Tidal Notes: A Critical Oral History of Asian and Asian/American Student Organizing at Barnard College and Columbia University, 1990s/2020s

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Tidal Notes: A Critical Oral History of Asian and Asian/American Student Organizing at Barnard College and Columbia University, 1990s/2020s

Solby Lim

Tidal Notes: A Critical Oral History of Asian and Asian/American Student Organizing at Barnard College and Columbia University, 1990s/2020s witnesses the vibrant constellation of student organizing around Asian/American identity, history, politics, and culture. This mixed media and oral history archive explores the different yet interconnected waves of Asian/American student organizing across time and space and understands how students become vital makers of social change and Asian/American history and politics.

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Solby Lim μž„μ†”λΉ„ is a Korean/American storyteller and researcher currently based out of New York, NY. Solby graduated magna cum laude from Barnard College with a degree in History and Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, where she completed a thesis on internationalism as forms of political and cultural intimacies for northern Korea (DPRK) during the 1960s. Her thesis drew upon various archives of political cartoons, expressions of art, and literature found in DPRK and US-based print publications, including the Black Panther Party’s community newspaper and radical Asian American magazine Gidra, that were published at the time. Solby worked as a student editor and intern for the Barnard’s Communications department, pitching and writing profile stories and campus news starting her sophomore year. She previously interned for W. W. Norton & Co. and GLAAD’s Media Institute where she wrote for the organization’s blog and gathered research for GLAAD’s annual Media Reference guide and for the 2020 and 2022 Olympic Games. Some of her interests lie in radical imaginings of archives, Asian/American history, internationalist art and culture, Korean protest and reunification art, histories of beauty, and multimedia expression as storytelling. Solby’s passion for exploring transnational cultural histories is grounded in her experiences as a third culture kid, having been a Korean raised in Massachusetts, Abu Dhabi, Hong Kong, and Shanghai as a teenager. She finds kinship as an Asian/American and part of the Korean diaspora, both communities she hopes to honor through her studies and work. Solby continues to explore Asian diasporic politics and culture as well as forge new possibilities for archiving Asian/American and other marginalized histories in her work.