Description

This presentation addresses the contemporary ambition of Buddhist actors and institutions to redefine and affirm their place in South Korean society. On the basis of ethnographical and sociological data, it presents how Buddhist temples in Seoul have undertaken massive development projects and broadened their activities in order to adapt to the population’s demands and to promote a formal religious adhesion both on individual and collective basis. In a context of strong concurrence among religious groups, and especially between Buddhist temples and Protestant churches, many Buddhist leaders aim at strengthening their religious denomination by developing a more “conscious”, “proud” and “collective” affiliation among the believers, with the explicit aim that religiously educated and socialized Buddhists would contribute to represent Buddhism in society and subsequently to its influence. By analyzing this phenomenon, this paper will explore the ambivalent relationship of Buddhism with the Protestant “megachurch” model and the new positioning of temples in Seoul.

Florence Galmiche’s research interest lies in examining the place and roles of religion in contemporary Korean society. She received her Ph.D in sociology at the EHESS in 2011 with a dissertation on urban Buddhism in South Korea. She is now maître de conférence (associate professor) in Korean Studies at the University Diderot-Paris 7. She is a member of the research units CESSMA (Centre d’études en sciences sociales sur les mondes africains, américains et asiatiques) and CCJ (Chine, Corée, Japon).

Description

In the spirit of Asha or “hope”, the Asian Institute at the University of Toronto invites you to a breakfast fundraiser to aid victims of the earthquake in Nepal.

After the devastation of the 7.8 magnitude earthquake that hit the region on April 25, the people of Nepal are in dire need of assistance. Hundreds of local and international organizations are working day and night for relief and rebuilding work. Please join us in supporting them. Donations in any amount are welcome, with tax receipts issued for contributions of $25 and over. Proceeds raised go to Nepal-based Association of Youth Organizations Nepal (AYON) www.facebook.com/AyonNepal via Scadding Court Community Center and Plan Canada www.plancanada.ca.

The Government of Canada has pledged to match privately raised funds, so your generosity will automatically be doubled.

Please help the University of Toronto mount a strong collective response to rebuild Nepal

Description

The Toronto Festival of Literature and the Arts (FSALA),

This is an international festival with a difference, truly reflecting the diversity of Toronto. Over 30 writers from Jamaica, Puerto Rico, Trinidad, Philippines, India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Ghana, Tanzania, and of course all across Canada will be present. Saturday night dance performance by Hari Krishan and InDance. African guitar by Tichaona Maradze. There will be panels on a variety of subjects, including New Theatre in Canada, East Asian Writing, South Asian Writing, Writing in Languages Other than English.

Admission is free except for the Saturday night event. It is advisable but not essential to pre-register.

FOR MORE INFORMATION AND THE FULL PROGRAM PLEASE VISIT: www.fsalatoronto.com.

Description

This presentation comes from his forthcoming book, Reparations and the Human, which investigates the problem of reparations and human rights in Cold War Asia. Following the devastating violence of World War II, an emerging discourse of reparations and human rights sought to articulate new precepts against state harm of individuals. Traditionally, reparations could be claimed by one state from another as compensation for the “costs of war.” For the first time, however, the idea of reparations was extended to encompass individual and group claims for redress for state-sponsored violence in the name of human rights and in the interests of protecting the sanctity of human life.

His approach to the topic is fundamentally interdisciplinary. Reparation is a key term in political theory, but it is also a central concept in psychoanalysis specifically, object relations yet the two are rarely discussed in relation to one another. Reparations and the Human focuses on unexamined links between political and psychic genealogies of reparation in order to explore the possibilities and limits of repairing the injuries of war, violence, and colonialism in the Transpacific region. Here, he investigate three interlocking events: the internment of Japanese Americans during WWII; the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki ending that war; and contemporary legal claims of “Comfort Women,” girls and women conscripted by the Japanese Imperial Army into sexual slavery.

From this larger perspective, he analyzes the postwar ascension of reparations and human rights not only as a moral response to but also, and indeed, as a form of continued state violence.

In this talk, he focuses specifically on the afterword to his book, “Absolute Apology, Absolute Forgiveness,” which explores the history of uranium mining and “Little Boy,” the atomic bomb detonated by the U.S. military over Hiroshima on August 6, 1945. Much of the world¹s uranium supply is mined from indigenous lands, and the uranium for Little Boy, too, came in part from the lands of the Sahtu Dene, an indigenous people in Great Bear Lake, Canada. Ignorant at the time of how their mining efforts would be applied and the destination of the ore, the Sahtu Dene nonetheless felt implicated once they learned of Hiroshima¹s fate. In response to the disaster, they sent a delegation to Hiroshima to apologize. He will discuss the Sahtu Dene’s response to the atomic bombing in order to propose an alternate concept for reparations and the human. Here, he extends Jacques Derrida¹s notion of “absolute forgiveness” to develop a corollary concept: “absolute apology.”
David L. Eng is Richard L. Fisher Professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania. He is also Professor in the Program in Comparative Literature & Literary Theory and the Program in Asian American Studies.

Eng is author of The Feeling of Kinship: Queer Liberalism and the Racialization of Intimacy (Duke, 2010) and Racial Castration: Managing Masculinity in Asian America (Duke, 2001). He is co-editor with David Kazanjian of Loss: The Politics of Mourning (California, 2003) and with Alice Y. Hom of Q & A: Queer in Asian America (Temple, 1998). In addition, he is co-editor of two special issues of the journal Social Text: with Teemu Ruskola and Shuang Shen, “China and the Human” (2011/2012), and with Judith Halberstam and José Esteben Muñoz, “What’s Queer about Queer Studies Now?” (2005). His current book project, Reparations and the Human, investigates the relationship between political and psychic genealogies of reparations in Cold War Asia. Eng is the recipient of research fellowships from the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton and the Mellon Foundation, among others. Last year, he helped to organize a Penn Mellon Sawyer Seminar on “Race, Across Time and Space,” focusing on race as a fungible yet persistent feature of human history and as a global phenomenon with long and diverse histories.

Description

In the early 1990s, Korean Chinese began to visit South Korea, long considered a forbidden homeland during the Cold War era. Many overstayed their visas to become undocumented workers in search of the “Korean dream.” In 2005 the South Korean government granted amnesty to them, while requiring migrant laborers to move back and forth between China and Korea in complex ways. Based on the ethnographic research in Seoul, Korea and Yanbian, the Korean Chinese Autonomous Prefecture, China, for the last few years, this presentation examines how the impact of amnesty and the governmental aspects of the migratory rhythm have fashioned a new order of home and work for many Korean Chinese. I develop two inter-related arguments. First, I argue that the rhythm sets limits for the bodies, money, and futurity of Korean Chinese migrants. Second, I argue that the rhythm has reorganized the concepts of “work place” and “home,” working time and non-working time, between Korea and Yanbian—forming a transnational mode of living that I term split lives.
~
Dr. June Hee Kwon received her PhD from the Department of Cultural Anthropology at Duke University in 2013. Her research and teaching focuses on diaspora and citizenship, transnational migration and human rights, kinship and ethnicity, affect and compassion. Her area of expertise spans contemporary Korea (North and South), China, and Japan, including postcolonial and post-Cold War East Asian inter-connections.

For further information: anthro.officeofthechair@utoronto / 416-946-3318

Description

The Asian Institute at the Munk School of Global Affairs is pleased to announce the formation of Asha [“hope”] Toronto, an open-membership group that aims to share information on local relief and rebuilding efforts on Nepal, and to seek opportunities for collaboration with other groups in the GTA and elsewhere. Click the link below for the facebook page.

The group will be meeting regularly at the Munk School of Global Affairs, and the meetings will feature a combination of organizing activity and critical discussion. This week’s meeting, on Wednesday, May 27 will feature 3 presentations, including one through skype from Kathmandu by Prashant Jha, Nepal-based journalist and author of the acclaimed 2014 Battles of the New Republic: A Contemporary History of Nepal (on the government response). Also speaking will be U of T doctoral candidate Anil Bhattarai (on resilient housing) and U of T postdoctoral fellow Deepak Pant (on resilient communities)

Please see the agenda below. All welcome!

ASHA TORONTO Meeting
Date: Wednesday May 27
Time: 6:00 – 8:00 pm
Venue: 108N at Munk School, University of Toronto

AGENDA
1. Report on activities that have followed from the last meeting.

2. Announcement of upcoming fundraising programs or events.
A. Strategies for getting Big Dollars/Companies

3. 6:30 pm: Skype talk by Prashant Jha on the Nepal government’s response. Talk will last 10 – 12 minutes.

4. Talk by Anil Bhattarai on resilient housing. Talk will last 10 – 12 minutes.

5. Talk by Deepak Pant on resilient communities, and the U of T’s 18-point guideline and its possible relevance to Nepal.

6. 7:20 pm: Half hour discussion on the government’s response and planning for resilient housing and communities.

7. A recap of any new activities and decisions that come out of the meeting.

Please feel free to invite others, including academic colleagues with interest in Nepal and engineers who are thinking about rebuilding in Nepal.

Description

Evergreen Tree (상록수)
SHIN Sang-ok | Classics, Drama | 141 min | Korea 1961
CANADIAN PREMIERE

Korean language finds itself strangled under Japanese colonial rule during the 1930s. Lack of education and will to progress plagues those living in the more rural areas of the peninsula. A story about two lovers and a goal to promote education amid political suppression, ‘Evergreen Tree’ was directed by the legendary Shin Sang-ok and is based on the 1935 novel of the same name by prolific screenwriter Shim Hoon.

*There will be a post-screening discussion and Q&A session with Janet Poole, author of the book ‘When The Future Disappears’ and Professor in the East Asian Studies Department at the Centre For The Study of Korea, University of Toronto

For more information visit the website below.

Description

This week, Asha Toronto’s meeting will feature a discussion on “Rebuilding Nepal from the Ground Up: Conversation with leaders of grassoroots relief and rebuilding.” We will be joined on skype from Nepal by Nripal Adhikary (Adobe and Bamboo Research Institute and Brabim Kumar (Association of Youth Organizations Nepal) in a discussion that will be facilitated by doctoral candidate Sabin Ninglekhu. The discussion will feed directly into Asha Toronto’s own plans for organizing responses from Toronto.

The discussion will be recorded and posted on the ASHA Toronto facebook page for those who cannot attend.

Nripal Adhikary: Nripal Adhikary is an architect who specializes in sustainable architecture using locally available material. He was educated the City University of New York. Nripal has since had extensive experience in Bhutan, Kenya, Ethiopia, Mongolia, Kenya, Uganda and Nepal. He has had many research projects, with organizations like INBAR, ICAR, IIT/Delhi and MIT. He aims to make bamboo and earth a mainstream building material. In the aftermath of the earthquake, Nripal and his team are dedicated to building owner-driven temporary and longer-term structure using quality material sourced locally.

Brabim Kumar: Brabim Kumar president of AYON and long-time activist for youth-related issues. Brabim has had extensive experience in not only providing a platform for youth to have a unified voice, but also acting as a conduit between issues of youth from the grassroots level to the government. In the aftermath of the earthquake, Brabim has spearheaded relief efforts in fourteen districts, overseeing everything from coordinating volunteers to procuring and distributing relief material, to sourcing funds, and providing a comprehensive action plan. In the coming months, with his AYON team, Brabim will focus on rebuilding temporary shelters, as well as providing information to communities on earthquake preparedness and citizens’ continued access to rights and resources.

Description

This project examines the continued weakness of political parties in democratized Korea as manifested in organizational instability, non-programmatic competition, and public disparage of party politics. Instead of following the traditional explanations that emphasize citizens’ political preference or institutional rules, this study investigates the development of party politics as situated in interaction with a strong state and active pro-democracy movements. The historical legacies and social dynamics in contemporary Korea have created unique conditions for political parties to oscillate between counter-institutional politics (the streets) and electoral politics (the National Assembly), ultimately undermining the path for effective party politics.

Yoonkyung Lee is associate professor in Sociology and Asian Studies at the State University of New York in Binghamton. Trained as a political scientist (Duke University 2006), she works on labor politics, political economy, and democratic institutions in East Asia. She is the author of Militants or Partisans: Labor Unions and Democratic Politics in Korea and Taiwan (Stanford University Press 2011) and her research appeared in journals such as Globalizations, Journal of Contemporary Asia, Studies in Comparative International Development, Asian Survey, Critical Asian Studies, Korea Observer, Taiwanese Sociology, and Education about Asia. Her writings are also published in edited volumes including Working Through the Past: Labor and Authoritarian Legacies in Comparative Perspective (edited by Teri Caraway et al., Cornell University Press, 2015), Oxford Bibliographies: Political Science (edited by Sandy Maisel, (Oxford University Press, 2015), New Challenges for Maturing Democracies in Korea and Taiwan (edited by Larry Diamond and Gi-Wook Shin, Stanford University Press, 2014), and Contemporary South Korean Reader: A Critical Perspective (edited by Hee-Yeon Cho et al., Routledge, 2012).

Description

Since 2011, the genre of popular music called Kpop has established a visible presence on the web both as a corporate pop culture commodity and as a rich and complex participatory video culture that centers on the “reaction video.” The variety of video “reactions” display a common concern with consumption captured by video and, thus, with the indexicality of the reaction video as a transcultural spectacle that moves or affectively touches the viewer through its presentation of reception as corporeal event. Examining a spectrum of video reactions to Kpop, I question how reception is represented, why the re-presentability of reception is appealing, and what this may indicate about the circulation of encounters with difference on the web. Pairing the Kpop reaction video with a corollary fan-produced genre—the Kpop dance cover performance video—to compare multiple forms of video-making within the Kpop videosphere, I consider how these videos simultaneously commodify empathy, document the nature of spectator identification, and visualize Kpop commodities’ infectiousness. Against this fascination with generalized consumer affect, what also emerge are the contours of geopolitically differentiated and racialized consumption. I argue, therefore, that video of Kpop’s seemingly deterritorialized, global consumption underscore, instead, its context-specificity, belying the cosmopolitan fantasy reiterated in spectator reactions, and thus underscoring the need to address geopolitical and transcultural contexts to understand video’s subjectivating influence. Thus my talk analyzes Kpop’s video culture to consider the diagnostic function and the “cosmopolitical” potential of popular culture. Cosmopolitics more than cosmopolitanism refers to the continuing interdependence of the national and the global, and can elucidate the objects and practices that lead to the coalescence of something imagined as the global popular qua “pop cosmopolitanism.”

Michelle Cho is an Assistant Professor of Korean Studies and World Cinemas at McGill University. Her writing on gender, genre, celebrity culture, and self-reflexive media appears in Cinema Journal, Acta Koreana, Hallyu 2.0, and The Korean Popular Culture Reader. She is completing a book that analyzes the form and function of South Korean genre cinemas in the “Sunshine Policy” decade. Her new project examines the relationship between popular culture and the post-political in South Korea, with a focus on celebrity labor, minority representation, and media convergence.

Description

This week, Asha Toronto’s meeting will feature a discussion on the role of the banking sector in reconstruction. We will be joined on skype from Nepal by Mr. Kishor Maharjan, CEO of Civil Bank of Nepal in a discussion that will be facilitated by Mr. Anil Thapa. The discussion will feed directly into Asha Toronto’s plans for organizing responses from Toronto.

The discussion will be recorded and posted on facebook (https://www.facebook.com/groups/367446393455257/). Instructions for participating from a remote location can be found on facebook.

Description

On Thursday, June 11th 2015 at the Munk School of Global Affairs, we will be hosting a one-day conference to critically examine various ways for strengthening bilateral relationship between Canada and South Korea, focusing on trade, defence, culture, education and immigration. We hope to bring together high-level political leaders, civil servants, business leaders, legal experts, academics, civil society representatives and interested students to generate a forum for candid and practical discussions as we look towards the future.
The CKFTA entered into force on January 1, 2015. This landmark agreement constitutes Canada’s first free trade agreement in the Asia-Pacific region and provides new access for Canadian businesses and workers to the world’s 15th-largest economy and the fourth-largest in Asia. In fact, the Canada-Korea Free Trade Agreement is projected to create thousands of jobs for hardworking Canadians by boosting Canada’s economy by $1.7 billion and increase Canadian exports to South Korea by 32 percent. South Korea is not only a major economic player in its own right and a key market for Canada; it also serves as a gateway for Canadian businesses and workers into the dynamic Asia-Pacific region as a whole.
Canada and Korea share an exceptionally rich history, dating back to the 1880s when the first wave of missionaries from the University of Toronto arrived on the shores of Busan. In addition to friendship forged on battlefields during the Korean War, immigration and trade between the two countries have flourished ever since. We believe that the new Canada-Korea Free Trade Agreement will only accelerate partnership and cooperation between the two countries in the 21st century. As we contemplate future implications of the CKFTA, our conference aims to advance expert opinion on the future of Canadian-Korean relations and critically assess opportunities for strategic partnership in political, military and cultural spheres.
Please join us for a day of engaging and fruitful discussions on the future of Canadian-Korean partnership. We look forward to hearing your insightful ideas!

Description

Renowned scholar Dr. David Chuenyan Lai will give a lecture on the history of Hongmen, including its origin, organization, and contributions to the anti-Manchu revolution after Dr. Sun Yat-Sen joined the Hongmen society. Dr. Lai will talk about the evolution of the Hongmen society in Canada and British Columbia from Chee Kung Tong, to Chee Kung Party and eventually to Min Zhi Party. The lecture will also describe the significant contributions of Chee Kung Tong to Dr. Sun Yat-Sen’s fundraising trips across Canada, and the conflict between Hongmen and Kuomintang.

The lecture will be conducted in Cantonese and supplemented by Putonghua (Mandarin) and English.

Admission is free. Seating is limited. Please RSVP to events.rclchkl@utoronto.ca