Description

Within the labor literature, with its predominant focus on wage workers, self-employed workers are too often ignored and under-examined as part of the modern proletariat. However, this neglect of self-employed workers creates major blind spots in our understanding of the multiplicity of agents of social change that are organizing as workers outside the Global North. As urban spaces are increasingly being captured as a speculative commodity, especially in rapidly urbanizing cities beyond the often-theorized and studied West, urban spaces are becoming a source of precarity for the many self-employed workforce who depend on them to make a living. However, the same spaces are also emerging as loci for building workers’ power. I focus on the South Korean tenant shopkeepers who are waging creative collective actions to defend their rights to their shops and attracting outside allies within the progressive networks to join them. Through ethnographic research, I analyze how and when the making of what I refer to as protest space—a symbolic space challenging the entrenched power structure—can effectively translate into workers’ power. The case of Seoul presents broader implications for understanding how the previously fragmented and isolated self-employed workers can form collective consciousness.

Yewon Andrea Lee is currently a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy at the University of Toronto. Prior to coming to Toronto, she completed her doctoral degree in the Department of Sociology at the University of California, Los Angeles.
As a political and labor sociologist and urban ethnographer, Yewon is broadly interested in how speculative real estate interests increasingly dictate the shapes and characters of urban landscapes and how, in response, ordinary people organize to preserve their ways of living. Her dissertation, Precarious Workers in the Speculative City: The Untold Gentrification Story of Tenant Shopkeepers’ Displacement and Resistance in Seoul, examines tenant shopkeepers in Seoul, Korea—how the previously unorganized organize under their collective identity as workers. A manuscript that emerged from this dissertation is currently forthcoming at Critical Sociology and has received many awards including Honorable Mention in the 2019 American Sociological Association’s Mayer N. Zald Distinguished Contribution to Scholarship/ Graduate Student Paper Award competition.

Description

Please note that the registration is now CLOSED.

Same-day rush tickets will be available from 7 PM on the night of the show.

Feature Presentation
The Dragon Painter

USA 1919
53:00
Silent with English intertitles
G

DIRECTOR
William Worthington

CAST
Sessue Hayakawa
Tsuru Aoki
Edward Peil
Toyo Fujita

An early Hollywood silent film, The Dragon Painter is a fantasy romance about love and creative inspiration. Tatsu (Hayakawa) is a reclusive artist who lives in the mountains of Japan painting images of the dragon princess he loved in another life. He comes to believe the daughter of a wealthy art collector is his lost princess, but as Tatsu finds happiness in love, his art begins to suffer.

In his prime, Hayakawa was as popular as Charlie Chaplin, as rich as Douglas Fairbanks, and to this day, the only Asian American to own his own Hollywood studio. Hayakawa founded Haworth Pictures Corporation after becoming fed up with the self-proclaimed Orientalist roles in which he was cast by the major studios, including his character in Cecil B. DeMille’s The Cheat. Hayakawa’s studio subsequently released 19 films between the years of 1918 to 1922.

Although set in Japan, The Dragon Painter was shot on location in Yosemite National Park and stars a predominantly Japanese American cast, including Hayakawa’s wife, Tsuru Aoki. Produced by Hayakawa’s own studio, the film deliberately strived to provide an authentic perspective on Japanese culture that countered the dominant narrative of stereotypes, violence, and melodramatic conflict expected in so-called “Oriental” films of the period. For these reasons, it is considered it to be one of the first Asian American films in history. – Rob Buscher

–

On the occasion of the film’s 100th Anniversary, The Dragon Painter will be presented with a live musical accompaniment and an original score by Los Angeles-based musician Goh Nakamura that was originally commissioned by the Philadelphia Asian American Film Festival. A presentation on Hayakawa’s work and legacy will be given by Stephen Gong, film archivist and executive director of the Center for Asian American Media, who was responsible for locating and overseeing the restoration of the last existing print of The Dragon Painter.

The screening will be followed by a discussion moderated by Takashi Fujitani, Professor of History at the University of Toronto where he holds the Dr. David Chu Chair and is Director of the Dr. David Chu Program in Asia-Pacific Studies.

Please arrive early as all tickets become void as of 15 minutes before showtime.

Description

Please note that the registration is now CLOSED.

Same-day rush tickets will be available from 7 PM on the night of the show.

Feature Presentation
WHAT WE LEFT UNFINISHED

Afghanistan/USA 2019
71:00
Dari with English subtitles
PG • Toronto Premiere

DIRECTOR
Mariam Ghani

CAST
Latif Ahmadi
Hossain Fakhri
Said Miran Farhad
Juwansher Haidary
Wali Latifi
Faqir Nabi
Yasamin Yarmal

OFFICIAL SELECTION
2019 Berlinale Forum
2019 SFFILM
2019 Sheffield Doc/Fest

From 1978 to 1991, the Afghan Films Institute had been producing propaganda features to fit with the times. This documentary follows the incredible story of five of these unfinished works from Afghanistan’s Communist era, when the constantly shifting political regimes resulted in films remaining unfinished, unedited, and thought to be destroyed.

In her debut feature, Mariam Ghani pieces fragments of this once-lost footage, from The April Revolution (1978), Downfall (1987), The Black Diamond (1989), Wrong Way (1990), and Agent (1991), unedited (and therefore, uncensored). Just as the original filmmakers did when they shot action scenes with real bullets, hired ex-agents to play spies, or restaged the Communist coup d’état with the army, air force, and an awful lot of tanks and missiles, What We Left Unfinished interweaves histories and fictions. Ultimately, we come to understand both the price paid by Afghan filmmakers for the benefits they gained under Communism and the reasons they persisted despite the risks they faced—and why they still believe that film could save Afghanistan from the divisions tearing it apart today.

DIRECTOR BIO
Mariam Ghani’s previous projects in Afghanistan have documented the spatial politics of the post-war constitutional assembly, real-estate speculations in reconstructed Kabul, afterlives of former secret prisons, diasporic translators in theatres of war, and forgotten histories of Afghan modernists, artists and intellectuals. What We Left Unfinished is her first feature.

This screening will be followed by a discussion moderated by Shahrzad Mojab, a scholar, teacher, and activist, internationally known for her work on the impact of war, displacement, dispossession, and violence on women’s learning and resistance. She is professor of Adult Education and Community Development and Women and Gender Studies at the University of Toronto, and currently, the Director of Equity Studies at New College.

Please arrive early as all tickets become void as of 15 minutes before showtime.

Description

The first independent Burmese administration of U Nu embarked on a national Buddhist revivalist project that included laws regulating Buddhism, sponsorship of lay-centred meditation centres, and the so-called Sixth Buddhist Council. This paper focuses on Burmese monk Mingun Jetavana Sayadaw (1868-1954) and the controversy over his Pali commentary in the early 1950s, the Commentary on the Questions of [King] Milinda (Milindapañha-aṭṭhakathā). Published in 1948 by a pioneer of mass-lay meditation in the most classical commentarial genre, this text sparked protest in the streets and forced U Nu to send police to confiscate almost 400 copies from a monastery in Rangoon at night. Ostensibly the uproar was over reforms the Mingun Jetavana Sayadaw proposed to the monastic code (vinaya), possibly hurrying the enactment of the Monastic Courts Act of 1949 (Ṭhana Vinicchaya). By examining the controversy over this text through newspaper articles, epigraphic evidence and government documents, this paper will explore the intersection between Buddhist statecraft, emerging communities of insight (vipassanā) meditation, and control of the Pali canon in mid-twentieth-century Burma.

Tony Scott is a PhD Candidate in the Department for the Study of Religion in collaboration with the Centre for South Asian Studies at the University of Toronto. His research interests lie in South and Southeast Asian Pali discourse and its intersection with communities of practice, vernacular language, and twentieth-century statecraft. He currently focuses on the Milindapañha-aṭṭhakathā, a modern Pali commentary on the Questions of King Milinda (circa 1st century B.C.E.) written by a Burmese pioneer of insight (vipassanā) meditation, the Mūla Mingun Jetavan Sayadaw (1868-1954).

Description

Rabindranath Tagore’s 1924 tour in China has attracted numerous critical analyses throughout the years and continues to pique scholars’ curiosity. The literary luminary’s attempt to raise support for his vision of an Asia-wide investment in spirituality in a rapidly materializing world remains a particularly fraught topic. Scholarship on China’s response to the Eastern spirituality ideal has generally focused on Chinese Marxists’ scathing critiques of Tagore’s vision, epitomized in the cold reception his lectures received from their audience. Less attention has been paid to an array of enthusiastic responses that emerged from May 4th poets in the form of journal articles about Tagore and poetry which directly engaged with his ideas. This talk investigates the exchange with Tagore and his work as an event that deeply informed Chinese poetry. As such, I argue, Tagore’s visit enables a new understanding of the Eastern spirituality project not as a failure, but as a vehicle for the Chinese envisioning of Pan-Asian poetics.

Gal Gvili is an Assistant Professor at the Department of East Asian Studies at McGill University. She studies and teaches modern, and contemporary Chinese literature, literary and cultural theory. Her first book investigates how interactions between Chinese writers and Indian religions and philosophy fashioned a conviction that literature is the ultimate means for transforming the national fate.

The lecture will be followed by reception, 7-8 PM.

Description

LECTURE: 4:00 – 5:30 PM
RECEPTION: 5:30 – 6:30 PM

China’s innovation ambitions inspire worldwide commentary, much of it poorly informed. Focusing on several sectors central to China’s innovation drive, Loren Brandt (University of Toronto) and Thomas Rawski (University of Pittsburgh) offer a richly detailed account of China’s innovation efforts in their latest book, Policy, Regulation, and Innovation in China’s Electricity and Telecom Industries. The book’s granular studies look beyond specific technologies to incorporate the policy matrix, regulatory structures and global developments into an appraisal of China’s industrial policy and innovation achievements. The massive application of human and financial resources offers great promise, but institutional obstacles and legacies, conflicting objectives, and ill-advised policies inject inefficiencies, resulting in a complex mosaic of success and failure in both technical and commercial dimensions.

Loren Brandt is the Noranda Chair Professor of Economics and International Trade at the University of Toronto. With Thomas G. Rawski, he was co-editor and a major contributor to China’s Great Economic Transformation (Cambridge, 2008). His current research focuses on issues of industrial upgrading in China, inequality dynamics, and China’s long-run economic growth and structural change.

Thomas G. Rawski is emeritus Professor of Economics and History at the University of Pittsburgh. Recent publications include Tales from the Development Frontier (2013), which he co-authored. With Loren Brandt, he was co-editor and a major contributor to China’s Great Economic Transformation (Cambridge, 2008). His research focuses on the development and modern history of China’s economy, including studies of China’s reform mechanism and achievements.

Lecture: 4 – 5:30 PM
Reception: 5:30 – 6:30 PM

Description

Abstract:  Prime Minister Abe, in both his first and second administrations, has emphasized values: democracy, human rights, and the rule of law, in his diplomatic statements. Does the Abe administration’s rhetorical focus on values signify a substantial change in Japanese foreign policy, or is it just window dressing?   In this public talk, Professor Hikotani argued: (1) Japan’s foreign policy was never value-devoid; but the “value” that drove Japan in its foreign policy was different from other western countries in its emphasis; to be less explicit about the value being promoted, and that the value promoted, especially with regard to Asia, emphasized development assistance over democracy promotion. (2) External developments (the rise of China in the region), and internal developments (institutional empowerment of the Prime Minister) led more emphasis in the use of values as slogans in foreign policy. (3) While values are more often used as slogans, the substance of Japan’s foreign policy has not changed much. Democracy and rule of law is mentioned more frequently as the natural bond among Australia, India and Japan, Japan is also careful about not to force Asian countries to choose between China and Japan and to antagonize China along the way.    

Speaker Bio:  Takako Hikotani is Gerald L. Curtis Associate Professor of Modern Japanese Politics and Foreign Policy at Columbia University. She previously taught at the National Defense Academy of Japan, where she was Associate Professor, and lectured at the Ground Self Defense Force and Air Self Defense Force Staff Colleges, and the National Institute for Defense Studies. Her research focus on civil-military relations and Japanese domestic politics, Japanese foreign policy, and comparative civil-military relations. Her publications (in English) include, “The Japanese Diet and defense policy-making.” International Affairs, 94:1, July, 2018; “Trump’s Gift to Japan: Time for Tokyo to Invest in the Liberal Order,” Foreign Affairs, September/October 2017; and “Japan’s New Executive Leadership: How Electoral Rules Make Japanese Security Policy" (with Margarita Estevez-Abe and Toshio Nagahisa), in Frances Rosenbluth and Masaru Kohno eds, Japan in the World (Yale University Press, 2009). She was a Visiting Professional Specialist at Princeton University as Social Science Research Council/Abe Fellow (2010-2011) and Fellow of the US-Japan Leadership Program, US-Japan Foundation (2000- ).  Professor Hikotani received her BA from Keio University, MA from Keio University and Stanford University, and PhD in Political Science from Columbia University, where she was a President’s Fellow.

Description

This paper examines the oldest existing museum in the Philippines, the University of Santo Tomas (UST) Museum of Arts and Sciences, as a cabinet of curiosity and a catalyst of conversion. By Spanish royal decree, its early collection acquired through colonial expeditions, complex evangelical networks, and commercial expositions formed the classroom materials for the Natural History course taught by Dominican friars. By 1877, the fauna, flora, and mineral—from the minute to the monumental, from the ordinary to the odd—were inventoried in a three-volume catalogue raisonné. Its collection has since elicited a sense of wonder in nature’s perfection and diversity. Within the broader philosophical contexts of natural and revealed theology and the revival of Thomism after Charles Darwin’s publication of his theory of evolution through natural selection, the museum’s pursuit of scientific knowledge masked its pursuit of sacred truth, engendering an epiphany through the embalmed and serving the divine through the drama of its dioramas. Operating as a mode of signification and translation of the Word, the museum became a biblical exegesis of the origin of species to archive God, preserving faith in formaldehyde as a means of maintaining the authority of the Roman Catholic Church in the Philippines.

Pearlie Rose S. Baluyut received her B.A., M.A., and Ph.D. in Art History from the University of California, Los Angeles. A two-time Fulbright U.S. Scholar (Student/Faculty Grant), a Ford Foundation Dissertation Fellow, and a Faculty Learning Community Participant through the NEH Humanities Initiative Grant, she is the co-editor of Confrontations, Crossings, and Convergence: Photographs of the Philippines and the United States, 1898-1998 (1998) and author of Institutions and Icons of Patronage: Arts and Culture in the Philippines during the Marcos Years, 1965-1986 (2012). Besides teaching art history and museum studies at several institutions in the United States, France, and the Philippines, she also served as Advisor for the Arts at the National Museum of the Philippines before her appointment as Project Manager/Curator of the Philippines at the Venice Biennale by the Department of Foreign Affairs. Currently, Baluyut is Assistant Professor of Art History in the Art Department and Affiliate Faculty in the Women’s and Gender Studies Department at the State University of New York (SUNY) at Oneonta and Chair of the College Art Association’s International Committee.

Description

In Spring 2015, Nepal experienced two massive earthquakes. Later that year, the country’s constitution was ‘fast-tracked’ to a hurried conclusion after a nearly decade-long wait since the 2006 end of the country’s Maoist-state civil conflict. This paper considers how the temporal tool of the deadline has yielded particular political and material results within Nepal’s ongoing experience of transformation. Whether used to bring political actors from seven major parties to the bargaining table, or nearly 1 million individual householders to the local administrative office to begin their application for reconstruction subsidies, the deadline is a commonly experienced mediator of relationships between the Nepali state and its citizens. Familiarity with this temporal tool also leads to experimentation: when deadlines are believed to be extendable, they may not lead to the desired result. But even when deadlines are repeatedly extended—as they were both for Nepal’s constitution drafters and for homeowners seeking reconstruction subsidies—they effect significant political and material transformations on the ground. Individuals hedge their bets by building particular kinds of political and material structures that are at once possible to complete quickly, and open to expansion should timeframes allow. From the vantage point of 2019, four years after both the earthquakes and the constitution, this paper explores how the dual processes of post-conflict state restructuring and post-earthquake reconstruction intertwine at the experiential level to yield large-scale structural transformations—in which the deadline may both enable and constrain new forms of political and material life.

Sara Shneiderman is Associate Professor at the University of British Columbia (UBC), in the Department of Anthropology and the Institute of Asian Research at UBC’s School of Public Policy & Global Affairs. She is the author of Rituals of Ethnicity: Thangmi Identities Between Nepal and India(University of Pennsylvania Press 2015; winner of the 2017 James Fisher Prize for First Books on the Himalayan Region) and co-editor of Darjeeling Reconsidered: Histories, Politics, Environments (Oxford University Press, 2018). She has also published widely on the themes of ethnicity, mobility, citizenship, and borders in the Himalayas and South Asia. Her current transdisciplinary research partnership funded by the Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) focuses on the social and political dimensions of post-earthquake reconstruction in Nepal in collaboration with Social Science Baha, the Department of Anthropology at Tribhuvan University, and several other partners. At UBC, she coordinates the Himalaya Program, and served as Co-Director of the Centre for India and South Asia Research from 2017-2019.

Description

In 1944, the U.S. Navy established the War Crimes Tribunals Program in Guam, one of several Japanese colonies located in the Pacific. For the next five years, the military commission reviewed war crimes cases about assault, murder, treason, and other acts against white civility. Throughout this period, the tribunal also featured more than 100 indigenous Chamorro and Chamorro-Japanese testimonies about Japanese militarism, policing, and torture in Guam. How did these testimonies support the U.S. effort to eradicate Japan’s sovereignty and remake the political bodies and territorial borders of Guam and the Pacific Islands more generally? By drawing on various philosophies and proverbs about life and death, this talk examines the legal and political impact of military courts, native testimonies, and white supremacist violence.

Keith L. Camacho is an associate professor in the Asian American Studies Department at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is also the author of Sacred Men: Law, Torture, and Retribution in Guam, the co-editor of Militarized Currents: Toward a Decolonized Future in Asia and the Pacific, and the former senior editor of Amerasia Journal.

* Sacred Men: Law, Torture, and Retribution in Guam by Keith L. Camacho will be available for purchase at the venue.

Description

Kunti, a dalit (“untouchable” caste) woman, became the poster child for the nation-wide movement in India against the abolition of the system of indentured labor in 1917. The system, managed by the colonial government in India, had supplied approximately 1.3 million workers from India to plantations overseas in the aftermath of the abolition of Atlantic slavery in the 1830s. This paper explores how a woman at the very bottom of the caste hierarchy in India became the face for an empire-wide change. It will argue that Kunti’s role in the movement illustrates an important dimension of the abolitionist movement: the construction of the “people” (or the demos) as the subject of a new kind of politics in late colonial India.

Mrinalini Sinha is Alice Freeman Palmer Professor in the Department of History and Professor (by courtesy) in the Departments of English Language and Literature and of Women’s Studies at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. She has written on various aspects of the political history of colonial India, with a focus on anti-colonialism, gender, and transregional approaches. She is the author of Colonial Masculinity: The ‘manly Englishman’ and the ‘effeminate Bengali’ in the late nineteenth century (1995) and of Specters of Mother India: The Global Restructuring of an Empire (2006), winner of the Joan Kelley Memorial Prize from the American Historical Association and the Albion Book Prize from the North American Conference of British Studies. She is currently working on a book project with the working title, “Complete Political Independence: The Curious History of a Nationalist Indian Demand,” for which she received the 2012 John Simon Memorial Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship. Sinha is also a past President of the Association of Asian Studies (2015).

Description

The lecture will be followed by a reception, 6:00 – 7:00 PM.

Professor Jie-Hyun Lim’s book project of “victimhood nationalism” aims to illustrate competing memories of victimhood in the postwar Vergangenheitsbewältigung in the global memory space across East and West. Throughout this book, he explores the dialectical interplay of global and national memory with a critical inquiry of the dichotomy of: perpetrators vs. victims, collective guilt vs. innocence, national vs. cosmopolitan memory, historical actors vs. passive objects, over-contextualization vs. de-contextualization, historical conformism vs. presentism, etc. With the emergence of global memory space, unconnected historical actors and memory activists are linked mnemonically a posteriori in the global mnemoscape and memories of victimhood have become more contested. With the histoire croisée as the methodological background, he will trace the global history of victimhood nationalism by drawing entangled memories between victimizers and victimized.

Jie-Hyun Lim is Professor of Transnational History and director of the Critical Global Studies Institute at Sogang University, Seoul. He is also a principal investigator of the research project on the “Mnemonic Solidarity: colonialism, war, and genocide in the global memory space” and the series editor of “Entangled Memories in the Global South” at Palgrave. His most recent book is Memory War: How Could Perpetrators Become Victims? (2019).

Description

This is a book panel on George Anderson & Sujit Choudhry’s recently published edited volume, Territory and Power in Constitutional Transitions (Oxford University Press, 2019). This edited volume, and an accompanying policy paper, are the major outputs of the “Territory and Power” project, a 5-year, thematic, collaborative, global research initiative led by the Center for Constitutional Transitions, the Forum of Federations, and International IDEA, that brought together 24 experts from 13 countries. The research question is how territorial claims relate to constitution-making processes and constitutional design during periods of intense political engagement over constitutional reform or “constitutional moments”. The book includes 17 case studies. Anderson & Choudhry will present the main findings of Territory and Power, followed by commentary by Jacques Bertrand & Lucan Way, who were in participants in this project and contributed chapters.

Sujit Choudhry (WZB Berlin Social Science Research Centre) is one of the world’s leading scholars of comparative constitutional law. His edited volumes include The Migration of Constitutional Ideas (CUP), Constitutional Design for Divided Societies (OUP), the Oxford Handbook of the Indian Constitution (OUP), Territory and Power in Constitutional Transitions(OUP), and Security Sector Reform in Constitutional Transitions (OUP). He is currently working on the public law theory of political parties. He has advised constitutional processes in Cyprus, Egypt, Jordan, Libya, Myanmar, Nepal, South Africa, Tunisia, Ukraine and Yemen.

George Anderson has been a federal deputy minister, president of the Forum of Federations, and member of the UN’s stand-by team of mediation experts. He is a fellow at Queen’s University’s Centre for the Study of Democracy and Diversity. In addition to his extensive work internationally, he is author of the widely translated Federalism: An Introduction and Fiscal Federallsim: A Comparative Introduction, as well as editor of volumes on oil and gas, water, and internal markets in federal systems.

Lucan Ahmad Way is Professor of Political Science at the University of Toronto. He is the author of Pluralism by Default: Weak Autocrats and the Rise of Competitive Politics (2015) and co-author of Competitive Authoritarianism: Hybrid Regimes After the Cold War (2010). Together with Steven Levitsky, he is completing a book on the durability of autocracies founded in violent social revolution.

Jacques Bertrand is Professor and Associate Chair (Graduate) of Political Science, as well as Director of the Centre for Southeast Asian Studies and Director of the Collaborative Master’s Program in Contemporary East and Southeast Asian Studies (Asian Institute, Munk School of Global Affairs) at the University of Toronto. He is the author/co- editor of Nationalism and Ethnic Conflict in Indonesia (Cambridge, 2004); Multination States in Asia: Accommodation or Resistance (Cambridge, 2010); Political Change in Southeast Asia (Cambridge, 2013); and Democratization and Ethnic Minorities: Conflict or Compromise? (Routledge, 2014). He is finalizing a book manuscript on Democracy and Secessionist Conflict in Southeast Asia (Cambridge UP)and a book (w/ Ardeth Thawnghmung and Alexandre Pelletier) entitled Winning by Process: The State, Democratic Transition, and Ethnic Conflict in Myanmar.

Filiz Kahraman is an Assistant Professor of Political Science and an affiliate faculty member at the Centre for European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies of the Munk School at the University of Toronto. Her research investigates law and politics from international and comparative perspectives. She is currently working on a book manuscript examining why labor activists in Europe pursue human rights law as a new mobilization strategy and how international law has affected the lives of aggrieved workers on the ground.

Description

Post-1997 Hong Kong has become the restive frontier of global China – it is the place where the major strategies of global Chinese power are in full display, and where these have provoked the strongest popular resistance yet to Chinese domination. In this talk, I will first analyze Hong Kong as the testing ground for China’s power playbook around the world – (1) economic statecraft (2) patron-clientelism (3) symbolic violence. How do these mechanisms play out in Hong Kong? Second, I will trace the trajectory of countermovements in Hong Kong to generate lessons about the limits and effectiveness of global China.

Ching Kwan Lee is Dr. Chung Sze-yuen Professor of Social Science at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology and Professor of Sociology at UCLA. Her latest books include The Specter of Global China: Politics, Labor and Foreign Investment in Africa (Chicago 2017) and Take Back Our Future: An Eventful Sociology of the Hong Kong Umbrella Movement (Cornell 2019).

RELATED EVENT: “Stand with Hong Kong Journalists” Photo Exhibit
DATES: December 2, 2019 – January 6, 2020
HOURS: please click here for regular and winter holidays hours
LOCATION: Hart House, University of Toronto, 7 Hart House Circle
Please click here for more information
PRESENTING PARTNERS:
Hart House, University of Toronto 
Stand With Hong Kong Journalists (SWHKJ)
The International Human Rights Program, University of Toronto Faculty of Law 

Description

Taiwan will hold its 7th direct Presidential election on January 11, 2020. The incumbent candidate, President Tsai Ing-wen (Democratic Progressive Party – DPP) will face off the opposition candidates, the Kaohsiung mayor of Han Kuo-yu (Chinese Nationalist Party – KMT), and the People First Party (PFP) candidate, James Soong. After suffering a huge defeat in the 2018 local elections, polls suggest Tsai Ing-wen in the lead. The two key election issues this time are China, particularly in light of Hong Kong protests, and Taiwan’s economy.

We will bring together a distinguished group of Taiwan specialists to discuss and help us understand the election outcomes and their implications for Taiwan, Canada, global economy and international relations.

Please join us for the Panel Discussion followed by reception.