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To register and purchase tickets for this conference, please go here: www.cajle.info/programs/cajle-conference-2013-2/registration/

Assessing “Proficiency”: Teachers’ Roles in Supporting Students’ Learning

Keynote Speech & Workshop 1: Professor Osamu Kamada (Nanzan University)

Workshop 2 & 3: Professor Kimi Kondo-Brown (University of Hawaii at Manoa)

Special Lecture: Dr. Michael Salvatori (The Canadian Association of Second Language Teachers)

As our society becomes more globalized, so has the diversity of those learning Japanese. The purpose for wanting to learn Japanese varies, as do the methods for studying Japanese. Learners have options to study as part of a school education, through heritage language schools, by going to Japan, and through self-study with sources such as the internet. It is possible that these learners from varied backgrounds will come together in a classroom to continue their study of Japanese. Faced with this increasing range of diversity among the learners, how can an educator assess their levels and provide appropriate instructions to enhance their learning? At this conference, we will strive to provide educators with means to measure the proficiency level of the diversified learners and we will reflect on learning, teaching and assessment to efficiently enhance the learners’ proficiency.

We welcome for our Keynote Lecture Prof. Osamu Kamada from Nanzan University, who will also lead us in our Teacher’s Workshops with Prof. Kimi Kondo-Brown from the University of Hawaii at Manoa. Our programme topics include focus on Japanese language education as a foreign language, as a second language, as well as Japanese as a heritage language. A special lecture on Canadian foreign language education will be given by Dr. Michael Salvatori, from CASLT (The Canadian Association of Second Language Teachers), a partner association of CAJLE.

With many participants from various educational institutions, we expect this conference to be an excellent opportunity for vibrant exchange of information and opinions.

For more information about this conference, please go here: www.cajle.info

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In 1968, a survey revealed that enormous oil reserves likely lie beneath some uninhabited islands then regarded as Japanese (known in Japan as the Senkaku, in the People’s Republic of China as the Diaoyu, and in the Republic of China on Taiwan as the Tiaoyutai). That led to both China and Taiwan asserting historically-based claims to the area; but as part of the agreement establishing normal diplomatic relations between the PRC and Japan in 1972, the two governments agreed to shelve the issue of ownership.
Recent years have seen more assertive foreign policy behavior from China, backed by its burgeoning economic and military power. Increasing pressure from Beijing to claim the islands has been met with a resolve from Japan to solidify its jurisdiction over them. The dispute has escalated since a clash in 2010 between a Chinese fishing boat and Japanese coast guard ships, with some observers predicting that ownership of the islands could be the catalyst for war. This talk will examine the claims of the three sides as well as the economic and security implications involved in the islands’ ultimate disposition.

June Teufel Dreyer is Professor of Political Science at the University of Miami, Coral Gables, Florida, where she teaches courses on China, U.S. defense policy, and international relations. Formerly senior Far East specialist at the Library of Congress, she has also served as Asia policy advisor to the Chief of Naval Operations and as commissioner of the United States-China Economic and Security Review Commission established by the U.S. Congress. Professor Teufel Dreyer’s most recent book is China’s Political System: Modernization and Tradition, ninth edition in press. A partially-completed manuscript on Sino-Japanese relations is under contract from Oxford University Press. Professor Teufel Dreyer received her BA from Wellesley College and her MA and PhD from Harvard, and has lived in China and Japan and paid several visits to Taiwan. She has published widely on the Chinese military, China-Taiwan relations, Sino-Japanese relations, ethnic minorities in China, and Chinese foreign policy.

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It is difficult to organize irregular workers, especially female irregular workers in Korea, as many of them are employed by small enterprises, change their jobs frequently and enter and leave the labor market according to economic fluctuations. Therefore, the Korean Women’s Trade Union (KWTU) has tried to build a new model of a trade union, and a new idea of a labor movement, which are different from the enterprise unions for male regular workers in order to organize female irregular workers who have been entirely excluded from the protection of labor laws, the welfare system and the trade union. While the enterprise unions have concentrated on protecting employment and improving working conditions for union members at each workplace, the KWTU has been an independent women’s trade union open to all working women, regardless of their industry, occupation, region, or employment status. In this lecture, we will consider the activities of the KWTU as well as its implications.

Nobuko Yokota is a Professor of Korean Socio-Economic History in the Graduate School of East Asian Studies at the Yamaguchi University. Dr. Yokota studies the formation of the working class in the Republic of Korea, primarily from the latter half of the 1960s to the present. Her central concern has been to analyze historical developments in the labour movement, industrial relations, employment patterns, and labour policies in South Korea, in conjunction with structural changes in the Korean labour market during this period. She received the encouragement prize of the Society for the Study of Social Policy in Japan for her book The Urban Under-stratum and Workers in Korea: Focusing on Non-Standardization of Labor in 2012.

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Lau Kar Leung, Hong Kong filmmaker, actor, choreographer and martial artist, is one of the true pioneers of Hong Kong martial arts cinema, developing an idiosyncratic action style in the late seventies and early eighties that combined authentic traditional martial arts with an impeccable slapstick comic sensibility. In tribute to his passing, The Asian Institute and Cinema Studies Student Union (CINSSU) will honour the late “Grandmaster”of martial arts cinema with a panel discussion and screening of two of his classic films.

Schedule:
6:00 – 7:30 PM Panel- Brutal Grace
To register, please click on above: “Register For This Event”
(snackboxes will be provided to panel attendees)

7:45-9:30 PM Screening of Eight Diagram Pole Fighter (1984) directed by Chia-Liang Liu
To register, please click here:Eight Diagram Pole Fighter

9:45 – 11:30 PM Screening of Dirty Ho (1976) directed by Chia-Liang Liu [TBC]
To register, please click here: Dirty Ho

Description

Lau Kar Leung, Hong Kong filmmaker, actor, choreographer and martial artist, is one of the true pioneers of Hong Kong martial arts cinema, developing an idiosyncratic action style in the late seventies and early eighties that combined authentic traditional martial arts with an impeccable slapstick comic sensibility. In tribute to his passing, The Asian Institute and Cinema Studies Student Union (CINSSU) will honour the late “Grandmaster”of martial arts cinema with a panel discussion and screening of two of his classic films.

Schedule:
6:00 – 7:30 PM Panel- Brutal Grace
To register, please click here: Brutal Grace
(snackboxes will be provided to panel attendees)

7:45-9:30 PM Screening of Eight Diagram Pole Fighter (1984) directed by Chia-Liang Liu
To register, please click on above: “Register For This Event”

9:45 – 11:30 PM Screening of Dirty Ho (1976) directed by Chia-Liang Liu [TBC]
To register, please click here: Dirty Ho

Description

Lau Kar Leung, Hong Kong filmmaker, actor, choreographer and martial artist, is one of the true pioneers of Hong Kong martial arts cinema, developing an idiosyncratic action style in the late seventies and early eighties that combined authentic traditional martial arts with an impeccable slapstick comic sensibility. In tribute to his passing, The Asian Institute and Cinema Studies Student Union (CINSSU) will honour the late “Grandmaster”of martial arts cinema with a panel discussion and screening of two of his classic films.

Schedule:
6:00 – 7:30 PM Panel- Brutal Grace
To register, please click here: Brutal Grace
(snackboxes will be provided to panel attendees)

7:45-9:30 PM Screening of Eight Diagram Pole Fighter (1984) directed by Chia-Liang Liu
To register, please click here:Eight Diagram Pole Fighter

9:45 – 11:30 PM Screening of Dirty Ho (1976) directed by Chia-Liang Liu [TBC]
To register, please click on above: “Register For This Event”

Description

This panel will explore the complex questions of identity Mahesh Dattani raises in several of his most celebrated plays (from Final Solutions, to Tara to On a Muggy Night in Mumbai). Speakers will discuss Dattani’s interrogation of religious fundamentalism and cultural nationalism, his resistance to reductive visions of domesticity, gender and sexuality, and his exploration of queer identities. In examining these thematic issues, we will also trace the formal choices (use of English, construction of spaces etc.) that are so central to Dattani’s theatrical practice.

Mahesh Dattani is one of India’s foremost English-language playwrights as well as being an actor and a director. He is a recipient of the prestigious Sahitya Akademi Award, and his plays have been produced across the world, from Bangalore and Delhi to Victoria and Toronto. He has also written and directed several films, including Mango-Soufflé and Morning Raga.

Following the panel, Dattani himself will give a lecture entitled Me and My Plays.

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“No matter what, nobody can take away the dances you have already had.” – Marquez, quoted in Mahesh Dattani’s play Where Did I Leave My Purdah

This quote appears early in Dattani’s play, when the protagonist Nazia Saheba decides to go back to the theatre after thirty years, still craving more dances even at the ripe age of 82. She goes on, “I want more dances. Dances that nobody can take from me. Oh! This van is too small! It can’t take my dancing. Your cinema is too small for me. My life is big. I am big and generous. Only the theatre deserves me!”

For Dattani, dancing, singing, and performing in general have always represented living life to the fullest. This metaphor plays out in three of his works that he calls his triptych.

Mahesh Dattani is a playwright, stage director, and filmmaker. In 1998, he won the prestigious Sahitya Akademi award for his book Final Solutions and Other Plays, published by Manas. His plays have been performed in all of India’s major cities and around the world, and have been included on the course syllabi at several prestigious universities in India. He lives in Mumbai.

The lecture will be followed by reception.

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Canada has been Gold Mountain, promise land and multicultural society to Chinese immigrants. This conference, with prominent scholars in the field of Chinese Canadian studies, will discuss issues and successes of Chinese immigrants and their offspring. Topics include settlement trajectories, labour market experiences, sense of identity and belonging, inter-generational mobility and the emerging Asian Canadian studies.

Opening remarks:
Vivienne Poy, Author of the Passage to Promise Land: Voices of Chinese Immigrant Women to Canada

Panel chair:
Ruth Hayhoe, Professor, Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto

Panelists:
Jeffrey G. Reitz, R.F. Harney Professor of Ethnic, Immigration and Pluralism Studies, University of Toronto
Comparisons of the Success of Racial Minority Immigrant Offspring

Lucia Lo, Professor of Geography, York University
Chinese Moving Through Canada: Closed Door, Open Door, Revolving Door

Gordon Pon, Associate Professor, School of Social Work, Ryerson University
Reimagining “Slow Boats” and Chinese Cafés: The Need for Asian Canadian Studies

Discussant:
Joseph Wong, Director, Asian Institute, University of Toronto

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This talk extends the work of my article Viral Clouds (Cultural Anthropology 2010) that explored in multispecies terms the clusters of biosocialities in play in relation to the mid-2000s H5N1 avian influenza outbreak in Indonesia. Here, I interrogate the experience of the Indonesian H5N1 outbreak for its links to biosecurity. Biosecurity, as an extension of the security state and an overall securitization of the social since 9/11, manifested during the outbreak in two forms: promotion of the technical intervention of on-farm biosecurity, and the geopolitical form of international pandemic preparedness. These forms are linked through fear imaginaries, yet what scared the International and Indonesian communities were often at odds.

Celia Lowe is Associate Professor of Anthropology and International Studies at the University of Washington. She works in Southeast Asia, especially Indonesia, in the the field of post-colonial science studies, and her main interest is in the travels of biological and other forms of scientific knowledge between EuroAmerica and Southeast Asia. Her first book, Wild Profusion: Biodiversity Conservation in an Indonesian Archipelago was published with Princeton University Press in 2006. She is currently working on the recent avian influenza outbreak in Indonesia and how new forms of biosecurity and risk were in play in relation to the disease. In addition to this work, she is interested in practices of scholarly collaboration in the social sciences between US-based and Southeast Asian scholars. Lowe has also consulted with the Ford Foundation and the Asian University for Women in this field.

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Micronutrient malnutrition is the inappropriate intake of vitamins and minerals for proper growth and development. This presentation focuses specifically on the micronutrient, iodine, as the insufficient intake of iodine has been identified as the main cause of preventable brain damage. In addition, an inadequate intake can have other adverse effects, including cretinism and increased levels of infant mortality. In India alone, a recent study found that approximately 71 million people are iodine deficient. This is cause for concern and further research on effective interventions for the country context are needed. This presentation first examines whether vulnerable groups, which include pregnant women, infants, and young children, are able to obtain the recommended amount of iodine from iodized salt in low and middle income countries. Next, the extent to which complementary interventions contribute to iodine intake is explored by reviewing the objectives, delivery methods, and iodine content of various interventions, and estimating the number of people reached. Finally, programmatic considerations are discussed for the specificities of the Indian context.

Carmen Ho is pursuing her PhD in the Department of Political Science at the University of Toronto. Her presentation is based on research she conducted at UNICEF HQ (New York) with Arnold Timmer, Senior Adviser, Micronutrients, UNICEF. Their work will be presented at the 20th International Congress of Nutrition in Granada, Spain. Carmen’s doctoral research will also investigate child malnutrition interventions in low and middle income countries. Specifically, she will explore the facilitators of and barriers to scaling up programs involving multiple micronutrient powders (MNPs), an intervention developed at the Hospital for Sick Children and distributed by UNICEF.

PLEASE NOTE:
You must register by September 25th to receive (and have enough time to read) the outline of this talk. This way, every participant can make a difference by giving constructive suggestions to the speaker. Thank you for your understanding.

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Increasingly today, individuals and states take stock of how other people educate their children. South Koreans have long looked to the U.S. as an educational other – a gaze that came to new life as more and more children and families joined a project of educational exodus beginning in the late 1990s and peaking in the first decade of the 2000s. Interestingly, in recent years South Korean education has become an object of the U.S. gaze and seems to be President Obama’s favorite educational other. But the picture is not so simple: just as the U.S. has long debated educational equity and achievement so too has South Korea. And recently Finland seems to be on everyone’s map as the “happy alternative.” I examine how these gazes reveal the very complicated landscape of thinking about class, social mobility, and social justice in South Korea today. I also introduce a middle school student, Alex (and his mother), to showcase the family-level experience of South Korea’s internal educational debate.

Nancy Abelmann is Associate Vice Chancellor for Research and the Harry E. Preble Professor of Anthropology, Asian American Studies, and East Asian Languages and Cultures at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She writes on family, class, gender, education, and migration with a focus on South Korea and Korean/Asian America.

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The new leadership of China is now completely in position. Over the next five to ten years they will hope to steer China towards middle income status, doubling GDP, and becoming one of the major forces of the modern world. What do we know about this leadership, their political priorities, the paths they have taken to be in power, and the priorities they have set themselves? How do we assess the legacy they have been given by Hu Jintao and Wen Jiabao, and in what ways can we expect them to change, challenge or subvert this? What are their chances of combating corruption and restoring the Party to its moral position in society, reconnecting it with the historic narratives on which its legitimacy was founded? And most importantly of all, in what ways can this networked and small elite really connect with the broader society around them as China changes and evolves in the decade ahead.’

Kerry Brown is Professor Chinese Politics and Director of the China Studies Centre, University of Sydney and Team Leader of the Europe China Research and Advice Network (ECRAN) funded by the European Union. He is an Associate of the Asia Programme at Chatham House, London and was a member of the British Diplomatic Service from 1998 to 2005, serving as First Secretary, British Embassy Beijing 2000-2003 and Head of the Indonesia and East Timor Section 2003-2005. Educated at the universities of Cambridge (MA) and Leeds (PhD), he is the author of `The Purge of the Inner Mongolia Peoples Party’ (2006), `Struggling Giant: China in the 21st Century’ (2007), `The Rise of the Dragon: Chinese Inward and Outward Investment in the Reform Era’ (2008), `Friends and Enemies: The Past, Present and Future of the Communist Party of China’ (2009), `Ballot Box China’ (2011), `China 2020’ (2011), `Hu Jintao: China’s Silent Leader’ (2012), `Contemporary China’ (2013), and `The Networked Leadership: China’s Fifth Generation Leaders’ (Forthcoming).

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Shiben Banerji is a PhD candidate in History, Theory & Criticism, where his research interests include the critique of disenchantment and the history of architectural and urban theory. Shiben holds a Master in City Planning degree from MIT and a Bachelor of Arts degree from Columbia University.

His dissertation, “Inhabiting the World: Architecture, Urbanism and the Global Moral-Politics of Marion Mahony and Walter Burley Griffin”, revises the history of internationalism through an archive of architectural and urban design projects completed in the United States, England, Australia, and India between 1895 and 1949.

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A significant East–West interface with global implications unfolded during the half millennium of “Luso-globalization” from Portuguese explore Vasco da Gama’s 1498 arrival in India to Macau’s 1999 retrocession to Chinese rule that ended five centuries of European colonialism in Asia. The year 2013 also marks the half-millennium of a prelude to the Luso-Macau legacies—the arrival in China of the first Portuguese Jorge Alvares who planted the roots for today’s thriving Sino-Lusophone interface that is largely Macao-based/facilitated. Such Sino-Luso-Macao networks are genuinely global, transcending three oceans, linking four continents and spanning five centuries. Of geopolitical relevance today, the Sino-Lusophone Economic Cooperation Forum as headquartered in Macao engages nine countries with a total population of 1.5 billion to sustain a large share of the global economy. This talk will sketch some outstanding features in the strategic roles performed by Macao with its Luso-enriched heritages; it will also prospect for trends ahead amid China’s intensifying world-wide engagement.

Ming K. CHAN is visiting fellow, Center for East Asian Studies, Stanford University, where he was a Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution, 1976-80/1999-2009 and ran its Hong Kong Documentary Archives project. Born in Hong Kong, he obtained 3 US degrees, including a Stanford PhD in 1975 at age 25. He taught at the University of Hong Kong during 1980-97 as a twice elected “Best Teacher.” Holder of endowed chairs at Swarthmore College and Grinnell College, he served as visiting professor at Duke, UCLA, Mount Holyoke and El Colegio de Mexico, and he was also twice visiting fellow at St Antony’s College, University of Oxford, 1992 and 1998. Author/editor of 14 academic volumes and over 80 articles/book chapters on Chinese studies topics, he is General Editor of the series published by M E Sharpe-NY, with 12 titles released since 1991.

Light refreshment will provided. Please RSVP by October 1, 2013.

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In the Indian state of Odisha, several thousand villages are protecting state-owned forests through community-based arrangements. In this paper, I illustrate how through the daily practices of conserving forests, villagers have not only enriched their landscapes but have also transformed their individual and collective subjectivities. Using ethnographic research, I show how subjects are not only ‘made’ (through ‘governmentality’ and technologies of power) but ‘become’ through embodied practices of ‘living in the environment’ and through affective relations with their human and non-human environment. I discuss how villagers practices of caring for the forests and assisting in its regeneration can be seen as what Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri term as ‘affective labor’ in which the mind and the body, reason and passions, intellect and feelings are employed together. I show how affect and emotions are central to local conservation practices that are similar to farming practices of helping plants and animals to grow. I conclude by elaborating on the ‘biopower from below’ of such practices and discuss how this biopower provides ways of challenging capitalist projects of commodifying nature. I will briefly present how I am extending these ideas by considering reframing of transactions in the so-called ecosystem services using ideas of gift and reciprocity to enable more equitable and respectful ways of sharing the burden and the joy of environmental care. Drawing lessons from my use of participatory videomaking in the forested landscapes of Odisha, I will also discuss methodological challenges of studying the ‘liveliness’ of life and paying attention to intersubjective communication between humans and other-than-humans.

Neera Singh is an assistant professor at the Faculty of Forestry, University of Toronto. Her research focuses on democratization of forest governance, forest tenure and local rights and affective dimensions of people’s relations with forests. Prior to her academic career, she founded and led a non-profit organization in India, Vasundhara that works on community forestry and sustainable livelihood issues.

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A Master Class with Professor Bruno Bosteels
FACULTY AND STUDENT EVENT ONLY

Starting from the premise that finitude constitutes the new dogmatic presupposition of much work in philosophy or so-called “theory” after
Heidegger and Foucault, this seminar will proceed to tackle five key concepts that figure prominently in the new jargon of finitude: difference, retreat,
inoperativity, affect, and community or commonality.

October 4th and 18th, and November 1st, 15th, 29th, 2013
5:00 – 7:00pm

Bruno Bosteels is Professor of Romance Studies at Cornell University. He is the author of Alain Badiou, une trajectoire polémique
(La Fabrique, 2009); Badiou and Politics (Duke University Press, 2011); The Actuality of Communism (Verso, 2011), and Marx and Freud in Latin America (Verso, 2012). He is preparing two new books, After Borges: Literature and Antiphilosophy and Philosophies of Defeat: The Jargon of Finitude (under contract with Verso). He has translated Alain Badiou’s Theory of the Subject (Continuum, 2009). Further translations include Badiou’s Wittgenstein’s Antiphilosophy, Philosophy for Militants, The Adventure of French Philosophy and Rhapsody for the Theatre (all for Verso). He is the author of dozens of articles on modern Latin American literature and culture, and on contemporary European philosophy and political
theory. Between 2005 and 2011, he served as the general editor of Diacritics.

5-7pm, Sidney Smith Hall
Natalie Zemon Davis Conference Room, SS2098

NOTE: To participate in this Master Class, please email Kevin.Coleman@utoronto.ca to register.

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Ideals of beautiful and desirable bodies are historically contingent and shift in response to a range of social, economic, technological and political changes. The dramatic changes that took place in China at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries directly impacted on corporeal aesthetics. Powerful new conceptualizations of “the past” and “the present”, the “foreign” and the “Chinese” circulated in China’s transition from Imperial dynasty to Republican state. This paper examines the 100 Beauties genre in commercial illustrated publications from the late Qing and early republic and argues that the beauties depicted reflect the uniquely Chinese sense of modernity that was circulating at this time. The seminar will feature artwork by Ding Song, Wu Youru, Shen Bochen and Dan Duyu.

Louise Edwards is Professor of Modern China Studies at HKU. Her publications include Gender, Politics, Democracy: Women’s Suffrage in China (Stanford, 2008). She is currently working on gendered cultures of war and her article “Drawing Sexual Violence in Wartime China: Anti-Japanese Propaganda Cartoons” recently appeared in Journal of Asian Studies.

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Lecture & Discussion: 3:00 PM – 5:00 PM
Book Signing & Reception: 5:00 PM – 6:00 PM

In China Goes Global, eminent China scholar David Shambaugh offers a sweeping account of China’s growing prominence on the international stage. Thirty years ago, China’s role in global affairs beyond its immediate East Asian periphery was decidedly minor and it had little geostrategic power. Today however, China’s expanding economic power has allowed it to extend its reach virtually everywhere–from mineral mines in Africa, to currency markets in the West, to oilfields in the Middle East, to agribusiness in Latin America, to the factories of East Asia. Professor Shambaugh offers an enlightening look into the manifestations of China’s global presence: its extensive commercial footprint, its growing military power, its increasing cultural influence or “soft power,” its diplomatic activity, and its new prominence in global governance institutions.

David Shambaugh is an internationally recognized authority and author on contemporary China and the international relations of Asia. He is presently Professor of Political Science & International Affairs and the founding Director of the China Policy Program in the Elliott School of International Affairs at George Washington University. He is also a Nonresident Senior Fellow in the Foreign Policy Studies Program and Center for Northeast Asian Policy Studies at The Brookings Institution. He was previously Reader in Chinese Politics in the University of London’s School of Oriental & African Studies (SOAS), where he also served as Editor of The China Quarterly. He has authored or edited over thirty books on China and Asia.

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Are you interested in graduate study on Asia?

The Collaborative Master’s Program in Asia-Pacific Studies allows students to study in a traditional discipline through a home department, while gaining an interdisciplinary perspective on Asia and access to a range of scholarships, internships, and other resources at the Asian Institute at the Munk School of Global Affairs.

Come out to our info session to learn more:

• Hear from the program director, course instructors, and former students
• Learn about application procedures, scholarships, internships, and extra-curricular opportunitieses, and have your questions answered
• Stay for a public talk by Benedict Anderson (Cornell University) hosted by the Dr. David Chu Program in Asia-Pacific Studies at the Munk School of Global Affairs

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Discussion on Mundane History (2009) by Arkaney Cherkam.

Benedict R.O’G Anderson is the Aaron L. Binenkorb Professor of International Studies (Emeritus) at Cornell University. Professor Anderson is renowned for his highly influential study of the origins and spread of nationalism, Imagined Communities (1983), which has been translated into more than 20 languages. His work on nationalism is widely read across the social sciences and humanities and has been particularly influential in the fields of political science, history, anthropology, geography and comparative literature. In addition to his work on nationalism, Professor Anderson has also published extensively on the culture and politics of Southeast Asia, and their place in the broader world. His books on these topics include: Java in a Time of Revolution (1972), In the Mirror: Literature and Politics in Siam in the American Era (1985), Language and Power: Exploring Political Cultures in Indonesia (1990), The Spectre of Comparisons: Nationalism, SE Asia, and the World (1998), Under Three Flags: Anarchism and the Anti-colonial Imagination (2005), Why Counting Counts: A Study of Forms of Consciousness and Problems of Language in Noli Me Tangere and El Filibusterismo (2008), and The Fate of Rural Hell: Asceticism and Desire in Buddhist Thailand (2012). Professor Anderson is the recipient of numerous honours for his work, including the Association of Asian Studies Award for Distinguished Scholarship, the Fukuoka Prize for Studies on Asia, the Albert Hirschman Prize in the Social Sciences, a doctorate honoris causa from the Pontifical University of Peru in Lima, and the Asian Cosmopolitan Prize (Nara, Japan).

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The unyielding sectarian violence, communal tensions, and the recent petition for a controversial “national race protection law” restricting interfaith marriages between Buddhist women and non-Buddhist men have drawn attention to the history of contestations of race, religion, and nation in Burma (Myanmar). Almost a century ago, prominent Buddhist monks and women’s organizations similarly campaigned for legislative reforms that would “protect” Burmese women in intermarriages. Then, as now, unions between Buddhist women and Muslim men were condemned in the name of religion and race, and the image of the female infidel oppressed by “others” was put into the service of nationalist, masculinist politics. Historians have seldom questioned this long-standing characterization of the Muslim-Buddhist intermarriage as a singularly pernicious form of conjugality, and even fewer have felt compelled to explore how it in fact compared with other colonial-era forms of intermarriage: Hindu-Buddhist, Christian-Buddhist, Sino-Burmese, Anglo-Burmese, and Japanese-Burmese.

Through an examination of 19th and 20th century archival and literary sources, this talk offers a comparative analysis of these intimate relations that contested imperialist and nationalist projects of disciplining difference, desire, and intimacy. It illuminates the richly textured social lives of transcultural families in colonial Burma and suggests important commonalities in the way that affective ties, family affairs, and communal identities were managed and confronted.

This talk is part of a larger project on intra-Asian conjugalities, domesticities, friendships, and collaborations in colonial Burma and Southeast Asia that challenges the primacy of the white male colonizer-“native” woman coupling in the prevailing literature on the “tense and tender ties” of empire. It argues for consideration of a fuller range of intimate encounters that characterized the age of global empire in interrogating the significance and role that religion, race, and culture had in normalizing and legitimating certain forms of transcultural affection while deeming others illegitimate.

Chie Ikeya, who holds a PhD from Cornell University and has worked as an Assistant Professor at Rutgers University since 2012, is a historian of Southeast Asia with interests in the related fields of Asian studies, postcolonial studies, and feminist race, gender, and sexuality studies. Her first book Refiguring Women, Colonialism, and Modernity in Burma (University of Hawai’I Press, 2011) concerned colonial politics, gender and race relations, social reforms, anticolonialism, media, and consumerism in twentieth century Burma.

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LOST YEARS is an award-winning documentary tracing four generations of racism as revealed through the journey and family story of Kenda Gee, a Chinese Canadian. Co-Produced/Directed by Kenda Gee & Tom Radford, the documentary begins in China in 1910 and concludes with the movement to
embrace redress as a concept of social justice in Canada, the United States, New Zealand and Australia, exactly a century later.

Doors open at 6.00 pm with opening remarks and screening to be followed by a Q&A. Our esteemed MC for the evening is Jeannie Lee who covers breaking business news for CBC News Network. Her reports are also heard regularly on CBC Radio.

The documentary’s run time is 90 minutes and we encourage you to bring friends and family to the screening. Remember to print your ticket and present it for admission. A voluntary donation of $5 or whatever you can contribute will be graciously accepted at the door to help offset the event’s expenses.

As this is a free event, please take note that your reservation may not guarantee admission (the theatre’s capacity is 700). Unclaimed seats will be released to standby customers ten minutes prior to the start of the event. We recommend that you arrive early to ensure best seating.

FREE TICKETS AVAILABLE AT www.lostyearstoronto.eventbrite.ca

Lost Years Toronto acknowledges the generous support of Dr. David Chu Program in Asia Pacific Studies at the Asian Institute, the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada’s National Conversation on Asia, and University College’s Canadian Studies Department.

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Yang Zili currently does research and writes about migrants rights, health care and education policy reform, and human rights issues, including land seizures. The Transition Institute is a marvelous think-tank staffed by lawyers, economists, accountants, and media specialists. They combine serious policy reform work with terrific outreach to journalists, scholars, and government officials. Their work is popular with the public, but not always with public security which keeps a close watch on them. Despite this, they continue to produce first-rate analysis and are considered leaders investigating the transition to rule of law and constitutional democracy in China. Here is a link to the Chinese version of TI’s website, to the English version, and to Yang Zili’s work, in particular.

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Friday, October 25, 4:00-6:00 PM, Innis Town Hall
Screenings: Orientations, School Fag
In Conversation with Richard Fung

The Dr. David Chu Program in Asia Pacific Studies at the Asian Institute and its co-sponsors are thrilled to present a retrospective on the work of Richard Fung, the renowned Toronto-based video artist, writer, cultural theorist, activist, and educator. Fung’s videos have been screened and archived throughout the world and he has been widely recognized with awards such as the Bell Canada Award for Lifetime Achievement in Video and the Toronto Arts Award for Media Art. In addition to his artistic work and writing, Fung teaches at OCAD University. Beginning in 1985 with Orientations – his pioneering video on queer sexuality and its intersections with race and class – Fung’s creative and often highly experimental works have questioned normative understandings of history and memory, temporality, sexuality, identity, colonialism, empires, racism, classism, labour, authenticity, diasporic communities, the body, illness, trauma, food, writing, and so much more. Tracing diasporic movements and communities as well as the complex and constantly changing identities of Asians and others in places across the globe – most especially North America and the Caribbean – Fung’s works inspire us to “reorient” ourselves toward both the future and the past.

View the event program here and the complete schedule here. Please register for each portion of the program you wish to attend.

Description

Friday, October 25, 7:30-9:00 PM, Innis Town Hall
Screenings: My Mother’s Place, Sea in the Blood, Islands

The Dr. David Chu Program in Asia Pacific Studies at the Asian Institute and its co-sponsors are thrilled to present a retrospective on the work of Richard Fung, the renowned Toronto-based video artist, writer, cultural theorist, activist, and educator. Fung’s videos have been screened and archived throughout the world and he has been widely recognized with awards such as the Bell Canada Award for Lifetime Achievement in Video and the Toronto Arts Award for Media Art. In addition to his artistic work and writing, Fung teaches at OCAD University. Beginning in 1985 with Orientations – his pioneering video on queer sexuality and its intersections with race and class – Fung’s creative and often highly experimental works have questioned normative understandings of history and memory, temporality, sexuality, identity, colonialism, empires, racism, classism, labour, authenticity, diasporic communities, the body, illness, trauma, food, writing, and so much more. Tracing diasporic movements and communities as well as the complex and constantly changing identities of Asians and others in places across the globe – most especially North America and the Caribbean – Fung’s works inspire us to “reorient” ourselves toward both the future and the past.

View the event program here and the complete schedule here. Please register for each portion of the program you wish to attend.

Description

Saturday, October 26, 2:00-5:30 PM, Innis Town Hall
Screenings: Dirty Laundry, Rex vs. Singh
Roundtable

The Dr. David Chu Program in Asia Pacific Studies at the Asian Institute and its co-sponsors are thrilled to present a retrospective on the work of Richard Fung, the renowned Toronto-based video artist, writer, cultural theorist, activist, and educator. Fung’s videos have been screened and archived throughout the world and he has been widely recognized with awards such as the Bell Canada Award for Lifetime Achievement in Video and the Toronto Arts Award for Media Art. In addition to his artistic work and writing, Fung teaches at OCAD University. Beginning in 1985 with Orientations – his pioneering video on queer sexuality and its intersections with race and class – Fung’s creative and often highly experimental works have questioned normative understandings of history and memory, temporality, sexuality, identity, colonialism, empires, racism, classism, labour, authenticity, diasporic communities, the body, illness, trauma, food, writing, and so much more. Tracing diasporic movements and communities as well as the complex and constantly changing identities of Asians and others in places across the globe – most especially North America and the Caribbean – Fung’s works inspire us to “reorient” ourselves toward both the future and the past.

View the event program here and the complete schedule here. Please register for each portion of the program you wish to attend.

Description

By Invitation Only

Description

Book description:
What will the end of the world look like? Abandoned Futures: A Journey to the Posthuman World, is a breathtaking global overview of the decay and abandonment that sits in the midsts of humanities constant push towards an uncertain future. It’s a visual epic dedicated to the edge of our power, where human industry fails and decay takes over. These are the landscapes that give the lie to our dreams of immortality.

Professor Tong Lam is a historian, author, and visual artist. His research interests cover modern and contemporary China and East Asia, modernity, technoscience, spectacle and urbanism, social theory, colonialism, and nationalism. As a visual artist, he is particularly interested in using photographic and cinematographic techniques to explore and examine industrial and postindustrial ruins from around the world, as well as China’s hysterical transformation. His photo essays have appeared in the Dissent Magazine, the Los Angeles Review of Books, and other major literary publications. His solo photo exhibit, Unreal Estate, is currently on view at the Institute of East Asian Studies, University of California, Berkeley. He is an Associate Professor of History and a core faculty of the Asian Institute, University of Toronto.

Description

The Dr. David Chu Program in Asia Pacific Studies at the Asian Institute and its co-sponsors are thrilled to present a retrospective on the work of Richard Fung, the renowned Toronto-based video artist, writer, cultural theorist, activist, and educator. Fung’s videos have been screened and archived throughout the world and he has been widely recognized with awards such as the Bell Canada Award for Lifetime Achievement in Video and the Toronto Arts Award for Media Art. In addition to his artistic work and writing, Fung teaches at OCAD University. Beginning in 1985 with Orientations – his pioneering video on queer sexuality and its intersections with race and class – Fung’s creative and often highly experimental works have questioned normative understandings of history and memory, temporality, sexuality, identity, colonialism, empires, racism, classism, labour, authenticity, diasporic communities, the body, illness, trauma, food, writing, and so much more. Tracing diasporic movements and communities as well as the complex and constantly changing identities of Asians and others in places across the globe – most especially North America and the Caribbean – Fung’s works inspire us to “reorient” ourselves toward both the future and the past.

OCTOBER 24-29

ReOrientations Projections at OCAD University, 49 McCaul Street | Hours of Operation: 11:00 AM to 6:00 PM daily (closed Sunday)
Jehad in Motion (2007)
Landscapes (2008)

OCTOBER 25-26

Films, talks, and roundtable at Innis Town Hall, Gala Screening of Dal Puri Diaspora at Bloor Hot Docs Cinema
Please check the Asian Institute event listings for details (registration is required for each portion of the event) and view the complete schedule here.

Description

Besides international factors such as the 2008 world financial crisis, there are important domestic factors in China’s current external policy. They include the intensive debates over the necessity and content of economic and political reforms, and people’s dissatisfaction and anxiety about the flip side of China’s rapid growth. This talk will take up the case of China’s hardline approach towards Japan over the Senkaku (Diaoyu) Islands, and discuss why it continues, despite the undaunted advancement of economic exchange, and how the rest of the world should react to it.

Dr. Akio Takahara graduated from the Faculty of Law, University of Tokyo, and received his PhD from the University of Sussex. He previously worked at the Sasakawa Peace Foundation, the Japanese consulate in Hong Kong, J.F. Oberlin University, Rikkyo University, the Japanese embassy in Beijing, and University of Tokyo. He was a visiting professor at Harvard University (2005–06). He is currently a professor at the Graduate School of Law and Politics, University of Tokyo, a member and Secretary General of the New 21st Century Committee for Japan-China Friendship and a senior researcher with the Tokyo Foundation. His academic interest revolves around contemporary Chinese politics and China’s foreign policy. His publications include “New Developments in East Asian Security” (2005), “Beyond the Borders: Contemporary Asian Studies Volume One” (2008), “Putting the Senkaku Dispute Into Pandora’s Box: Toward a ‘2013 Consensus” (2013) and many more.

Description

Ambassador Guy Saint-Jacques joined the Foreign Affairs Department in 1977. His postings have included Beijing, Hong Kong, Kinshasa, Washington and London. (In his most recent assignments to Washington and, just prior to that, London, he served as Deputy Head of Mission). At Headquarters, he has held numerous positions including: Deputy Director, Environment and Energy Division; Director, Assignments Division; and Director General, Personnel Management Bureau. Prior to his appointment as Ambassador to China in October 2012, Mr. Saint-Jacques was Canada’s Chief Negotiator and Ambassador for Climate Change. Fluent in Mandarin, this is his fourth posting to the People’s Republic of China. Mr. Saint-Jacques holds a BA [Geology], from Université de Montréal; and an MA [Land Planning and Regional Development] from Laval University. He is married to Sylvie Cameron and they have two daughters and one grandchild.

Description

The Chinese diaspora in Toronto is diverse. An interwoven network of immigrants from Hong Kong, Taiwan, different parts of China, and across Southeast Asia, the identity of this group is constantly in flux, oscillating between internal fissions and outwardly projected unity. As an overview of a larger project, in this paper I posit that people negotiate the tension between diverse sub-ethnic identities and a pan-ethnic Chineseness by imagining different “homes.” Imaginations of China as a cultural home and of people’s specific places of origin are superimposed on their current homes, and experienced simultaneously. I explore how longings for this complex home and prospects of homecoming are sustained at the intersections between various sonic expressions (including music, speech, and everyday sound). Such expressions include onomatopoeically imitating festive music and noise in home soundscapes; using regional accents from home to inflect speaking, singing, and listening in Mandarin; and talking about how music and speech at home will change in the future. I frame these musico-linguistically constructed imaginations of home, multiply conceived, within Edna Bonacich’s (1973) conception of immigrant cultures: immigrant communities maintain their boundaries by perpetuating concepts of home and prospects of returning, whether such home is actual or imagined, and whether the prospect is realistic or not. Ultimately, I show that sonic constructions of home and returning allow members of the diaspora to construct and enact both a pan-ethnic Chineseness and diverse sub-ethnic identities in Toronto.

Yun Emily Wang is a second year PhD student in Ethnomusicology. Her CGS-SSHRC supported project explores how Chinese diaspora imagine, construct, and maintain collective memories of “home” or “homeland” through various sounding practices (including music, speech, and everyday sounds). Emily holds an MA from New York University and a BA from the University of Rochester.

NOTE: Please register by October 30th to receive (and have enough time to read) the outline of this talk. This way, every participant can make a difference by giving constructive suggestions to the speaker. Thank you for your understanding.

Description

When illustrating the lives of the Jinas, typically we use examples from the Śvetāmbara Kalpa Sūtra. One might get the impression that this the only text recounting the lives of the Jinas, but there are many works in a variety of languages that tell these tales in much greater detail. The Digambara Jainas also wrote versions of the lives of the Jinas and illustrated manuscripts survive, but in far fewer numbers. Some of these manuscripts have been discussed in the art historical literature, but usually the discussions have to do with style. It is rare to put narrative scenes side by side to compare the Śvetāmbara and the Digambara modes of telling similar stories, particularly the five important events (pañcakalyāṇaka) in each life. Sometimes the ways these are depicted is quite different and it is the consistencies of these differences that concern me here.

Robert J. Del Bontà (Ph.D., The University of Michigan, 1978) has taught courses at the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco and curated many shows there and elsewhere. He has written on a wide range of subjects. Since 2006 he has worked with the Centre of Jaina Studies at SOAS (University of London).