“I am strongly devoted to developing an academic advising relationship between students and me,” Eguchi said. “By doing so, my goal is to assist students to become active members of an intellectual community and to develop critical, creative, transformative knowledge that is relevant for today’s globalized, intercultural communication contexts.”
Originally from Tokyo, Eguchi came to the United States in 2001 to attend an undergraduate program in California. He started as a theatre arts major and wanted to be an actor, but said he fell in love with communication studies.“I realized communications sounded interesting; you learn about not only public speaking, but also about cultural identity and sexuality and gender,” he said.
Eguchi attended San Francisco State University, NYU and Howard University, and was a post-doctoral fellow on transnationalism, diaspora — in particular, the culture of Jews living outside of Israel — and migration in the communication studies department at the University of Denver, before joining the C&J Department at UNM in 2012.
Eguchi said that throughout his career as a student and professor, LGBTQ issues have always been an open topic of conversation, while he’s found race to be more a taboo subject.
“What I noticed is, when I’m teaching sexuality studies now at UNM, recent students seem to be more understanding about sexuality,” he said. “That’s great — students seem to want to talk about sexuality like gay issues or lesbian issues, it’s a cool thing — but they don’t really want to talk about race issues. I still find it a lot here in New Mexico, even when people come from a non-white background. I thought that was interesting.”
For that reason, he said, his current research and interest is in queer-intercultural communication studies where it pertains to race.
“Specifically queer people, transgender, migrating from other countries to the U.S.,” he said. “I’m very interested in those transnational, international people migrating to the U.S., how they understand their sexuality.”
In the future Eguchi hopes to do more queer-Asian American studies: examining how gay or bisexual Asian American men communicate and interact with each other.
Eguchi said most research talks about Asian men and white men or Asian men and black men. They don’t really talk about Asian/Asian or Asian/Latino relationships, and he is interested in talking about Asian/Asian relationships from a queer studies perspective.With that focus in mind, Eguchi’s next goal is to publish a book on the topic of queer Asian American relations.
“There is not a book about gay Asian or bisexual Asian or queer Asian men, how they develop a relationship with other Asian men,” he said.
Eguchi said this includes examining historical rivalries between Japan and China, how that impacts Asian American men in the United States who are either gay, bisexual or queer, and how it impacts the way they talk to each other.
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As a professor and researcher, Eguchi said it is extremely rewarding to have his work read by academics, graduate students and undergraduate students and to get feedback from them.
“I really appreciate a wide range of audiences who read my work and react to it,” he said.
In addition to research, because of the work he does, Eguchi attracts students, of both the graduate and undergraduate level, to work with him on LGBTQ issues on campus.
Eguchi said LGBTQ awareness and the tradition of Pride month is important for many reasons. One of the biggest reasons is support on a campus-wide level.
“Without institutional support, we can’t do it,” Eguchi said. “Each institutional support must maintain the tradition, so people can keep aware about LGBTQ issues, but also this institutional support needs to be always critiqued.”
Eguchi said LGBTQ tradition, when talked about, mostly revolves around white gay or lesbian people. He said it is important that people talk about transgender more often, or undocumented gay or lesbian people, and this critique must continue so that many people will be included in the future.
Eguchi wants LGBTQ students and people who may feel self-conscious or oppressed to know that their independence matters.
“Don’t be afraid of who you are, what you like, what you do,” he said.
Meaning, if some people feel comfortable coming out, let them be who they are, Eguchi said.
“Just enjoy who you are. That’s the best advice I could give,” he said. “Enjoy the Pride weekend, have a good drink, enjoy and celebrate an important month to be proud of LGBTQ all across the cultures and differences.”
Matthew Reisen is a staff reporter for the Daily Lobo. He can be reached at news@dailylobo.com or on Twitter @DailyLobo.
