” June 1, 2018

Toronto Star, “B.C.’s Human Rights Commissioner launches inquiry into ‘hate in all its forms’,” August 18, 2021

CTV News, “Filling the gap in data on anti-Asian racism in Canada,” June 15, 2020

Globe and Mail, “Vancouver exhibit A Seat at the Table dives into history of Chinese-Canadians,” August 13, 2020

The Source, “An invitation to learn the story of Chinese Canadians in BC,”  June-August, 2020

Trek Magazine, UBC “A Seat at the Table: A new exhibit on Chinese immigration and British Columbia highlights belonging, racism, and resilience,” November 23, 2020

Vancouver Sun, “Stereotypes skew money-laundering debate, inquiry warned,” March 14, 2021

Globe and Mail, “Rise in anti-Asian hate crimes should highlight myths about how Canadians view themselves,” March 19, 2021

Bloomberg, “This is the Anti-Asian Hate Crime Capital of North America (Vancouver),” May 7, 2021

Office of the President, UBC, “Asian Heritage Month: A Conversation with Henry Yu,” May 13, 2022

Select Films

“Unarchived,” directed by Hayley Gray and Elad Tzadok (2022) National Film Board of Canada

“British Columbia: An Untold History, Episode 3 Migration + Resilience,” directed by Kevin Eastwood (2022) Knowledge Network Storyville

“Clash on Keefer,” directed by Chester Sim (2021) Telus Originals

“All Our Father’s Relations,” directed by Alejandro Yoshizawa (2016) CBC Gems

“From C to C: Chinese Canadian Stories of Migration,” directed by Jordan Paterson (2012) Knowledge Network Storyville

“Waterfront Cities: Vancouver (Season 2, Episode 13),” with Heidi Hollinger (2012) Knowledge Network

“1788: A History of Chinese and First Nations Relations in BC,” directed by Farzine Macrae (2008)


Henry Yu

Associate Professor
phone 778 895 5088
location_on BuTo 1116, 1873 East Mall, Vancouver, BC, V6T1Z1, Canada
Regional Research Area
Education

Ph.D., Princeton University, 1995
MA, Princeton University, 1992
BA, History (Honours), 1989

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About keyboard_arrow_down

As a history professor, Dr. Yu’s research and teaching has been built around collaborations with local community organizations, civic institutions such as museums, and multiple levels of government. He is passionate about helping British Columbians and Canadians undo the cultural and historical legacies of colonialism and to be inspired by the often hidden and untold stories of those who struggled against racism and made Canadian society more inclusive and just.

Dr. Yu was the Co-Chair of the Steering Committee of the 2007 Anniversaries of Change marking the 100th anniversary of the anti-Asian riots of 1907. Between 2009-2012, he was the Co-Chair of the City of Vancouver’s project Dialogues between First Nations, Urban Aboriginal, and Immigrant Communities (vancouver.ca/commsvcs/socialplanning/dialoguesproject). In 2015, Dr. Yu was appointed as the Co-Chair for the Province of British Columbia’s Legacy Initiatives Advisory Council implementing legacy projects following the province’s apology in May 2014 for BC’s historic anti-Chinese legislation. He also served on the Advisory Group for the City of Vancouver’s apology consultation process for Historical Discrimination Against People of Chinese Descent (HDC) from 2016-2017 that resulted in the City of Vancouver’s formal apology for its historical discrimination against its Chinese Canadian residents on April 22, 2018.

He is one of the Founding Directors of the Chinese Canadian Historical Society of BC in 2004; the Vancouver Chinatown Foundation in 2011; PCHC-MoM in 2013; and the Chinese Canadian Museum of BC in 2020.

Most recently, Prof. Yu was the Co-Chair of the Organizing Committee of the National Forum on Anti-Asian Racism convened in June 2021 and the Co-Lead for the Centre for Asian Canadian Research Engagement (ACRE) in the Faculty of Arts at UBC. Read his essay “The White Elephant in the Room: Anti-Asian Racism in Canada” explaining the history of anti-Asian racism and white supremacy  at Beyond UBC.

Prof. Yu was awarded the Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal in 2012 and the Province of BC’s Multicultural Award in 2015 in recognition of his research and community leadership. In 2019, he was featured by the Georgia Straight as a “Trailblazer” as a “leading voice on Asian migration and discrimination in Canada.”

His book “Thinking Orientals” won the Norris and Carol Hundley Prize for Most Distinguished Book of 2001 from the American Historical Association (PCB) and his book “Journeys of Hope: Challenging Discrimination and Building on Vancouver Chinatown’s Legacies received the City of Vancouver Heritage Award. The Museum of Vancouver and the Chinese Canadian Museum multi-sited exhibits “A Seat at the Table: Chinese Immigration and British Columbia” which Prof. Yu Co-Curated with Denise Fong and Dr. Viviane Gosselin received the Canadian Historical Association Public History Prize in 2021 and the Canadian Museums Association Outstanding Achievement in Exhibitions Award in 2022

At UBC, Prof. Yu has served on a large number of committees, including searches for the Dean of Arts, for the Director of MOA, and most recently for the Associate Vice President for Equity and Inclusion, and chaired university-level as well as department committees on equity and inclusion. He has served as an expert witness in court cases and legal proceedings, most recently for the Cullen Commission, and on the selection committees for the Rhodes Scholarship and other prizes and awards.

Teaching keyboard_arrow_down
Research keyboard_arrow_down

Henry Yu is a scholar of migration, race and colonialism involved in the collaborative effort to reimagine the history of Vancouver and of British Columbia through the concept of “Pacific Canada,” a perspective that focuses on how migrants from Asia, Europe, and other parts of the Americas engaged with each other and with First Nations peoples historically.

Prof. Yu Co-Chaired the Organizing Committee for the National Forum on Anti-Asian Racism convened at UBC in June 2021 and helped co-author the Final Report as well as serving as the UBC researcher for two Angus Reid polls on “Anti-Asian Racism” and “Racism and Canadian High Schools”

Read “Our Own Not-So-Quiet Revolution” and Prof. Yu’s essay “Global Migrants and the New Pacific Canada,” written for the 25th Anniversary of the Asia Pacific Foundation. Also visit Henry Yu’s blog “Past Present” at http://henryyu.blogspot.com.

Prof. Yu has been the Principal since 2011 of St. John’s Graduate College, UBC’s international graduate college, and served as its Associate Principal from 2005-2009.

Prof. Yu is also the Director of the Initiative for Student Teaching and Research in Chinese Canadian Studies (INSTRCC), which began in 2005 as a long term commitment at UBC to the study of trans-Pacific migrations and the long history of interactions between Asian and European migrants and First Nations peoples in Pacific Canada. Watch a series of films that were made by Prof. Yu’s students at http://www.youtube.com/instrcc

Prof. Yu and his research team helped organize and create the online exhibit Chinatown Reimagined as well as providing research for the City of Vancouver Chinatown Transformation Team’s Cultural Heritage Asset Management Plan (CHAMP) adopted by City Council in June 2022.

Between 2015-2017, Prof. Yu served on the Historical Discrimination Against Chinese Peoples Advisory Committee to the City of Vancouver after City Council voted to consider a formal civic apology for the City’s role in legislating and supporting historical anti-Chinese racism and discrimination. The final report to Council was adopted on October 30, 2017 (found here and with the formal presentation to Council here), and Prof. Yu served on the subcommittee that wrote the text of the official apology, delivered by Mayor and Council in Chinatown on April 22, 2018. Prof. Yu has been involved in helping shape the fulfilment of one of the recommendations endorsed by Council to pursue UNESCO World Heritage Designation for Vancouver’s Chinatown. See “Vancouver to Apply for UNESCO World Heritage designation for Chinatown,” John Mackie, The Province, November 2, 2017

In May 2014, Prof. Yu had the privilege of bearing witness to the historical apology by the Provincial Legislature of British Columbia as Premier Christy Clark formally apologized for the province’s long history of anti-Chinese legislation. Prof. Yu had contributed to the drafting of the text in the Final Report outlining the historical context for the official apology, and was appointed in the Fall of 2014 as Co-Chair of the Legacy Initiatives Advisory Council which helped oversee and implement the series of legacy projects that followed the legislative apology.

In 2012, Prof. Yu was a member of the committee that organized the granting of honorary degrees from UBC for the 76 Japanese Canadian UBC students who were removed from the west coast in 1942. Many of these students were unable to complete their studies or to attend their graduation, and their belated recognition as UBC alumni was part of a remarkable ceremony in May 2012 on the 70th anniversary of their forcible removal from their school and homes. See http://japanese-canadian-student-tribute.ubc.ca/ for more. As one of the commitments made by UBC Senate to honour the Japanese Canadian students of 1942, the new Asian Canadian and Asian Migrations Studies program was launched in the fall of 2014.

Prof. Yu is committed to expanding the engagement between academic research and the communities which the university serves. He was the Project Lead for a $1.17 million project entitled “Chinese Canadian Stories: Uncommon Histories from a Common Past” (chinesecanadian.ubc.ca). Receiving $950,000 from the Community Historical Recognition Program of the Canadian Federal government, this project aimed to gather the ignored histories of Chinese Canadians and to use the latest in new media technologies to present a new understanding of our common history. As part of the project, Prof. Yu’s research team collaborated with the Spatial History Lab at Stanford University in creating state of the art visualizations of historical data. See them at the Stanford website.

Prof. Yu served between 2010-2012 as a Co-Chair, along with Susan Tatoosh of the Vancouver Aboriginal Friendship Center and Councillor Wade Grant of the Musqueam Nation, of the City of Vancouver’s “Dialogues Between First Nations, Urban Aboriginal, and Immigrant Communities in Vancouver,” a unique and important series of projects that aimed to promote engagements between communities that are often considered separately.

Each summer Prof. Yu takes students on a unique six week summer field course. In 2005, Prof. Yu and Jennifer Lau took students from classes at UBC and UCLA on a course comparing Asian migration and its effects on Vancouver and Los Angeles. Entitled “Eating Our Way from Vancouver to LA,” the course focused on food and restaurants as a way of understanding cultural change. In the summer of 2007, Prof. Yu took UBC students on a joint field course with University Scholar Program students from the National University of Singapore. Entitled “Eating Our Way Across Southeast Asia,” the 20 UBC and NUS students, along with Jennifer Lau and fellow UBC Professor emeritus Graham Johnson, literally ate their way through Hong Kong, Guangzhou, Singapore, Malacca, and Kuala Lumpur. The summers of 2009 and 2010 saw students from UBC and from NUS each spending two weeks in Vancouver and Singapore in group research projects comparing the two cities, and of course sampling the other city’s cuisine. Watch a film made by the students examining how the two cities have dealt with their historic “Chinatown” districts. In May-June of both 2012 and 2013, Prof. Yu and Wendy Phung took a set of students on an exchange with Hong Kong University, and with Alyssa Leung and Joanna Yang repeated the program in the summers of 2014 and 2015. In May of 2016, Prof. Yu along with Joanna Yang, Belle Cheung, and Zoe Lam organized a unique exchange class with students from UBC and Chinese University of Hong Kong, with UBC students visiting the UNESCO World Heritage Site in Kaiping, Guangdong, China. Click here.

Between 2017 and 2019, Prof. Yu and Jennifer Lu and Angela Ho organized summer field studies that examined Hong Kong, Singapore, and Penang as urban cultural heritage landscapes, combining the course work with funding from the Arts Research Abroad and Arts Undergraduate Research Awards to place students after their return to Vancouver into internships at local museums and non-profit organizations. The application of knowledge they had learned during their field studies directly into their work with community partners led to transformative projects, for instance at Burnaby Village Museum and at Museum of Vancouver, where student researchers helped create more inclusive and accessible spaces that reflected and welcomed the diverse populations of Burnaby and the Lower Mainland who visited the museums, or at Gulf of Georgia Cannery, where the “Fish Tales” project created by students created an innovative way in which residents of Richmond could share their own stories and see them reflected within digital engagement spaces that extended beyond the physical locale of the museum (a project that was recognized with a Richmond Heritage Award in 2022). Even during the pandemic, the annual field study continued in virtual and hybrid form, finally returning to physical site visits to Vancouver Island in 2022 in partnership with Prof. Imogene Lim of Vancouver Island University. The course in 2022 was pathbreaking in bringing UBC staff for the first time along for the ride with students, piloting a Professional Development Program that combined student experiential learning with a transformative program for UBC staff.

Community-engaged teaching and research remains at the heart of Prof. Yu’s approach as a scholar. A Founding Board Member of the Chinese Canadian Historical Society of British Columbia http://www.cchsbc.ca, Prof. Yu continues to serve on the Board of Directors and actively engages his UBC students in community history projects through CCHSBC. His essays are featured in two of the CCHSBC’s books, Tracing Memories, Finding Routes (2006) and Eating Stories: A Chinese Canadian and Aboriginal Potluck (2007), as well as in the introduction “1788” for CCHSBC’s documentary “Bamboo and Cedar” about engagements between Chinese Canadian and First Nations historically.

Prof. Yu and Prof. Peter Ward were co-investigators in a SSHRC funded project involving the creation of a digital database of the approximately 96,000 Chinese Canadians who paid the discriminatory Head Tax between 1885-1923. This project involved student research assistants Jason Chan, Mary Chan, Denise Wong, and PhD student Feng Zhang. This database enables Chinese Canadians whose ancestors were Head Tax payers to search digitally for their records. The fully searchable database can now be found at UBC cIRcle.

Watch a CBC news story with Prof. Yu explaining the Chinese Head Tax Digitization Project.

Read more about the Chinese Head Tax Digitization project in a story by Lisa Stedman of the Vancouver Courier from September 29, 2006 and an essay written by Prof. Yu for Library Archives Canada’s online collection on Chinese Canadian history. See one of the results of a Geographic Information Systems project undertaken by Edith Tam, Maria Ho, and Jeremy Alexander students of Prof. Sally Hermansen of UBC Geography. Prof. Hermansen’s students mapped the destinations of Chinese Head Tax Payers between 1910 and 1923.

During 2007, Yu was the Co-Chair of the Anniversaries of Change Steering Committee, representing a network of community and cultural organizations, educational institutions, and labour organizations coming together to mark a series of important anniversaries in the history of Vancouver and Canada. After a year-long series of events, the Anniversaries of Change partnered with the British Columbia Teachers Federation to obtain a grant from the Law Foundation of British Columbia to create teaching resources for B.C. high schools (see the intro to the “Pivotal Voices” resource from The Critical Thinking Consortium.

Prof. Yu spoke about the concept of “Pacific Canada” at Sam Sullivan’s Public Salon on June 5, 2013 in Vancouver BC.

Public-Salon-June-5th-2013-poster4-662x1024

In May 2005, Yu was chosen by the History New Network as one of its “Top Young Historians.”

In September 2007, Prof. Yu was featured in the Georgia Straight’s annual “Best of Vancouver” Issue as one of the city’s “Bright Lights”

In October 2007, Prof. Yu was honoured as an “Unsung Hero” in a “Spotlight on Leadership” event sponsored by the North American Association of Asian Professionals (NAAAP) held at the CBC in Vancouver.

In 2012, Prof. Yu was honoured for his work with a Queen Elizabeth Diamond Jubilee Medal.

In 2015, Prof. Yu received the Multiculturalism Award from the Province of British Columbia.

Prof. Yu lives in Vancouver with his four children and his wife, Ai Mizuta.

See Dr. Yu on Waterfront Cities with host Heidi Hollinger discussing Vancouver.

Listen to Dr. Yu on the CBC Radio series “Sold” discussing the history of Vancouver’s real estate with host Stephen Quinn

Research Interests

  • Global Vancouver
  • Trans-Pacific migration
  • Asian Canadian and Asian American history
  • Race and immigration
  • Social Science and Social Theory in US and Europe
  • Public History and History Education
  • Hong Kong and Canada Crosscurrents

Prof. Yu has served on the Editorial Boards for the American Quarterly, BC Studies, the Journal of Migration History, the Western Historical Quarterly, and Amerasia Journal. He is currently the Series Editor with Dr. Elizabeth Sinn of the “Crossing Seas” Book Series at Hong Kong University Press. For the 2016-2017 academic year, Prof. Yu was on sabbatical from UBC as the Stanley Kelley, Jr. Visiting Professor for Distinguished Teaching in Asian American Studies at Princeton University.

Publications keyboard_arrow_down

Books

Thinking Orientals: migration, contact, and exoticism in modern America. New York: Oxford Universtiy Press, 2001.

Within and Without the Nation: Canadian History as Transnational History, edited with Karen Dubinsky and Adele Perry (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2015)

Journeys of Hope: Challenging Discrimination and Building on Vancouver Chinatown’s Legacies, 希望之旅:挑戰歧視、宣揚溫哥華唐人街的歷史文化遺產, bilingual English/Chinese, author, translated into Chinese by Szu Shen (Vancouver: INSTRCC UBC and City of Vancouver, 2018)

A Seat at the Table: Chinese Immigration and British Columbia 卑詩省與華人的遷徙, Exhibition Catalogue (two versions, Bilingual English-Simplified Chinese and Bilingual English-Traditional Chinese), with curatorial essays by Denise Fong, Viviane Gosselin, and Henry Yu, translations by Szu Shen and Zoe Lam (Vancouver: Museum of Vancouver, Chinese Canadian Museum, and the Province of British Columbia, 2021)

 

Articles/Book Chapters

“The White Elephant in the Room: Anti-Asian Racism in Canada,” British Columbia History, volume 55 no. 1 (Spring 2022);10-13

“The Apotheosis of Tiger Woods Monetizing Racial Transcendence and Sexual Transgression for a Quarter of a Century,” in The Circus Is in Town: Sport, Celebrity, and Spectacle., edited by Jack Lule, David C. Ogden, Joel Nathan Rosen, & Lisa Alexander,  Jackson: University Press of Mississippi (2022):91-125.

“Reckoning with the Realities of History: The Politics of White Supremacy and the Expansion of Settler Democracy in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries,“ in Constant Struggle: Histories of Canadian Democratization, edited by Julien Mauduit and Jennifer Tunnicliffe (Montreal-Kingston: McGill-Queens University Press, 2021):390-422.

“Multi-sited Networks: The Underlying Analytical Power of Transnational and Diasporic Approaches,” in Chinese Diaspora Archaeology in North America, edited by Chelsea Rose and J. Ryan Kennedy (Gainseville: University of Florida Press, 2020)

“Re-Storying and Restoring Pacific Canada,” with Denise Fong and Sarah Ling, in Oral History, Education, and Justice, edited by Kristina R. Llewellyn and Nicholas Ng-A-Fook (New York: Routledge, 2019):13-31.

“The Rise and Fall of the Cantonese Pacific, 1850-1950,” in The Transcultural Streams of Chinese Canadian Identities, edited by Jessica Li, Preface by Vivienne Poy (Montreal and London: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2019):31-49

“Unbound Space: Migration, Aspiration, and the Making of Time in the Cantonese Pacific,” in Pacific Futures: Past and Present, edited by Warwick Anderson, Miranda Johnson, and Barbara Brookes (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 2018)

“Who Are We? When Are We? A Migration History That Reframes Race, Ethnicity, and Immigrants at Canada’s 150,” in Shibao Guo and Lloyd Wong, editors, Immigration, Racial and Ethnic Studies in 150 Years of Canada: Retrospects and Prospects (Leiden: Brill, 2018)

“The Cantonese Pacific: Migration Networks and Mobility Across Space and Time,” with Stephanie Chan, in Lloyd Wong, Trans-Pacific Mobilities: The Chinese in Canada (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2017):25-48.

“Chinese Migrations,” in Michael Szonyi, editor, Companion to Chinese History (Oxford: Wiley & Sons, 2017)

“Asian Canadians,” in Eiichiro Azuma and David Yoo, editors, Oxford Handbook of Asian American History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016)

“Reviving a Lost Potential of the Chicago School of Sociology? A Century of Studies of Trans-Pacific Migrations,” Journal of Migration History 1:2 (2015):215–241.

“Conceptualizing a Pacific Canada Within and Without Nations,” in Karen Dubinsky, Adele Perry, Henry Yu, Editors, Within and Without the Nation: Canadian History as Transnational History (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2015)

“The Irony of Discrimination: Mapping Historical Migration Using Chinese Head Tax Data,” with Sally Hermansen, in Jennifer Bonnell and Marcel Fortin, Editors, Historical GIS Research in Canada (Calgary: University of Calgary Press, 2014) 225-237.

“Mountains of Gold: Canada, North America, and the Cantonese Pacific,” chapter in Chee-Beng Tan, editor, Handbook of the Chinese Diaspora (London: Routledge, 2011)

The Rhythms of the Trans-Pacific” and “The Intermittent Rhythms of the Cantonese Pacific”, in Connecting Seas and Connecting Ocean Rims: Indian, Atlantic, and Pacific Oceans and China Seas Migrations from the 1830s, D. Gabaccia and Hoerder, D. Leiden: Brill, 2011.

Nurturing Dialogues between First Nations, Urban Aboriginal, and Immigrant Communities in Vancouver”, in Cultivating Canada: Reconciliation through the Lens of Cultural Diversity, A. Mathur, Dewar, J., and DeGagne, M. Ottawa: Aboriginal Healing Foundation, 2011, pp. 300-308

Global migrants and the new Pacific Canada”, INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL, vol. 64, pp. 1011-1026, 2009.

REFRACTING PACIFIC CANADA: Seeing Our Uncommon Past”, BC Studies, p. 5, 2008.

Ethnicity”, in American Cultural Studies, B. Burgett and Hendler, G. New York: New York University Press, 2007.

Towards a Pacific history of the Americas”, AMERASIA JOURNAL, vol. 33, p. XI-XIX, 2007.

Then and Now: Trans-Pacific Ethnic Chinese Migrants in Historical Context”, in The World of Transnational Asian Americans, D. Yui Tokyo: Center for Pacific and American Studies, University of Tokyo, 2006

Is Vancouver the Future or the Past? Asian Migrants and White Supremacy”, Pacific Historical Review, vol. 75, pp. 307-312, 2006

Los Angeles and American Studies in a Pacific World of Migrations”, American Quarterly, vol. 56, pp. 531-543, 2004.

Tiger Woods Is Not the End of History: Or, Why Sex across the Color Line Won’t Save Us All, The American Historical Review, vol. 108, pp. 1406-1414, 2003.

Tiger Woods at the Center of History: Looking Back at the Twentieth Century through the Lenses of Race, Sports, and Mass Consumption”, in Sports Matters: Race, Recreation, and Culture, John Bloom and Michael Willard,  New York: New York University Press, 2002.

Writing the past in the present”, AMERASIA JOURNAL, vol. 28, p. XLI-LII, 2002.

Ethnicity and Race”, in Encyclopedia of American Cultural and Intellectual History, M. Kupiec Cayton and Williams, P. W. New York: Scribner’s Sons, 2001.

Asian Americans”, in Encyclopedia of American Cultural and Intellectual History, M. Kupiec Cayton and Williams, P. W. New York: Scribner’s Sons, 2001.

Asian Americans”, in The Oxford Companion to United States History, P. Boyer New York: Oxford University Press, 2001.

How Tiger Woods Lost His Stripes: Post-National American Studies as a History of Race, Migration and the Commodification of Culture”, in Post-National American Studies, J. C. Rowe Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2000.

On a stage built by others: Creating an intellectual history of Asian Americans”, AMERASIA JOURNAL, vol. 26, pp. 141-161, 2000

Mixing Bodies and Cultures: The Meaning of America’s Fascination With Sex Between ‘Orientals’ and Whites”, in Sex, Love, Race: Crossing Boundaries in North American History, M. Hodes New York: New York University Press, 1998.

The ‘Oriental Problem’ in America: Linking the Identities of Chinese and Japanese American Intellectuals”, in Claiming America: Constructing Chinese American Identities During the Exclusion Era, S. K. Wong Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1998.

Constructing the ‘Oriental Problem’ In American Thought, 1920-1960”, in Multicultural Education, Transformative Knowledge and Action: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives, J. A. Banks New York: Teachers College Press, 1996.

Orientalizing the Pacific Rim: The Production of Exotic Knowledge By American Missionaries and Sociologists in the 1920’s”, Journal of American-East Asian Relations, vol. 5, 1996.

Online Publications:

“Its the people not the buildings–Vancouver Chinatown’s future legacies: A UBC historian answers the question of what is intangible cultural heritage in one of the city’s oldest neighbourhoods,” Georgia Straight, June 7, 2022 https://www.straight.com/news/henry-yu-its-people-not-buildings-vancouver-chinatowns-future-legacies

“The White Elephant in the Room: Anti-Asian Racism in Canada,” Beyond UBC, 2021 https://beyond.ubc.ca/henry-yu-white-elephant

“Chinatown Reimagined,” Virtual Exhibit and Online International Forum, in partnership with the City of Vancouver Chinatown Transformation Team https://chinatownreimagined.ca, 2021

Cultural Heritage Asset Management Plan, Chinatown Transformation Team, City of Vancouver Planning, 2021-22. Research Collaboration with UBC INSTRCC. Passed by City Council of Vancouver, June 8, 2022: https://vancouver.ca/files/cov/chinatown-cultural-heritage-assets-management-plan.pdf and https://council.vancouver.ca/20220608ag/documents/cfsc1staffpresentation.pdf

National Forum on Anti-Asian Racism, Convened at UBC, June 2021 https://events.ubc.ca/national-forum-on-anti-asian-racism/

Final Report, published online December 2021: https://events.ubc.ca/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/UBC-National-Forum-Anti-Asian-Racism-Report_13-Dec-2021_web.pdf

National surveys conducted in conjunction with the National Forum on Anti-Asian Racism; Lead Researcher at UBC in partnership with the Angus Reid Institute on Survey on anti-Asian racism across Canada: https://angusreid.org/anti-asian-discrimination/ released in June 2021; second survey on the experiences and knowledge about racism among Canadian high school students https://angusreid.org/canada-school-kids-racism-diversity/ released in October 2021

“Bamboo Shoots: Chinese Canadian Legacies in BC,” (2015) Produced Open Schools for the Legacy Initiatives Advisory Council of BC. Historical Advisor: Dr. Henry Yu. Bamboo Shoots: Chinese Canadian Legacies in BC is an educational resource for teachers of Grades 5 and 10.This resource offers a rich gallery of historical photographs, and a wealth of archival documents and personal stories that accompany five lessons at each grade level. http://www.openschool.bc.ca/bambooshoots/

Fraser Corridor Heritage Landscape Project Report (2014-2015) “Assessing the potential heritage significance of placer gold mining and Chinese Canadian historical sites along the Fraser Corridor,” Prepared for: BC Heritage Branch, Ministry of Forests, Lands and Natural Resource Operations and Chinese Legacy BC, Ministry of International Trade and Responsible for Asia Pacific Strategy and Multiculturalism. Prepared by: Fraser Corridor Heritage Landscape Project, UBC & SFU. Report Authors: Douglas Ross, Henry Yu, Michael Kennedy, Sarah Ling, Denise Fong https://www2.gov.bc.ca/assets/gov/british-columbians-our-governments/our-history/historic-places/documents/fchl_project_reportfinal_2015-07-17.pdf

Websites: https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/governments/multiculturalism-anti-racism/chinese-legacy-bc/legacy-projects/historical-sites-artifacts/fraser-landscape

“Pivotal Voices: Exploring Identity, Inclusion and Citizenship: The 1907 Vancouver Riots,” 2008-2009, Learning Resource; Author(s): Christine Stewart, Donna Lee, Elizabeth Byrne-Lo, Jennifer Hales, Mike Perry-Whittingham, Paula Waatainen, Rick Beardsley. Lead Researcher: Dr. Henry Yu. Publisher(s): Co-published by The Critical Thinking Consortium, the British Columbia Teachers’ Federation and Anniversaries of Change with the support of the Law Foundation of British Columbia. Using the 1907 Vancouver Riots, students explore themes of identity, inclusion and citizenship from the perspectives of five key groups.

Websites: https://tc2.ca/shop/exploring-identity-inclusion-citizenship-1907-vancouver-riots-p-30

“How Tiger Woods Lost His Stripes,” Los Angeles Times, December 2, 1996. https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1996-12-02-me-4929-story.html

Awards keyboard_arrow_down

Outstanding Achievement, Exhibitions, Canadian Museums Association (with Co-Curators Denise Fong and Viviane Gosselin) for “A Seat at the Table: Chinese Immigration and British Columbia,” 2022.

Public History Prize, Canadian Historical Association (with Co-Curators Denise Fong and Viviane Gosselin) for “A Seat at the Table: Chinese Immigration and British Columbia,” 2021.

Essay “Re-Storying and Restoring Pacific Canada,” co-authored with Denise Fong and Sarah Ling, was a chapter in the edited volume, Oral History, Education, and Justice: Possibilities and Limitations for Redress and Reconciliation, edited by Kristina R. Llewellyn and Nicholas Ng-A-Fook (New York: Routledge, 2019), which was the recipient of a pair of prizes: 1) Winner of the 2021 Canadian Association of Foundations of Education Publication Award for Edited Book and 2) the 2021 Society of Professors of Education Book Award

City of Vancouver Heritage Award of Merit for Journeys of Hope: Challenging Discrimination and Building on Vancouver Chinatown’s Legacies, 2019

Featured as a “Trailblazer” by the Georgia Straight, 2019

Multiculturalism Prize, Province of British Columbia, 2015

Queen Elizabeth II Diamond Jubilee Medal in recognition of community service, 2012

“Unsung Hero” Community Service Award, National Association of Asian American Professionals (NAAAP) and the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) “Spotlight on Leadership” Awards, 2007

Chosen as one of Vancouver’s “Bright Lights” in the annual “Best of Vancouver” Issue, Georgia Straight, 2007

History News Network, “Top Young Historians”, 2005

Graduate Supervision keyboard_arrow_down
Denise Fong Ph.D. (ISGP) Sept. 2017 Co-Supervisor
Sharanjit Sandhra Ph.D. Sept. 2014 April 2022 Supervisor
Killim Park Ph.D. (ISGP) Sept. 2013 June 2018 Co-Supervisor
Sarah Ling MA (ISGP) Sept. 2011 Nov. 2018 Co-Supervisor
Lisi Feng Ph.D. (SCARP) Sept. 2008 March 2015 Committee member
Dai Kojima Ph.D. (Education) Sept. 2009 Nov 2014 Committee member
Lawrence Santiago Ph.D. (Geography) Sept. 2007 June 2014 Committee member
Justin Tse Ph.D. (Geography) Sept. 2008 June 2014 Committee member
Laura Madokoro Ph.D. Sept, 2007 Aug

2013

Co-supervisor
Shelly Ikebuchi Ph.D. (Sociology) June 2013 Committee member
Ruth Mandujano Lopez Ph.D. Sept.

2006

March

2012

Committee Member
Christine Peralta M.A. Sept.

2009

Sept

2011

Supervisor
Heidi Kong Ph.D. Sept.

2007

Co-supervisor
Jooyoung Choi M.A. Sept. 2007 Apr 2010 Supervisor
Select Recent Media Stories keyboard_arrow_down

Burnaby Now, “Burnaby Village Museum Partners with UBC to Share History,” June 1, 2018

Toronto Star, “B.C.’s Human Rights Commissioner launches inquiry into ‘hate in all its forms’,” August 18, 2021

CTV News, “Filling the gap in data on anti-Asian racism in Canada,” June 15, 2020

Globe and Mail, “Vancouver exhibit A Seat at the Table dives into history of Chinese-Canadians,” August 13, 2020

The Source, “An invitation to learn the story of Chinese Canadians in BC,”  June-August, 2020

Trek Magazine, UBC “A Seat at the Table: A new exhibit on Chinese immigration and British Columbia highlights belonging, racism, and resilience,” November 23, 2020

Vancouver Sun, “Stereotypes skew money-laundering debate, inquiry warned,” March 14, 2021

Globe and Mail, “Rise in anti-Asian hate crimes should highlight myths about how Canadians view themselves,” March 19, 2021

Bloomberg, “This is the Anti-Asian Hate Crime Capital of North America (Vancouver),” May 7, 2021

Office of the President, UBC, “Asian Heritage Month: A Conversation with Henry Yu,” May 13, 2022

Select Films

“Unarchived,” directed by Hayley Gray and Elad Tzadok (2022) National Film Board of Canada

“British Columbia: An Untold History, Episode 3 Migration + Resilience,” directed by Kevin Eastwood (2022) Knowledge Network Storyville

“Clash on Keefer,” directed by Chester Sim (2021) Telus Originals

“All Our Father’s Relations,” directed by Alejandro Yoshizawa (2016) CBC Gems

“From C to C: Chinese Canadian Stories of Migration,” directed by Jordan Paterson (2012) Knowledge Network Storyville

“Waterfront Cities: Vancouver (Season 2, Episode 13),” with Heidi Hollinger (2012) Knowledge Network

“1788: A History of Chinese and First Nations Relations in BC,” directed by Farzine Macrae (2008)