Gaysia as Method: Queer Southeast Asian/North American Circuits of Play
Ph.D. Research Project
My dissertation, Gaysia as Method: Queer Southeast Asian/North American Circuits of Play, examines how queer Asian/North American (“gaysian”) communities create and circulate nightlife worlds across Southeast Asia and North America. While Euro-American queer nightlife has been extensively theorized, the cultural production of queer Asian diasporic communities remains understudied, often rendered invisible or derivative. This gap obscures how queer Asian subjects negotiate belonging and exclusion and limits broader theories of diaspora, globalization, and queerness.
I develop “Gaysia” as an analytic orientation that maps cultural geographies of play through Electronic Dance Music (EDM) events linking Vietnam, Los Angeles, Vancouver, and Las Vegas. Gaysia highlights porous borders: in Asia, where queerness is often underground or criminalized, and in North America, where Asian/North Americans remain marginalized in queer nightlife. By tracing these transpacific circuits, I show how gaysians reimagine identity, kinship, and citizenship beyond nation-centered frameworks, practicing what Muñoz terms “disidentification.”
Methodologically, I combine multi-sited ethnography, interviews with DJs and organizers, and soundscape ethnography informed by my own DJ training. This project demonstrates how gaysian nightlife unsettles fixed categories of “queer” and “Asian,” challenges Euro-American dominance in diaspora studies, and affirms queer Asian diasporic creativity as central to contemporary understandings of globalization and belonging.
