Description

This research project examines the transnational circuits of the assisted reproductive technology (ART) industry in South Korea to demonstrate how the concepts of reproductive rights and labor have been contested, negotiated, and reconstructed by various actors—including infertile couples, gamete donors, gestational surrogates, state agents, and medical professionals—across national boundaries. This study envisions reproductive ethics as part of a transnational feminist agenda by examining the ethical issues raised by the complicated relationships between intended parents and gamete donors/gestational surrogates. Drawing on three years of multi-sited ethnographic research conducted in South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, and Ukraine, this project disputes the unilateral understanding of ART, which is typically conceptualized as having a unidirectional flow from the “West” to Asia, by focusing on the complex relations between Korean intended parents and non-Korean gamete providers and gestational surrogates.

Dr. Sunhye Kim is currently the Soon Young Kim Postdoctoral Fellow in Korean Studies at the Korea Institute, Harvard University. She earned her Ph.D. in Women’s Studies at the University of Maryland in 2018. She received her B.A. and B.A in Sociology at Yonsei University, Seoul, and worked at the Korean Women’s Development Institute as a researcher. Sunhye’s research and teaching interests are related to the politics of human (re)production in transnational Asia; in particular, her research centers on the study of the transnational circuits of the assisted reproductive technology (ART) industry as a site of interdisciplinary inquiry.

Description

Open, collective, experimental and sustainable. Taiwan’s first Digital Minister Audrey Tang’s talk will show what happens when people who grew up on the internet get their hands on the building blocks of government. As a self-described “conservative anarchist” and a so-called “white-hat hacker,” Audrey Tang will show how she works with her team to channel greater combinations of intelligence into policy-making decisions and public services delivery. She will also discuss “tech for good” and how Taiwan is “SDG indexing everything.” For more information, please view two recent articles on Apolitical (links below) which help elucidate Audrey and her philosophy.

“Reprogramming power: Audrey Tang is bringing hacker culture to the state”

“Meet the network tearing down walls between departments in Taiwan”

Speaker’s Biography:

Audrey Tang (唐鳳)
Digital Minister, Taiwan

Audrey is known for revitalizing the computer languages Perl and Haskell, as well as building the online spreadsheet system EtherCalc in collaboration with Dan Bricklin.

In the public sector, Audrey serves on Taiwan National Development Council’s open data committee and K-12 curriculum committee; and led the country’s first e-Rulemaking project. Audrey joined the cabinet as Digital Minister on Oct 1st, 2016.

In the private sector, Audrey works as a consultant with Apple on computational linguistics, with Oxford University Press on crowd lexicography, and with Socialtext on social interaction design.

In the third sector, Audrey actively contributes to Taiwan’s g0v (“gov-zero”), a vibrant community focusing on creating tools for the civil society, with the call to “fork the government”.

Description

ABSTRACT:

Recent scholarship from the US and Asia critiques how US historiographies of post-war development in Asia, shaped by Cold War liberalism, painted imperialism in Asia as largely benevolent, supporting the universal interests of humanism, democracy, and freedom. In this talk, I will look into Wu Nien-Jen’s film Buddha Bless America (1996) to offer critical reflections on the connection between militarism and the postcolonial development of nation building in its “authoritarian” forms, especially measured against the Western liberal language of rights, democracy and sovereignty. I examine how this cultural text renders imperialist violence visible in what is otherwise portrayed as unqualified medical humanitarianism and development, even as it reifies a liberal language of medical and scientific progress for national rehabilitation in the mutual co-constitution of US and Taiwan modernities from the 1960s onwards. Perceiving Buddha Bless America as a putatively post-Cold War cultural production that is integral to the historical reconstruction of Taiwanese liberal nationalism, my reading suggests that a post-authoritarian democratization – one that would be achieved by demanding rights and liberty via Western modernity – paradoxically obscures the process of re-militarization in a racialized biopolitical regime of organizing and managing life, labor, security, health, and dis/ability.

BIOGRAPHY:

Professor Chien-Ting Lin teaches in the English Department of the National Central University of Chungli, Taiwan. He received his Ph.D. in literature and cultural studies from University of California, San Diego. He has published his research in Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, Review of International American Studies, and Taiwan: A Radical Quarterly in Social Studies. His current book project tentatively entitled, Fugitive Subjects of “Secret Doctors”: Politics of Life and Labor in Taiwan’s Medical Modernity, investigates transpacific colonial and neocolonial formations of knowledge production and hierarchies of reproductive labor and life politics within different periods of Taiwan’s medical modernization.

Description

ABSTRACT:

In the eyes of many foreign observers, one of the most puzzling aspects of the Republic of Vietnam (RVN, or South Vietnam) was the continual in-fighting among anticommunists. Most accounts depict these internal conflicts as simply a struggle for power, but I contend that they also constituted a battle of ideas. Specifically, the presentation examines the debate between Ngô Đình Diệm and rival anticommunist nationalists in the summer and fall of 1955. Virtually all anticommunists agreed that the regime should become a constitutional republic, and they unanimously called for a democracy. Yet the seeming consensus belied starkly different definitions of democratic government. Diệm’s faction and the political parties associated with the southern sects called for a hybrid regime, that is, a regime that combined elements of authoritarianism and democracy. The sect parties demanded greater pluralism than Diệm, though the difference was of degree rather than of kind. The debate took a decidedly more liberal direction under the influence of the émigré politician Phan Quang Đán. Đán advocated for a militant democracy, that is, a full-fledged democracy that minimally limited liberty only to protect itself from extremist forces seeking to subvert democracy. In the end, Diệm prevailed over his rivals because he and his followers controlled the government. By seriously examining the diversity of political ideas in the RVN, the presentation suggests that the regime’s seeming intractable factionalism arose from substantive disagreements rather than factional squabbling.

Description

ABSTRACT:

If, as Umberto Eco has argued, a work of art can be read as an “epistemological metaphor,” then the fictional world created by a film can also be read as an analogical comment on the knowability of the “real” world. This paper explores two models of cinematic realism, one totalizing and one apophatic, the former represented by Edward Yang’s Yi Yi and the latter by the films of Hou Hsiao-hsien. The former raises the ideal of cinema as a means of revealing even the hidden aspects of reality and thereby providing increased epistemological certainty. In contrast, through techniques including editing ellipses and the mobilization of off-screen space, Hou’s realism paradoxically represents a reality that defies or exceeds representation and therefore can only be represented in a negative or subtractive manner. It will further be argued that the two modes of realism reflect opposing impulses in a central dialectic of modernity.

BIOGRAPHY:

Jason McGrath is Associate Professor in Asian Languages and Literatures at the University of Minnesota, with affiliations in Moving Image Studies and Cultural Studies and Comparative Literature. His current book project is entitled Inscribing the Real: Realism and Convention in Chinese Cinema from the Silent Era to the Digital Age.

Description

The nature of Chinese investment abroad is changing. As China reaffirms its commitment to its “going global” strategy and the One Belt One Road initiative, China’s continued investment in regions such as Africa, Latin America, and Southeast Asia has caught the world’s attention. What are the implications of China’s shifting investment strategy for the global economy and the international system? To what extent are security and geopolitical concerns about Chinese investment abroad (both by the state and by the private sector) justified? How does China’s investment strategy reflect its shifting state and foreign policy challenges? How have these challenges changed the relationship between the Chinese government and the private sector, or transformed the Chinese approach to foreign investment? Please join us for this important dialogue with Professor Lynette Ong and Professor Howard Lin on November 13th, from 12:30pm-2pm. This event will take place in Room 108N, 1 Devonshire Place (North House, Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy).

Description

The registration for this event is now CLOSED. Rush tickets will be available but entries are not guaranteed.

Please arrive 30 minutes before the show at the Innis Town Hall, 2 Sussex Ave. (entrance off of St. George Street).

Canada/Malaysia 2017
82:00
English, Malay with English subtitles
PG • Toronto Premiere

Director
Ashley Duong (in attendance)

Cast
Mutang Urud
Noeli Urud
Agan Urud
Natasha Blanchet-Cohen

Official Selection
2018 CAAMFest
2017 LA Asian Pacific Film Fest

Much has changed in Sarawak, Malaysia since Mutang Urud was exiled to Montreal, Canada, more than 20 years ago. A renowned activist for Indigenous rights, Mutang has started a family and now lives as a stay-at-home dad. Filmmaker Ashley Duong follows Mutang as he travels with his family back to Borneo to reunite with his village relations, their travel visa contingent on Mutang staying away from the local politics.

The remote village in Sarawak, however, is not like he remembers it. His cousins who once fought for the forest alongside him have joined forces with the logging companies that are destroying it. Despite the threat of a lingering arrest warrant, Mutang can’t deny his activism. A Time To Swim traces Mutang’s search for belonging in a village where everyone is related, yet the very idea of home and heritage seems to be slipping away. – KE

Ashley Duong is a Montreal-based filmmaker and multimedia storyteller working to amplify marginalized voices. A Time to Swim is her feature-length directorial debut. She has also recently produced Land and Legends, an interactive podcast about the connection between the landscapes and myths of the Kelabit.

This 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 note, registration opens 30 minutes before showtime. Please arrive early as all tickets become void as of 15 minutes before showtime.

Description

ABSTRACT:

My talk advances consideration of the relations between the settler-colonial logic of elimination and the capitalist logic of exploitation through the prism of racism. The settler-colonial studies paradigm has convincingly established that its distinct mode of domination is the structure of elimination, not exploitation, and racism plays a decisive role in this eliminatory politics. But it rarely explores the way in which racism not only mediates but also shapes the relations between elimination and exploitation in the formation of capitalist society. This talk is an attempt to address this under-theorized terrain by taking the Ainu – indigenous people of present-day Hokkaidō, Sakhalin, and Kuril Islands – and their systematic dispossession by Meiji-era imperial Japan as a focal point of analysis.

BIOGRAPHY:

Katsuya Hirano teaches history at UCLA. He is the author of The Politics of Dialogic Imagination: Power and Popular Culture in Early Modern Japan (U of Chicago Press). He has published numerous articles and book chapters on cultural and intellectual history of Japan, Fukushima nuclear disaster, settler colonialism, and critical theory, including “Thanatopolitics in the Making of Japan’s Hokkaido: Settler Colonialism and Primitive Accumulation” (Critical Historical Studies). His current book project examines the relation between racism and capitalism in the making of the imperial Japanese nation with a focus on the settler-colonization of the lands that once belonged to the indigenous Ainu.

Description

The topic of this academic seminar is situated in the global shift of retreating American global leadership. America’s protectionist and isolationist tendencies have given rise to competing views about the world order, and contending emerging powers who may champion or restructure the liberal rules-based international system. China’s increasingly proactive foreign policy and the initiative of European states to uphold principles such as free trade hint at future prospects for further collaboration among like-minded partners, outside of traditional alliance networks. For example, in the area of global environmental governance, China’s growing portfolio in renewable energy investment and climate action is aligning it with the interests and positions of countries such as France and Germany. This raises the question of whether Europe and China should still be viewed in a East vs West dichotomy, or rather now as potential partners with shared policy priorities and collaborative approaches to global governance. Please join us – our speakers Professor Robert Austin, Dr. Anton Malkin, Mr. Bowen Yu and Mr. Asif Farooq will discuss China-EU relations, China’s role in the Balkans, Made in China 2025 and its implications for China-EU relations, and more!

Description

LECTURE IN THE ARTS, HISTORIES, LITERATURES, AND RELIGIONS OF BURMA

One of the Buddha Gotama’s numerous epithets was opamma kusalo muni – sage skilled in parables, exemplified in his life as Mahosadha. The remains of an early second millennium Burmese kingdom, named after its ceremonial center, Pagan, preserve several visual narratives of the story. They incorporate a labyrinth image to represent the setting where medicine curing human ailments was dispensed, and riddles and judicial problems were resolved – antecedent of the Bodhimanda – site of Gotama’s Awakening. Sometime in the late 11th century an unknown artisan, guided by a learned though anonymous Buddhist monk, selected the labyrinth image to reference his society’s conception of the human predicament. That monk’s vastly better known Christian counterparts, a millennium earlier and in another part of the world, chose likewise. The lecture speculates on the reasons and significance of the monk’s choice in the Pagan context.

Biography:

Lilian Handlin is a historian. She received her doctorate from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where she taught until 1977. She is the author and co-author of several books, including the four volume Liberty in America,1600 to the Present (New York, 1986 – 1995) as well as articles and reviews in American history. More recently, she began to publish articles concerned with Myanmar’s early history, grounded in the material culture surviving the kingdom of Pagan. One of her publications compares two Pagan era narratives of the Vessantara with its first Burmese vernacular version composed by an influential 18th century Burmese monk and commentator. The article was published in Steven Collins, ed., Readings in the Vessantara Jataka (New York, Columbia University Press, 2016). An examination of the myth of the Buddha’s eye teeth, in the Pagan context, appeared this summer in Cristophe Munier Gaillard, ed., Mural Art, Studies on Paintings in Asia (Bangkok 2018).

Description

Climate change is an urgent universal crisis facing all human beings. The impacts of climate change are potentially catastrophic and are unevenly distributed among different cities and countries due to environmental, geographical, social, political, and economic factors, rooted in systemic inequalities. Building resilience to climate change is complex, particularly in rapidly growing cities of Southeast Asia. In response to climate change, globalization, and urbanization, many Southeast Asian cities are experiencing a dramatic transformation due to socioeconomic and environmental challenges, especially under China’s ‘One Belt, One Road’ (OBOR) initiative.

This symposium invites scholars and practitioners across different sectors to share the latest knowledge development in the field and explore cutting-edge approaches. It hopes to further strengthen links between a community of climate leaders connected to the ground; and generate opportunities for collaboration in future urban climate resilience governance.

The symposium consists of two major sessions: a webinar (8:30-11:30 am) via Facebook Live and a panel discussion (2:00-4:00 pm).

During the webinar, ten scholars and practitioners across the world with expertise in climate issues in Southeast Asia will present their work through Facebook Live (https://www.facebook.com/ucrsea/). Each invited speaker will make a 3-minute elevator pitch to address the most critical environmental/climate issue in the region by answering the following questions briefly:

1. What is the most urgent environmental/climate issue in your city/country?
2. Why is it important?
3. What can we do?

A 10-minute Q&A session will follow each elevator pitch.

To register, please fill out a form found in https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSeLnQjKQtoCTe9emvtUMrZeA_tET1SXfxXRWwZ0S8HEQQo4kg/viewform?vc=0&c=0&w=1.

Description

Abstract:

Since 1994, when Jurassic Park was dubbed into Hindi and enjoyed unparalleled commercial success for a Hollywood film in India, the number of Hollywood films dubbed into Hindi and released in the Indian market has been steadily increasing. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in a dubbing studio in Mumbai observing Hollywood films being dubbed into Hindi, as well as participation in the dubbing of an original Netflix series from Hindi to English, this talk examines the language ideologies about Hindi and English that are articulated, performed, and manifest during the dubbing process. It describes the varied ways that voice artists and dubbing directors navigate and negotiate the complex act of rendering dialogue in Hindi when the original lines are written in English and vice versa. It illustrates how the production of dubbed media is a rich site to examine questions of legitimate language, socio-economic change, social imaginaries of difference, and ideas of belonging in contemporary India.

Biography:

Tejaswini Ganti is Associate Professor in the Department of Anthropology and core faculty in its Program in Culture & Media at New York University. She is the author of Producing Bollywood: Inside the Contemporary Hindi Film Industry (Duke University Press 2012) and Bollywood: A Guidebook to Popular Hindi Cinema (Routledge 2004; 2nd edition 2013). Her current research examines the politics of language and translation within the Hindi film industry and the formalization of film training through film schools in India.

Description

How has the trans-Pacific trade conflict impacted economics and business in Asia? What are the implications for Canada? Join us on December 10 as Bart W. Édes discusses these regional integration trends and more.

Biography:

Bart W. Édes has served as the Asian Development Bank’s (ADB’s) Representative in North America since October 2, 2017. In this capacity, he mobilizes financing for ADB’s developing member countries; shares development knowledge and experience; establishes and deepens partnerships with public, private and nonprofit organizations in North America; and raises public awareness of ADB in Canada and the United States.

His earlier ADB experience includes leading teams responsible for knowledge management, social development, gender equity, the social sectors, civil society engagement, ICT for Development, inclusive business, governance, and public sector management. He guided the formulation of ADB’s Public Communications Policy, which set a new global benchmark for transparency and information sharing among the international financial institutions. Mr. Édes has also served as Alternate Chairperson of ADB’s Appeals Committee, and Member of the ADB Integrity Oversight Committee.

Between 1994 and 2000, Mr. Édes managed communications at SIGMA, a joint initiative of the European Union and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development providing support to public governance reform in Central and Eastern European countries. Mr. Édes has also worked as a journalist, researcher, policy analyst, and specialist on international trade and foreign direct investment.

Description

The independence struggle of East Timor from Indonesia rested on a three-pronged strategy. An aspect of it was to Indonesianize the war that Jakarta had unleashed on the half-island country. Under the overall guidance – and sometimes strict instructions – of their nationalist movement, East Timorese students and activists across Indonesia progressively broke the government’s stranglehold on information about East Timor. They informed the Indonesian public and forged formidable alliances with Indonesian human rights activist and political reformists. These Indonesians rallied against the day-to-day human right violations that the Indonesian military committed in East Timor and gradually came to recognize that the exercise of the right to self-determination in East Timor was a step in the direction of their much-delayed democratic transition. This talk will explore how it was that the East Timorese nationalists marched – and won – in Jakarta while fighting a losing battle in East Timor itself.

Dr. Awet T. Weldemichael is a former refugee goatherd and currently a stateless person. He is an Associate Professor and Queen’s National Scholar in the Department of History at Queen’s University. He holds a Ph.D. in history and LL.M. in public international law. He studied the history and politics of Northeast Africa and Southeast Asia and wrote a dissertation on the East Timorese and Eritrean struggles for independence from Indonesia and Ethiopia, respectively. He is the author of Third World Colonialism and Strategies of Liberation: Eritrea and East Timor Compared (Cambridge, 2013), among others. He has since been researching Northeast African political economy of conflict and his book on the root causes, dynamics and consequences of maritime piracy in Somalia has just been published (Piracy in Somalia: Violence and Development in the Horn of Africa). He has previously held teaching and research positions at African, European and U.S. universities; and has worked for United Nations peacekeeping and The Carter Center election monitoring.