Description

Toronto Reel Asian International Film Festival (Reel Asian) presented by National Bank is a unique showcase of contemporary Asian cinema and work from the Asian diaspora. As Canada’s largest Asian film festival, Reel Asian® provides a public forum for Asian media artists and their work, and fuels the growing appreciation for Asian cinema in Canada. The 19th annual film festival runs from November 5 – 15, 2015 in Toronto and Richmond Hill. Reel Asian will be showcasing special projects featuring prominent artists, musicians, up-and-coming filmmakers and also includes an Industry Series for creative minds to connect. Works presented at Reel Asian include films and videos by East, South and Southeast Asian artists in Canada, the U.S., Asia and all over the world.

Event runs November 5 – November 15, 2015. Click the link below for the festival schedule.

Description

Although the discourse of globalization following the fall of the Soviet Union was sudden and celebratory, many distinct historical developments were brought together in most of the invocations, converging around the argument, either latent or patent, that a verdict had been delivered with the end of the Cold War, on the side of freedom and against overarching state authority.
My paper will address two specific sets of developments that instance the globalization of media and markets, namely advertising and trademark regulation. There are interesting differences between these developments, and to some extent they reflect consequential differences in nomenclature and usage, between the brand and the trademark. Although in a sense these are the same entity as intellectual property, and can be figured together in the idea of the commodity image, the former is in a lightly regulated zone at best, while the latter is subject to strenuous adjudication seeking to protect manufacturers’ and merchants’ rights while regulating market behavior. Studying examples from Indian case law and the history of Indian marketing and advertising, I will seek to understand how, when key aspects of the development of Indian markets have not replicated western conditions, the relevant differences appear to remain as aberrations to the given norms of understanding market-led globalization.

Arvind Rajagopal’s work explores questions of political aesthetics vis-à-vis postcolonial state formation. His book Politics After Television: Hindu Nationalism and the Reshaping of the Public in India (Cambridge, 2001) won the Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy Prize from the Association of Asian Studies in 2003, and his edited volume The Indian Public Sphere appeared in 2009. Recent articles include “The Emergency and the New Indian Middle Class” in Modern Asian Studies, 2011, and “Special Political Zone” on the anti-Muslim violence in Ahmedabad, Gujarat, in South Asian History and Culture, 2011. He has held fellowships at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University, the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, and the Institute for Advanced Studies in Princeton. In addition, he has been a visiting professor at the University of Goettingen, Germany, the Delhi School of Economics at the University of Delhi, and the Central University of Hyderabad. His current research draws on archives in five countries, including India and the United States, and seeks, among other things, to link the disciplinary history of media studies with the history of communication technology.

Description

While developments in innovation bring about major changes to our daily life, issues such as the spread of infectious diseases as well as malnutrition and poverty in developing countries remain unresolved. As a result, the gap between developed and developing countries continues to widen. The same could have been said for post-war Japan when infectious diseases were quite widespread in the country. Japan overcame these challenges collectively through its efforts in research and development, and innovative reforms including its social system. Based on its past experience, Japan has been making tremendous contributions toward the amelioration of global public health and the eradication of infectious diseases. In 2013, the Government of Japan and five Japanese pharmaceutical companies formally inaugurated a public-private partnership named Global Health Innovative Technology Fund (GHIT Fund) aimed at enhancing Japan’s contributions in the field of international health by exercising its innovative capabilities. Dr. Kurokawa, Board Chairman of the GHIT Fund, will discuss how globalization and innovation impact society in both positive and negative ways. He is also going to look at how countries such as Japan and Canada that lead the world in innovation should actively collaborate on international health through innovation.

Dr. Kiyoshi Kurokawa is a graduate of the University of Tokyo; Professor of Medicine at UCLA (1979–84), University of Tokyo (1989–96), and Dean Tokai University Medical School (1996–2002); President of the Science Council of Japan (2003–06), and Science Advisor to the Prime Minister of Japan (2006–08). He served as an executive member of many national and international professional societies of his disciplines, including Commissioner of WHO (2005–09), Institute of Medicine of National Academies of Sciences of USA, Master of American College of Physicians, and Founding Governor of ACP Japan Chapter. He served as a board member of Alexandria Library (Egypt), A*STAR (Singapore), Khalifa University (Abu Dhabi), OIST (Okinawa), and on the Advisory Board to the Prime Minister of Malaysia. He was appointed as a member of the World Dementia Council by the UK Government in April, 2014, and as a member of the International Scientific Advisory Committee (ISAC) of Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in 2015. Dr. Kurokawa was Chair of the Fukushima Nuclear Accident Independent Investigation Commission by the National Diet of Japan (NAIIC; 2011.12–2012.7) and received the 2012 Scientific Freedom and Responsibility Award of AAAS. He was listed among the 100 Top Global Thinkers of 2012 by Foreign Policy for his leadership in NAIIC.　

The JAPAN NOW Lecture Series is presented jointly by the Asian Institute and the Consulate General of Japan

Description

The prolonged war and violence in Sri Lanka dispersed many Tamil families across international borders. Desire and anxiety to reunite with family members became part of everyday life. Waiting for refugees claims to be heard, waiting for the visas to be approved after marriages so that the spouses could unite, waiting to leave the site of violence, waiting to return from refugee camps in India back to Sri Lanka or elsewhere, waiting for the disappeared and imprisoned sons and daughters to return home became a part of life among the Tamils. The constant mobility, immobility, dispersion and uncertainty created conditions for a new sociality within which the notion of waiting was expanded, prolonged and became ordinary. How do people inhabit the zone of waiting in the time of mobility and violence? How do people live by waiting? ‘Waiting’ I argue is not state of being in limbo but an everyday time and space which people have to learn to inhabit the everyday life in uncertainty.

Sidharthan Maunaguru is an Assistant Professor of South Asian Studies Programme, National University Singapore. Maunaguru completed his PhD in Anthropology at Johns Hopkins University, USA. He was awarded a Newton International Fellowship by the Royal Society and British academy and hosted by University of Edinburgh. He is currently completing a book on transnational marriages that looks at how Sri Lankan Tamil communities dispersed by war recreate their sense of community by attempting to rebuild personal and familial networks through the institution of marriage. His research is based on multi-sited fieldwork and intersects with anthropology, history and philosophy. His work has been supported by grants from the Wenner Gren, the National Science Foundation, and British academy. He has taught previously at the University of Peradaniya, Sri Lanka and Johns Hopkins University.

Description

For the first 55 years of its existence, Indonesia’s leaders used a centralised bureaucracy to try to keep the country’s 13,000 islands together. But since military ruler Suharto stepped down in 1998, the world’s fourth most populous nation has undergone a riotous decentralisation. Author and researcher Elizabeth Pisani examines how local identities are being excavated, dusted off and sometimes simply invented to serve the needs of political elites in this new age of micro-democracy.

Elizabeth Pisani is an epidemiologist by training and a political scientist by inclination. Her most recent book, the acclaimed Indonesia Etc.: Exploring the Improbable Nation, weaves history, travelogue and political analysis into a portrait of a nation with which she has interacted for over 25 years. Elizabeth holds an MA in Classical Chinese from Oxford, an MSc in Medical Demography from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, and a PhD in Infectious Disease Epidemiology, also from LSHTM. She is a visiting Senior Fellow at the Policy Institute at King’s College, London, and director of the public health consultancy Ternyata Ltd.

Indonesia is not only the most populous Muslim country, 255 million, but also one of the most diverse, with more than 700 local languages and culturally distinct groups. Indonesia has a rich history that saw various religious traditions established among the local populations, including Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, and Christianity. The University of Toronto boasts one of the strongest concentrations of specialists on Indonesia in Canada and North America, with five professors specializing on Indonesia in various departments. This lecture highlights the significance of this country and the strength of UofT as a centre for the study of Indonesia.

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Emigration from China has been rapidly growing but understudied, largely due to insufficient data. Based on China’s census microdata collected since 1982, we have studied both trends and patterns of the country’s emigrants. The five-year volume of emigration increased from several thousand in 1982 to over 1.5 million in 2010, with the main reasons being labor and student migration. There are demographical concentrations closely correlated with emigrants’ age and regions of origin. With a few exceptions, the emigration rate was higher for the city residents and the more educated social groups. Not surprisingly, Canada is among the top three destinations and proportionally the most favorite one for Chinese emigrants. A solid understanding of the diversity of Chinese immigrants’ background can help to improve the efficiency of integration policy in their new home society.

John Zhongdong Ma (Ph.D., McMaster University, 1993) is Associate Professor of Social Science and Associate Director of the Center for Applied Social and Economic Research (CASER) at HKUST. He has been working on census data in China and collaborated with the National Bureau of Statistics in China for over two decades. He served as Director of the Center for Demography and Sustainable Development at HKUST between 2006 and 2010. His research interests include internal migration and human capital transfer in the Asia-Pacific region, fertility, quantitative methods; geographical information systems (GIS), and mental health of labor migrants in China. He was the first researcher who conducted a survey of returned labor migrants in China and studied their occupational changes after returning to the countryside. He was awarded Second Prize in China’s Fifth National Competition in Population Science in 2010.

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On November 8, 2015, Burmese citizens will be voting for their new parliament in what is expected to be the first free general election since the beginning of democratization in 2011. Our speakers will focus on the implications of the election for Myanmar’s ethnic minorities, the regional migration and refugee crisis, Myanmar’s relations with its Asia-Pacific neighbours, and the future of the country’s nascent democracy.

Description

Many urban scholars assume that global capital flows, commodification and capitalization of land universally affect urban areas all over the globe. However, not all spaces are equally amenable to commodification or gentrification and in many cases the specific historical character of a city, a neighborhood or an urban space tends to stick to it for many generations. What happened in a space, which community or class is associated with it, leave marks that do not easily disappear. This is particularly true in post-colonial cities marked by deep historical segmentation. Drawing on material from India (and South Africa) I will show how religious markers and boundaries of caste and community gets etched onto the urban imagination, profoundly and durably structuring the use and habitation of urban space. Rather than understanding urban history as the history of capital, such historical dynamics must be at the heart of a more global urban theory for the 21st century.

Thomas Blom Hansen is the Reliance-Dhirubhai Ambani Professor of Anthropology at Stanford University and director of the Center for South Asia at Stanford. He is the author of multiple books and articles on Hindu nationalism, Hindu-Muslim violence, urban life, religious identity politics, sovereignty and the modern state in South Asia and South Africa.

Description

Charting their training, travels, and performances, Mao’s Cultural Army explores the role of the artists that roamed the Chinese countryside in support of Mao Zedong’s revolution. In this talk Professor Brian DeMare traces the development of this “cultural army” from its genesis in Red Army propaganda teams to its full development as a largely civilian force composed of amateur and professional drama troupes in the early years of the PRC. Drawing from memoirs, artistic handbooks, and rare archival sources, DeMare uncovers the arduous and complex process of creating revolutionary dramas that would appeal to China’s all-important rural audiences. The Communists strived for a disciplined cultural army to promote party policies, but audiences often shunned modern and didactic shows, and instead clamoured for traditional works. DeMare illustrates how drama troupes, caught between the party and their audiences, did their best to resist the ever growing reach of the PRC state.

A cultural historian of modern China and the Chinese Communist Party, Brian DeMare researches how Chinese citizens negotiated with the politicization of their everyday lives. Mass campaigns, revolutionary art, and rural cultural workers are the primary concerns driving his research agenda. Professor DeMare’s new book, Mao’s Cultural Army: Drama Troupes in China’s Rural Revolution (Cambridge University Press, 2015), explores the political uses of cultural performance in the rise of the Chinese Communist Party and the early years of the People’s Republic of China. He is currently working on two book projects. The first is a study of drama troupes during the Cultural Revolution. The second details the epic land reform campaigns that shook the Chinese countryside during the late 1940s and early 1950s.

Description

This paper examines the implications of Indian nationalism during the inter-war period for both Japanese rule in Korea and the anti-colonial struggle against it. It discusses how two Bengalis, famous for their Anglophobia—the poet Rabindranath Tagore and the revolutionary Rash Behari Bose—saw Japanese colonialism in Korea and how their contrasting views differentially influenced thoughts about colonialism in the Japanese colonial empire, among both Japanese and Koreans. The paper shows how the views and influence of these two Indians can usefully be examined in terms of what Ann Laura Stoler has called the ‘politics of comparison’. Stoler has seminally argued that modern empires interacted with one another in the (trans-)formations of their colonial policies, urging scholars of colonial history to attend to how these empires compared one another with a view to understanding the politics behind such acts of comparison. By taking the example of the Korean and Indian causes for independence, particularly their trans-imperial interactions, this paper will try to demonstrate that this concept can be usefully extended in ways that cover the thoughts and actions of those colonized subjects who used comparison to oppose colonialism.

Satoshi Mizutani was educated at Sophia, Warwick and Oxford Universities. His Dphil thesis was published in 2011 as The Meaning of White: Race, Class, and the ‘Domiciled Community’ in British India 1858-1930 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011). Since 2005, he has taught at Doshisha University (Kyoto, Japan), and, in 2007 with Ryūta Itagaki, co-founded DOSC [Doshisha Studies in Colonialism], an inter-disciplinary research group devoted to studies on European and Japanese colonialisms.

Description

A panoramic account of Chinese diaspora in Australia and North America during the 19th and 20th centuries, from the perspectives of the Poy family.

Readers will experience life of the Chinese in the gold fields in Australia at the height of the White Australia Policy, the horrors of the Second World War and of heroism, the life of high society in Hong Kong and the Japanese invasion, filled with spies and infiltrators. The turbulent events of the Chinese civil war, the establishment of the People’s Republic of China, and the subsequent Cultural Revolution, are felt through the suffering of family members who remained in China. As luck would have it, due to wartime diplomatic bungling, one member of the Poy clan entered Canada with his family during Chinese Exclusion, where they eventually remained and prospered. This is the story of a family from the village of Suizaikou, where the streams meet, in Taishan County in south China.

The Honourable Dr. Vivienne Poy is Chancellor Emerita of the University of Toronto, an author of non-fiction and a historian. In 1998, she was the first Canadian of Asian heritage to be appointed to the Senate of Canada where she focused on gender issues, multiculturalism, immigration, and human rights. She retired from the Senate in September 2012, and continues to be actively involved with communities across Canada. She travels extensively and has special interest in the study of Chinese diaspora.

Dr Barry McGowan is a Canberra-based heritage consultant and historian and a Research Associate at the College of Asia and the Pacific at the Australian National University. He has written extensively on the history and heritage of Australian and Chinese-Australian mining communities and Australian ghost towns. His best known books are Ghost Towns of Australia, Fool’s Gold. Myths and legends of gold-seeking in Australia, and Dust and Dreams. Mining Communities in South-East New South Wales. Barry has also written several thematic histories and helped curate exhibitions of the Chinese people in regional and rural Australia. He is currently working on a thematic history of the Chinese people in Central New South Wales. In October of this year his most recent publication, Tracking the Dragon: Thematic History of the Chinese people in the Rutherglen/Wahgunyah region of the Indigo Shire, Victoria, was short listed and commended in the 2015 Victorian Community History Awards.

Ruth Hayhoe is a professor at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education of the University of Toronto. Her professional engagements in Asia included foreign expert at Fudan University (1980-1982), Head of the Cultural Section of the Canadian Embassy in Beijing (1989-1991) and Director of the Hong Kong Institute of Education (1997-2002). Recent books include Canadian Universities in China’s Transformation: An Untold Story (2016), China Through the Lens of Comparative Education (2015), Portraits of 21st Century Chinese Universities: In the Move to Mass Higher Education (2011) and Portraits of Influential Chinese Educators (2006). She has received many honors including the Silver Bauhinia Star of the Hong Kong SAR Government (2002), Commandeur dans l’ordre des Palmes académiques of the Government of France (2002), Honorary Fellow of the University of London Institute of Education (1998) and of the Comparative and International Education Society (2011), Honorary Doctorates from the Hong Kong Institute of Education (2002) and the Open University of Hong Kong (2015) and the Mingyuan Education Prize (2015).

5:30 – 7:30 PM, followed by a reception

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Information is not yet available.

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Largely unknown to city-dwellers before the 1960s, large apartment complexes (ap’at’ŭ tanji) powerfully shape the landscapes of contemporary South Korean cities. Some are now being memorialized by artists, planners and citizen themselves. How did apparently western-style housing blocks migrate to Korea on such a large scale? To what extent do they reflect the power relations between the global and the local in South Korean cities? What is currently at stake regarding the future of apartments in the contemporary post-industrial Korean society? Combining the perspectives of cultural geography and Korean studies, and using ethnographic materials gathered on sites studied since the mid-1990s (in downtown Seoul) or new ones in the making (Songdo), the symposium will address those issues regarding the significance of South Korea as a “Republic of Apartments” (ap’at’ŭ konghwaguk), where apartment complexes have been the main mediation of the Korean society to urban modernity.

Valérie Gelézeau addresses in her research the various dimensions of space as a social construct in contemporary Korea, via different perspectives including urban geography, cultural geography, regional geography and geopolitics. She is the author of Ap’at’ŭ konghwaguk (“The Republic of Apartments” 2007), Atlas de Séoul (2011, a geographical monograph of Seoul as a megacity) and, with Koen De Ceuster and Alain Delissen, the co-editor of De-bordering Korea. Tangible and intangible legacies of the Sunshine Policy (Routledge 2013).

Description

How do social science researchers studying urban dynamism and change use -photography, maps, film, video, graphic design, and other forms of visual data in their methodological practice? How do visual representations of objects, places, and landscapes foster different ways of seeing and knowing? What kinds of ethical and political dilemmas are generated by the use of visual forms? In this This workshop invites four three distinguished speakers to share their innovative approaches to visual methodology, which move beyond a narrow emphasis on documentary representation and explore the complex issues involved in producing visual interpretations of social, political and cultural life. In addition to sharing their insights about specific projects utilizing visual methods, they will discuss the importance of collaboration and reciprocity in the field of visual methodology as well as complex entanglements around power, inequality, and social justice in the production and dissemination of visual representation and forms.

Chair: Jennifer Jihye Chun, CSK Director

Speakers:
Valérie Gelézeau, the 2015 annual symposium’s distinguished guest speaker from the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS, Paris) within the Centre for Korean Studies, will share insights from her use of visual methods in projects such as “Ap’at’ŭ konghwaguk” (“The Republic of Apartments”, Seoul, Humanitas, 2007), “Atlas de Séoul” (a geographical monograph of Seoul as a megacity, 2011), and “Korea, Koreas: a situated geography of the division” (2012).

Tong Lam, a historian and visual artist from the University of Toronto Mississauga, will discuss his use of photographic and cinematographic techniques to document China’s phenomenal growth, including images of the precarity of everyday life in a rapidly urbanizing village, the co-existence of affluence and dispossession, and the debris of history in industrial and post-industrial societies.

Ju Hui Judy Han, a cultural geographer of religion, mobility, and difference from the Department of Human Geography at the University of Toronto Scarborough, will discuss the use of ethnographic nonfiction and digital storytelling to deepen our understanding of affective geographies and temporalities.

Co-sponsors: Dr. David Chu Program in Asia-Pacific Studies, Department of Geography and Planning

Description

This is the second workshop in the series for the Richard Charles Lee Big Ideas Competition. In this workshop, open to undergraduate and graduate students in the Faculty of Arts and Science, you will learn how to:

-Write a clear and persuasive proposal
-Use journalistic writing techniques
-Shape a global story and tell it well
-Draft a proposal that will be reviewed and critiqued

THE BIG IDEAS COMPETITION
We’re looking for bright, motivated students with ideas for impactful projects with a focus on Asia. This is a chance to think outside the box, to apply your classroom learning to the real world in a meaningful way. Students will train to win through a series of expert-led workshops. In April, individuals and teams will pitch their ideas before a jury of faculty members and industry experts, competing for the prize to fund their projects.

Sign up to receive updates on the competition.

Description

This is another workshop in the series for the Richard Charles Lee Big Ideas Competition, open to undergraduate and graduate students in the Faculty of Arts and Science.

Session led by Kourosh Houshmand, Top 20 Under 20, Founder of Solar for Life

– Drop in
– Open hack
– Beverages and snacks available

THE BIG IDEAS COMPETITION
We’re looking for bright, motivated students with ideas for impactful projects with a focus on Asia. This is a chance to think outside the box, to apply your classroom learning to the real world in a meaningful way. Students will train to win through a series of expert-led workshops. In April, individuals and teams will pitch their ideas before a jury of faculty members and industry experts, competing for the prize to fund their projects.

Sign up to receive updates on the competition.

Description

Information is not yet available.

Description

Yasukuni Shrine is well known for the political controversies its presence has generated both within Japan and between Japan and its neighbors. But what exactly was Yasukuni Shrine’s role during that war? How could one shrine impart such significant and lasting influence throughout Japan and beyond? In my talk I follow one army private who was killed in Northern China in 1934. Through a reconstruction of the postmortem fate of his body and spirit—including his cremation and return of ashes back home, memorials in his hometown, and the lavish memorial service conducted at Yasukuni Shrine—I demonstrate the ways in which private grief for war death was institutionalized into a national experience. The experience of various events and rituals hosted by the shrine functioned as a training ground for those involved to practice an acceptable brand of grief, which was reproduced and disseminated by modern media to involve the entire nation.

Akiko Takenaka is Associate Professor of History at University of Kentucky. Her book Yasukuni Shrine: History, Memory, and Japan’s Unending Postwar (University of Hawaii Press, 2015) is the first book-length work in English that critically examines the controversial war memorial.

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Japan-China relations is one of the most important bilateral relations for Japan, and China’s constructive role is indispensible to the stability and prosperity of the Asia Pacific region. In this presentation, Consul-General of Japan Yasunori Nakayama gives an overview of the past and the present of Japan-China relations, how the Japanese and Chinese regard each other, the two countries’ economic ties and pending concerns. He also illustrates the importance of Japan’s cooperation and exchange with China from the perspective of the so-called “mutually beneficial relationship based on common strategic interest”.

Mr. Yasunori Nakayama assumed the post of Consul-General of Japan in Toronto on September 8, 2014. He joined Japan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs 33 years ago, and has since experienced postings abroad in the UK, Germany, Indonesia, Belgium, the Philippines and Switzerland.

Some of his other positions with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Tokyo include Principal Senior Coordinator in the Policy Coordination Division (Foreign Policy Bureau), Counsellor in the Cabinet Secretariat (Cabinet Intelligence and Research Office), and Director of the Foreign Nationals’ Affairs Division in the Consular Affairs Bureau.

Mr. Nakayama graduated from the Faculty of Law at Tokyo University. Just prior to coming to Toronto, he served as the Deputy Director-General for International Trade Policy, working in the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry to engage in trade negotiations and assist Japanese companies in their overseas activities.

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Information is not yet available.

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In this talk, Robert Diaz tracks the emergence of two important figures that have come to signify anti-Japanese nationalisms and calls for redress in the Philippines from the 1990’s onwards, namely the comfort woman (or women who were systematically abducted during Japanese occupation) and the japayuki (or women bound for Japan as migrant laborers because of the renewed economic relationship between the Philippines and Japan). By examining the representation of these figures in two provocative cinematic works—Nick DeOcampo’s The Sex Warriors and The Samurai (1996) and Gil Portes’ film Markova Comfort Gay (2000)—Diaz suggests that Filipino artists have queered these figures in order to expose and subtend how anti-Japanese nationalisms seek redress by reproducing heteronormative and patriarchal assumptions about victimized Filipinas. Diaz argues that by queering the comfort woman and the japayuki, these films thus dramatize the limits of victimhood as a nationalist articulation, while also limning how histories of Japanese colonialism and Japanese transnational capital intersect in the contemporary moment.

Robert Diaz is an Assistant Professor in the Faculties of Liberal Arts & Sciences and Graduate Studies at OCAD University. His teaching and scholarship focus on the intersections of Sexuality, Filipino, Asian, and Postcolonial Studies. Diaz is currently co-editing Diasporic Intimacies: Queer Filipinos/as and Canadian Imaginaries (under contract with Northwestern University Press), which brings together artists, scholars, and community workers in order to examine the contributions of queer Filipinos/as to Canadian culture and society. His first book project, Reparative Acts: Redressive Nationalisms and Queer Filipino/a Lives, examines how Filipino/a nationalisms from the 1970’s onwards have also possessed a redressive valence.His research has appeared or is forthcoming in Signs, GLQ, Women and Performance, Journal of Asian American Studies, Filipino Studies: Palimpsest of Nation and Diaspora, and Global Asian Popular Culture.

Description

In this workshop, students will learn:
• How to take a proposal and verbally articulate and present the Big Idea
• How to tell a compelling story and persuade an audience
• The art of the “elevator pitch”
• Not to forget the details
Note: this workshop is for University of Toronto undergraduate and graduate students only

Justin Poy is the President and Creative Director of The Justin Poy Agency, a niche market, full service, advertising agency based in Toronto. Established in 1993, Justin has led the agency to win over 15 international creative awards. He is often quoted in advertising and marketing media, and particularly in automotive marketing media. Justin is a frequent speaker at digital conferences across North America, including the Canadian Digital Dealer Conference, Digital Dealer USA and The New Car Dealers of BC Dealer Day, and is the former host and producer of “Philanthropy Today ” on Rogers Television. Justin is the recipient of the Queen’s Golden and Diamond Jubilee Medals for philanthropy and community activism, U of T’s Arbor Award, and the Chinese Canadian Legend Award, and is the inaugural recipient of the Canadian Youth Business Foundation’s Entrepreneurship Champion Award. He currently sits on the Board of the SickKids Foundation, the Honorary Board of the Kidney Foundation of Canada and was recently appointed to the Walrus Foundation. THE
RICHARD CHARLES LEE BIG IDEAS COMPETITION
We’re looking for bright, motivated undergraduate and graduate students in the Faculty of Arts and Science with ideas for impactful projects with a focus on Asia. This is a chance to think outside the box, to apply your classroom learning to the real world in a meaningful way. Students will train to win through a series of expert-led workshops. In April, individuals and teams will pitch their ideas before a jury of faculty members and industry experts, competing for the prize to fund their projects.

More Information: https://munkschool.utoronto.ca/ai/bigideas/

Description

Mark McDowell is Canada’s first resident Ambassador to the Republic of the Union of Myanmar. He joined the Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade in 1994 and served abroad in New York, Taipei, Bangkok, and Beijing. He received his BA in History and Philosophy from the University of Toronto, and has Masters degrees from the University of Toronto and Harvard University. From 2008-09 he was an Asia Research Fellow at the Ash Institute for Governance and Innovation at the Harvard Kennedy School.

Description

Conference is open to University of Toronto students

The Asian Institute, in collaboration with the Contemporary Asian Studies Student Union (CASSU), will organize a half-day conference, Global Careers through Asia, held at the Munk School of Global Affairs. The conference aims to get students thinking about how to plan for a global career in the twenty-first century, in a world that is no longer rooted in the west. Whether or not students go on to work in Asia, Canada, or anywhere else, Asia plays an important role in the global economy, and the ability to apply the skills and perspectives developed through Asian Studies to their future careers is crucial. Through a keynote presentation on the importance of Asia competence, an industry senior-level experts panel, and two alumni panels, students will receive inspiration and real-life stories from people engaged with Asia in their work. The conference will be followed by a networking reception with invited alumni and a speed mentoring session.

P R O G R A M

11:15 – 12:00
Registration and Informal Lunch

12:00 – 12:07
Welcome Remarks

Ritu Birla, Director, Asian Institute

12:07 – 12:15
Opening Remarks

Joseph Wong, Ralph and Roz Halbert Professor of Innovation, Munk School of Global Affairs

12:15 – 1:00
Keynote Address

David Mulroney, President and Vice-Chancellor, University of St. Michael’s College in the University of Toronto; Former Ambassador to the People’s Republic of China

1:00 – 2:15
Making a Career with Asia

Mark McDowell, Ambassador to the Republic of the Union of Myanmar
Margaret Cornish, Former Chief Representative and Senior Advisor, Bennett Jones LLP, Beijing
Sarah Kutulakos, Executive Director, Canada China Business Council

Moderator:
Carmen Ho, PhD Candidate, Department of Political Science

2:15 – 2:30
Break

2:30- 3:45
Engaging Asia, Beyond the University

Melinda Jacobs, Co-Founder, Lucent Sky
Betty Xie, Emerging Filmmaker; Development and Guest Services Coordinator, Toronto Reel Asian International Film Festival
Gaultier Letourneau-Ross, Analyst, Avia-Tek, Shanghai

Moderator:
Steven Denny, PhD Candidate, Department of Political Science

3:45 – 4:55
Making a Difference through Asia

Carlotta James, Outreach Manager and Research Coordinator-Asia, Peterborough
Remi Kanji, Co-Founder, Plato Medical, Singapore
David Wang, International Sales and Marketing Coordinator, Ishinomaki Laboratory, Japan

Moderator:
James Poborsa, PhD Candidate, Department of East Asian Studies

4:55 – 5:00
Closing Remarks

Eros Grinzato, President, Contemporary Asian Studies Student Union (CASSU)

5:00 – 7:00
Reception

Alumni and Students Mingle

5:30 – 6:30
Speed Mentoring Session