Description

Amiya K. Bagchi is author of “The Political Economy of Underdevelopment” (Cambridge University Press), “Perilous Passage: Mankind and the Global Ascendancy of Capital” (Rowman & Littlefield), and most recently, “Colonialism and Indian Economy” (Oxford University Press), among numerous others.

Description

Asia Pacific in the past several decades has undergone incredible economic and political transformation. Today, in the 21st century, in this scenario, universities in the region, which until a few decades were not blinking on the global radar screen, are faced with new challenges. In this talk, I will describe some of these challenges I believe universities in the region need to overcome, and what underlying principle universities must adhere to in order not to go astray.

Prof. Da Hsuan Feng is the Vice President of Global Strategy, Development and Evaluation at National Tsing Hua University. He obtained a B.A. in physics from Drew University in 1968, and a Ph.D. in theoretical physics from the University of Minnesota in 1972. From 2001–2007, he served as Vice President for Research and Economic Development of the University of Texas at Dallas, where he initiated a consortium of seven universities in Texas known as Strategic Partnership for Research in Nanotechnology (SPRING). From 1990–2000, he held the M. Russell Wehr Chair Professor of Physics at Drexel University. Other notable positions include technical advisor to the Vice Chairperson of the United States Congressional Armed Services Committee (1995–1998) and Vice President of Science Applications International Corporation (1998–2000).

Description

In this paper, I estimate the size of the Chinese government’s contingent liabilities in the corporate and financial sectors and explore the monetary and welfare implications of these liabilities. Looking broadly at all the liabilities in the formal financial system, debt owed by state-owned entities total over 60 trillion RMB as of late 2010. Because the government turns out to be the greatest ultimate debtor for much of this enormous pool of debt, the government has incentive to structure monetary policy so as to minimize the impact of this large pool of liabilities on the government’s formal balance sheets. In the process, however, households in China end up paying a large tax associated with excess liquidity in the system and ultimately inflation. This effect goes against China’s long-term goal to have domestic consumption as the main engine of growth.

Victor C. Shih is a political economist at Northwestern University specializing in China. An immigrant to the United States from Hong Kong, Dr. Shih received his doctorate in Government from Harvard University, where he researched banking sector reform in China with the support of the Jacob K. Javits Fellowship and the Fulbright Fellowship. He is the author of a book published by the Cambridge University Press entitled Factions and Finance in China: Elite Conflict and Inflation. It is the first book to inquire the linkages between elite politics and banking policies in China. He is further the author of numerous articles appearing in academic and business journals, including The China Quarterly, Comparative Political Studies, Journal of Politics, The Wall Street Journal and The China Business Review, and frequent adviser to the financial community on the banking industry in China. Dr. Shih holds a B.A. from the George Washington University, where he studied on a University Presidential Fellowship and graduated summa cum laude in East Asian studies with a minor in economics. His current research concerns Chinese banking policies, exchange rates, elite political dynamics and local government debt in China.

Description

Conference on South Asian Religions
Crossing Boundaries: Texts, Traditions, Temporalities

A University of Toronto Graduate Student Conference

September 23-24, 2011

Venues:
Friday: University of Toronto
Jackman Humanities Building, Room 318
170 St. George Street; Toronto, ON M5R 2M8

Saturday: University of Toronto Mississauga
Instructional Centre, Rooms 250 & 245

Featuring a Plenary Address by:
Professor Laurie L. Patton
Dean of Arts and Sciences and Professor of Religion, Duke University

For More Information:
http://www.religion.utoronto.ca/crossing-boundaries-texts-traditions-temporalities

Description

The prominent Cambodian Buddhist monk Khieu Chum (1907-75) was one of a small group of plotters who successfully ousted Norodom Sihanouk from power in early 1970. An active and well-connected figure during the successor Khmer Republic period (1970-75), Khieu Chum was the author of a number of works that provided a Buddhist justification for the overthrow of the Cambodian monarchy. This paper analyses his literary output and seeks to situate his ideas within a wider current of Therav?da Buddhist discourse on acceptable forms of governance.

Ian Harris is Tun Lin Kok Yuen Visiting Professor of Buddhist Studies at the University of Toronto Scarborough with interests including the modern and contemporary history of Cambodia, Buddhism and politics in Southeast Asia, Buddhist environmentalism, and landscape aesthetics. His most recent books are Cambodian Buddhism: History and Practice (2005), Buddhism Under Pol Pot (2007), and an edited volume entitled Buddhism, Power and Politics in Southeast Asia (2007). A new work, Buddhism in a Dark Age: Cambodian Monks under the Khmer Rouge, will appear in early 2012. He is Professor Emeritus at the University of Cumbria and has held previous visiting positions at the University of Oxford, the University of British Columbia, the National University of Singapore, and the Documentary Center of Cambodia in Phnom Penh.

Description

In the last two decades China’s urban centers have been a site of a consumer revolution that has sparked an urban occupational transformation creating a new service worker class. The creation of a service class has transformed women’s social status by segregating them into work that is low-wage, low-status, and temporary. This nascent consumer service economy is therefore an important mechanism of inequality in China. Drawing upon ethnographic data from two formal-sector international hotels, one in each of two cities, as well as service outlets in the informal sector, I examine the organizational processes through which China’s new women service workers transform economic inequalities into interactive hierarchies (asymmetries of care, deference, attention and effort) in different service workplaces. I find three patterns of labor practice, each of which distinctively draws on women’s bodies as symbols that resonate with the social class and gender aspirations of different types of clients. I explain diverse labor patterns by analyzing their links to local consumer markets, their embeddedness in institutional legacies, and the habits and dispositions workers carry into the workplace.

Eileen Otis is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Oregon. She held an An Wang Postdoctoral Fellowship at Harvard University’s Fairbank Center. She earned her PhD in Sociology from the University of California, Davis and also holds an MA in East Asian Studies from UC Santa Barbara, as well as a BA in Political Science from UC Berkeley. Before moving to the University of Oregon, she worked as an Assistant Professor of sociology at SUNY Stony Brook (between 2004 and 2008).

Description

“Between 1958 and 1962, China descended into hell.” So opens Mao’s Great Famine: A History of China’s Most Devastating Catastrophe, Frank Dikötter’s riveting of the Great Leap Forward. Using previously restricted archives, historian Dikötter reveals that under this initiative the country became the site not only of one of the most deadly mass killings of human history (at least 45 million people were worked, starved or beaten to death) but also the greatest demolition of real estate – and catastrophe for the natural environment – in human history, as up to a third of all housing was turned to rubble and the land savaged in the maniacal pursuit of steel and other industrial accomplishments. Piecing together both the vicious machinations in the corridors of power and the everyday experiences of ordinary people, Dikötter at last gives voice to the dead and disenfranchised.

Frank Dikötter is Chair Professor of Humanities at the University of Hong Kong. He has published nine books on modern China, from the classic The Discourse of Race in Modern China (1992) to China before Mao: The Age of Openness (2007). Mao’s Great Famine won the 2011 Samuel Johnson Award for Non-Fiction and is short-listed for the 2011 Asia Society Book Award.

Kimberley Manning is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Concordia University. Dr. Manning has published in the China Review, Modern China, and the China Quarterly, and is co-editor of the 2011 volume: Eating Bitterness: New Perspectives on China’s Great Leap Forward and Famine. Dr. Manning is currently is completing a monograph on the Chinese women’s movement during the 1940s and 1950s and embarking on a collaborative study of Sino-Tanzanian relations.

Yiching Wu is Assistant Professor in the Department of East Asian Studies and the Asian Institute. Yiching Wu grew up in Shanghai, the People’s Republic of China. Trained as an anthropologist at the University of Chicago, his main research field is the history and culture of Mao’s China, and in particular the history of the Cultural Revolution. His scholarly interests include anthropology and history, critical theory, history of populism and radicalism, socialism and postsocialism, and politics of historical knowledge. He is currently working on a book manuscript entitled Revolution at the Margins: Social Protest and Politics of Class in China, 1966-69.

Description

The usage of Chinese soft power has elicited much discussion and debate among foreign observers in recent years. However, the Chinese use of soft power is not new; indeed, I would argue that a highly feminized source of soft power (or what I call “maternalist internationalism”) served as a major tool of diplomacy for the Chinese since well before the foundation of the People’s Republic of China. In this talk I discuss the role that elite Chinese women in the Guomindang and the Chinese Communist Party played in Chinese international relations prior to 1949. I also discuss why and how it is some of these same women sought to make the People’s Republic of China a world leader in the protection of the rights of mothers and their children during the 1950s. Finally I discuss why it is that “maternalist internationalism” was dropped as a form of soft power in the late 1990s.

Kimberley Manning is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Concordia University. Dr. Manning has published in the China Review, Modern China, and the China Quarterly, and is co-editor of the 2011 volume: Eating Bitterness: New Perspectives on China’s Great Leap Forward and Famine. Dr. Manning is currently completing a monograph on the Chinese women’s movement during the 1940s and 1950s and embarking on a collaborative study of Sino-Tanzanian relations.

Description

Drawing on ethnographic analysis of the Rajasthan, India based contemporary Jain sect known as the Terapantha, and textual analysis of Medieval Jain lay conduct books, I will argue in my presentation today that although dana, the Jain practice of giving, particularly alms to Jain ascetics, is as close to being a truly free gift without any reciprocity – a notion implicit in the Maussian concept of the gift, nevertheless it seems that certain aspects of the Terapantha position on dana demonstrates that dana to anyone other than an ascetic may be perilous for the donor. This position is not only in opposition to other Indian traditions, such as Hinduism, but is also in conflict with all other contemporary Jain sects, which, I will show, has left the Terapantha open to criticism –criticism that has led them to alter their position in recent times.

Smita Kothari received her B.A. in English and Religious Studies from the University of Toronto in 2004 and her collaborative M.A. in Religion and South Asian Studies focusing on a comparative study of violence in the Bhagavad-Gita and the Sauptikaparvan (the sixth and tenth book of the Hindu epic The Mahabharata) from the University of Toronto. She is currently a Ph.D candidate in a collaborative program with the Department and Centre for the Study of Religion, the Centre for Environment, and the Centre for South Asian Studies at the University of Toronto. Her areas of study include the study of yoga in the Hindu and Jain traditions and the environment. Her dissertation “Dana and Dhyana in Jaina Yoga: A Case Study of Prekshadhyana and the Terapantha” is a textual and ethnographic study that explores notions of charity and meditation practices through a case study of a particular sect of Jainism. The dissertation examines, through the prism of charity and meditation, if and how such practices can be successful in responding to environmental and social justice concerns.

Description

FSALA-11 is primarily a Canadian arts festival, whose purpose is to present to the public the works of writers, musicians, and other artists. The panels and lectures will discuss vital topics on Canadian and South Asian arts. FSALA is as well a forum for the public to meet artists from across the country and for the artists to meet each other. More than 25 Canadian writers and musicians will be present. We are excited also to bring to the Festival seven renowned writers from South Asia and the US: Meena Alexander (US), Kamini Dandapani (US), Mahesh Dattani (India), Girish Karnad (India), Alamgir Hashmi (Pakistan), Neerav Patel (India), and Harish Narang (India).

For program information or to register, please visit http://www.fsala11.com/index.html or click website link above.

Description

This presentation explores cooperative and confrontational dynamics of Sino-Japanese interaction at sea. In light of China’s evolving maritime posture, and the growing recognition of the importance of the sea to Japan, it is worthwhile to explore the challenges these two states will face as they interact in the confined maritime space of East Asia. Success in this field could reinforce existing conflict management mechanisms that provide stability in other dimensions of the relationship. This presentation outlines the challenges to maritime order between China and Japan that have emerged as a consequence of the expansion of state jurisdiction seaward permitted by the law of the sea. Select cases include; the successful management of fisheries jurisdiction, the unsuccessful management of marine research and the partial success of a joint development zone for hydrocarbon resource exploitation. The findings indicate that the case could be made for cautious optimism about the future of the bilateral maritime relationship, particularly when issues of maritime jurisdiction can be decoupled from domestic political concerns of the elite. Based on these findings, the paper proposes a series of policy recommendations to help navigate future challenges, such as the status of the Okinotorishima islets and the fate of nascent efforts to develop an incidents at sea agreement. The aim is to ensure that the simultaneous emergence of two regional maritime powers in East Asia is a smooth one.

James Manicom is currently a SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow at the Balsillie School of International Affairs in Waterloo. He holds a PhD from Flinders University in Adelaide Australia and teaches at York University. He is also affiliated with the Asian Institute in the Munk School of Global Affairs at the University of Toronto and is a member of the executive of the Toronto Branch of the Canadian International Council. This presentation draws on a summer of field work in Tokyo based at the Ocean Policy Research Foundation, funded by the Japan Foundation. James’ research interests include East Asian international relations and strategic studies, maritime security, energy security, nationalism and territorial disputes; the latter three as they pertain to the Canadian Arctic.

Description

This showcase mixes cultural performances and scholarly presentations, bringing together for the first time leading Filipino artists and academics in Canada. Skewing traditions and hybrids, it highlights how diaspora reconfigures our realities and memories, our bodies and imaginations, our lived conditions and destinies. A must-see and experience event!

Presenters and Performers:
– Patrick Alcedo, Dance professor, York University
– Nina Lee Aquino, award-winning director, dramaturge and playwright
– Alex Felipe, human rights documentary photographer
– Marissa Largo, artist, educator, and doctoral student, OISE University of Toronto
– Eleanor Ty, English and Film Studies professor, Wilfrid Laurier University

No admissions fee.

Description

Information is not yet available.

Description

Transforming Southeast Asia: Dissertation Workshop
Organized by the Canadian Council of Southeast Asian Studies and the Center for Southeast Asian Studies, Asian Institute, University of Toronto
Sponsored by the Asian Institute and the Canada Research Chairs Program
October 16-18, 2011

Faculty:
Amrita Daniere, Geography, University of Toronto
Rodolphe De Koninck, Canada Research Chair, Université de Montréal
Michael Eilenberg, Aarhus University, Denmark
Tania Li, Canada Research Chair, University of Toronto

Workshop coordination and assistance:
Rajin Singh and Aga Baranowska

Student Participants:
Stephen Campbell – Anthropology, University of Toronto; Cross-ethnic labour solidarities among Myanmar workers in Thailand

Christine Gibb – Geography, Université de Montréal; Reconstructing dignity: exploring the post-disaster lives of environmentally displaced peoples in the Philippines through participatory videography

Tim Gorman – Developmental Sociology, Cornell University; Social Inequality, Environmental Vulnerability and Agrarian Change in the Mekong Delta

Ei Phyu Han – Geography, York University; DisPLACEment: Power, gender and transnational acts of Karen refugees from Burma

Jason Morris-Jung – Environmental Science, Policy, and Management, UC, Berkeley; Remaking Society: Articulating Nature with Nation in the Vietnamese Bauxite Controversy

Jacob Nerenberg – Anthropology, University of Toronto; Mobile Horizons: Life and Desire in an Eastern Indonesian Place

Phi Vân Evelyne Nguyen – History, Université du Québec à Montréal; Home faraway from home: a sociocultural history of the 1954 Northern migrants in South Vietnam 1954-1975

Edmund Oh – Developmental Sociology, Cornell University; Opening the door to change: Fisheries co-management and the re-imagining of the Vietnamese state

Trina Joyce Sajo, Information and Media Studies, The University of Western Ontario; Filipino Sexual Labors and the Business of Cybersex

Jonathan Tardif – Geography, Université de Montréal; Ecotourism, Conservation and Development in the Protected Areas of Cambodia: Towards more Resilient Social-Ecological Systems?

Justin Veuthey – Geography, Université de Montréal; Links between growing inqualities, social capital, and vulnerability to natural hazards in the Philippines

Joana Borges Coutinho – School of International development, University of East Anglia; Property, access and exclusion in the forests of East Kalimantan: governance transitions and a place for REDD+

Description

11:30-12:30 Official opening of exhibition (followed by luncheon reception)
12:30-1:30 Panel presentations
1:30-2:30 Discussion and Q&A

The symposium will examine the complexities and challenges facing the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC), commonly known as the Khmer Rouge Tribunal. Trials for Genocide, Crimes Against Humanity or War Crimes embody the hopes of countless victims and survivors for a compelling motive behind their victimization, a clear understanding of the responsibilities of all those involved in their tragedy and an outcome that brings a sense of justice commensurate with the worst imaginable suffering. More often then not those expectations are unfulfilled. Through his experience in four different International Tribunals, but with a specific focus on Cambodia, Robert Petit, will address the fundamental importance, and limits, of the criminal justice process for mass atrocities. Survivor, Kunthear Thorng, and ECCC legal intern, Kate Robertson, will provide additional perspectives on the nature of justice for atrocities committed by the Khmer Rouge.

The exhibition explores issues of accountability in the aftermath of the crimes that took place during the Khmer Rouge era. The exhibit, produced by the Documentation Centre of Cambodia, a Phnom Penh-based NGO, examines the recent activities of the ECCC. From Impunity to Accountability? Is presented in two parts: Case 001 offers an in-depth portrait of Kaing Guek Eav (aka Duch), the head of the notorious S21 security prison, and commentary on the controversial judgment handed down by the ECCC Trial Chamber in July 2010; Case 002 provides biographical details of the four senior Khmer Rouge leaders currently on trial – Nuon Chea, Ieng Sary, Ieng Thirith and Khieu Samphan – and descriptions of the crimes with which they have been charged.

Exhibition: October 14 – November 7
Location: Interior Corridor, Munk School of Global Affairs, 1 Devonshire Place
Exhibition Hours: Monday to Thursday: 8:30am to 11:45pm, Friday: 8:30am to 8:45pm, Saturday: 9:00am to 8:45pm, Sunday: 1:00pm to 11:45pm

SPEAKERS

Robert Petit was called to the Bar in 1988 and started his legal career as a Crown Prosecutor in Montreal for eight years eventually focusing on organised criminality and complex cases. From 1996 to 1999, he embarked on an international career starting as a Legal Officer in the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. Subsequently between 1999 and 2004, he was a Legal Advisor for the United Nations Interim Administration Mission in Kosovo, a Prosecutor for the Serious Crimes Unit of the United Nations Missions of Support to East Timor, and a Senior Trial Attorney with the Office of the Prosecutor of the Special Court for Sierra Leone. In 2006, he was named by the United Nations as International Co Prosecutor of the Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia a position he held until September 2009 when he returned to Canada and his current position as Counsel with the War Crimes Section of Canada’s Federal Department of Justice. He is the 2009 recipient of the Frederick K Cox International Humanitarian Award for Advancing Global Justice.

Kunthear Thorng is a child-survivor of the Cambodian genocide. Orphaned after the execution of his father, stepmother and five step-siblings, he lived through the Khmer Rouge period by hiding in a pagoda and an orphanage before being forced to the Thai border, where he was transported to a series of refugee and transit camps. He immigrated to Canada in 1983 and currently lives in Bradford with his wife and two sons. Mr Thorng will speak about his experiences in Cambodia between 1975-1979, and provide a survivor’s perspective on accountability and justice.

Kate Robertson is a JD candidate in the University of Toronto’s Faculty of Law. Previously, Kate worked as a Legal Intern in the
Office of the International Investigating Judge at the Extraordinary Chambers of the Courts of Cambodia. Later as a Reparations Intern for the International Center for Transitional Justice, she continued to research victim participation and reparations at the ECCC.

MODERATOR

Andrea Russell teaches International Criminal Law at the University of Toronto Faculty of Law, where she also serves as Executive Director of the Dean’s Office. She holds a law degree from UofT as well as a Master’s in International Relations from Cambridge University, and practiced international law in New York and Europe prior to her return to Toronto. Her course at the Law Faculty includes extensive analysis of the role of international criminal tribunals in transitional, post–conflict societies.

The exhibitions, The Duch Verdict: Khmer Rouge Tribunal Case 001 and Genocide: The Importance of Case 002, were produced by The Documentation Centre of Cambodia under the directorship of Youk Chhang. Exhibition text was written by Anne Heindel and Jaya Ramji-Nogales. Funding for the exhibition was provided by the U.S. Agency for International Development and the Swedish International Development Agency.Curator, Toronto: Carla Rose Shapiro

Description

Canadian born, award winning, documentary photographer Ryan Pyle first visited China in 2001. After a 3 month trip around the country he was hooked. He has never left since. It was very much Ryan’s first trip to China that inspired him to enter the discipline of photography, and since then his imagery has graced the pages of the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Time, Newsweek, Fortune, The Sunday Times Magazine and the Financial Times Magazine. Ryan will visit the Asian Institute to speak about his work, his career to date and what it is like working in China for the world’s leading publications.

Born in Toronto, Canada, Ryan Pyle spent his early years close to home. After obtaining a degree in International Politics from the University of Toronto in 2001, Ryan realized a life long dream and traveled to China on an exploratory mission. In 2002 Ryan moved to China permanently and in 2003 began taking freelance newspaper and magazine assignments. In 2004 Ryan became a regular contributor to the New York Times. In 2009 Ryan was listed by PDN Magazine as one of the 30 emerging photographers in the world. Ryan Pyle is an award winning photographer, television presenter, filmmaker and author. Ryan is based full time in Shanghai, China.

Description

Information is not yet available.

Description

Public discussion on recent federal, provincial and municipal elections has increasingly focused on the “rise of the ethnic vote.” Is there a South Asian “ethnic vote” and if so, what is its significance? Are political parties playing a numbers game, or do they really want to hear from new voices? This roundtable of journalists and politicians, brought together in a collaboration between the Centre for South Asian Studies, the Journalism Lab at The Munk School of Global Affairs, and the South Asian Journalists’ Association Toronto Chapter, will consider these key questions about emerging electoral logics, the limits and dynamics of political pluralism in Canada today.

5:30 Reception

6:00-6:15 Opening Remarks

6:15-7:00 Discussion with:
Piya Chattopadhyay as moderator: Anchor, with Steve Paikin of The Agenda & Host, Big Ideas Lecture Series, TVO
Jagmeet Singh: MPP-elect for Brampton-Gore-Malton
Rana Sarkar: Federal liberal candidate for Scarborough-Rouge River & The President of the Canada-India Business Council
Steven D’Souza: CBC TV/Radio reporter covering provincial politics
Sunil Rao: Editor, South Asian Focus

7:00-7:50 Q&A from audience

7:50-8:00 Closing Remarks/SAJA

Description

After 1949, the Chinese Communist Party made “democratic management” a key legitimating slogan of its workplace administration and developed an elaborate complex of related institutions, policies, and practices. In this paper, based on interviews with over 100 workers and cadres from factories in several Chinese cities, as well as party, government, and factory documents, I first examine the system of industrial relations in place during the first four decades of communist power. The system, I conclude, was only democratic in a very limited sense, but workers had considerable influence, an essential foundation for which was permanent job tenure. I next assess the impact of sweeping market reforms since the early 1990s, which have restructured industrial enterprises and eliminated permanent job tenure, fundamentally undermining workers’ influence and producing much more coercive labor relations. Opening up labor markets, I conclude, undercuts employees’ “membership rights,” curtailing possibilities for democratic participation in the workplace.

Joel Andreas, Associate Professor of Sociology at Johns Hopkins University, studies political contention and social change in contemporary China. His recent book, Rise of the Red Engineers: The Cultural Revolution and the Origins of China’s New Class, analyzes the contentious process through which old and new elites coalesced during the decades following the 1949 Revolution. He is currently investigating changing labor relations in Chinese factories between 1949 and the present.

Description

Jainism, being a Sramana tradition, upholds the path of self-effort to achieve liberation. As the renouncer tradition grew, and attracted lay followers, a cult of devotion emerged centered on the renouncers themselves, in particular, on those who had attained liberation, namely the Tirthankaras. This led to the emergence of a full-fledged path of Bhakti or devotion in Jainism. The path of Bhakti evokes emotions; not of submission to Tirthankaras or Union with God but bringing a deep sense of pathos by which a person may feel himself or herself to be in bondage. My talk aims to discuss in detail the phenomenological aspect of the Jain aesthetic experience of devotion.

Dr. Kamini Gogri received her Ph. D. in Philosophy from Mumbai University in 2006. Dr. Gogri was appointed as a lecturer at K.J. Somaiya Centre for Buddhist Studies (2007-2008) and at G.N. Khalsa College for Philosophy (2008-2009). Currently, she is a Coordinator of Jainology courses at Mumbai University. Her current research focuses on the contribution of Samantabhadra and Mallisena (Jain thinkers) to Jain philosophical thought.

Description

FRIDAY, OCTOBER 21, 2011

VENUE:
North House – Room 208N
Munk School of Global Affairs
1 Devonshire Place

5:00 – 7:00 Keynote lecture

Cuisine, Commerce and Cultural Poetics: Night Markets in Taiwan
Professor Scott Simon (Sociology and Anthropology, University of Ottawa)

http://webapp.mcis.utoronto.ca/EventDetails.aspx?EventId=10526

VENUE:
Innis Town Hall
Innis College at the University of Toronto
2 Sussex Street at St. George

8:00 – 10:20 Opening Night Welcome

Professor Joseph Wong (Director, Asian Institute, University of Toronto)
Mr. Winston Chen (Director General, Taipei Economic and Cultural Office in Toronto)
Professor Charlie Keil (Director, Cinema Studies Institute, U of T)

Film Introduction
Professor Bart Testa (Cinema Studies Institute, U of T)

Gala Screening

Night Market Hero
Directed by Tien-Lun Yeh
2010 | 124 Min. | HD | Mandarin with English subtitles

VENUE:
Innis Café

10:20
After Party | Showcasing Taiwanese night market food

http://webapp.mcis.utoronto.ca/EventDetails.aspx?EventId=10766

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 22, 2011

VENUE:
Innis Town Hall

2:30 – 4:35 Film Introduction
Professor Bart Testa (Cinema Studies Institute, U of T)

Eat Drink Man Woman
Directed by Ang Lee
1994 | 124 Min. | 35mm | Mandarin with English subtitles

http://webapp.mcis.utoronto.ca/EventDetails.aspx?EventId=10767

VENUE:
Innis Café

5:00 – 7:00 Family Melodrama and Food Metaphors in Three Moments of Taiwanese Cinema
Professor Bart Testa (Cinema Studies Institute, U of T)
Professor James Udden (Film Studies, Gettysburg College in Pennsylvania)
Professor Jing Jing Chang (Professor of Film Studies, Wilfrid Laurier University)

7:00 – 8:00 Break | Taiwanese snackboxes available for panel attendees

http://webapp.mcis.utoronto.ca/EventDetails.aspx?EventId=10768

VENUE:
Innis Town Hall

8:00 – 10:35 Film Introduction
Professor Jing Jing Chang (Professor of Film Studies, Wilfrid Laurier University)

Kuei‐mei, A Woman
Directed by Yi Chang
1986 | 152 Min. | 35mm | Mandarin with English subtitles

http://webapp.mcis.utoronto.ca/EventDetails.aspx?EventId=10769

Description

Night markets, adored by locals and tourists alike, are a vibrant part of social life in Taiwan and affordable places to experience “authentic” cuisine. Yet night markets are more than just food stands, entrepreneurs, and high-calorie snacks. They are stages for cultural poetics, where diverse national, cultural, ethnic, and gender identities are shaped, represented, and contested. Night markets embody the cultural poetics of the masses, just as film and literature represent the cultural poetics of the elite. What do night markets mean in Taiwan? This talk provides an anthropological approach to the study of Taiwan’s most loved culinary institutions.

Scott Simon, with a Ph.D. in Anthropology from McGill University, is Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at the University of Ottawa; as well as Chair in Taiwan Studies. He specializes in the anthropological study of development in Taiwan. Simon is author of three books about Taiwan, including Sweet and Sour: Life Worlds of Taipei Women Entrepreneurs, which includes research on night markets. He has also done research on the informal food sector globally for the Food and Agriculture Organization. In recent years, he has been doing field research with the Seediq and Truku communities of Nantou and Hualien, Taiwan. The results of that field research will be published as a book by the Presses de l’Université Laval in the summer of 2012.

Description

Eat Drink Man Woman (1994). This was the third film in director Ang Lee’s “father trilogy” that launched his career as a Taiwan filmmaker — from New York! It the only one to be set in Taipei (the two previous movies were set in the U.S.) The plot concerns an widowed master chef Mr. Chu (Shing Lung, carried over from Lee’s The Wedding Banquet) who has decided to retire and looks after his three daughters and cooks them fantastic Sunday dinners, which become the narrative pivot for what at turns is a comedy and family drama – and the source of the film’s famous culinary spectacles.

Description

Jing Jing Chang, “The Empire of Food and Love: Challenging the Parameters of the Woman’s Picture in Kuei-Mei, A Woman”
Jing Jing Chang is assistant professor in film studies at Wilfrid Laurier University. She completed her BA in Cinema Studies at the University of Toronto and her PhD in History at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign. Her research interests include Chinese cinemas, cold war Hong Kong, and postcolonial studies.

James Udden, “Eating Scenes in Taiwanese Cinema: A Political Aesthetic?”
James Udden is associate professor of Film Studies at the University of Gettysburg and the author of Not Man Is an Island: The Cinema of Hou Hsiao-hsien (2009).

Bart Testa (Moderator), “Cuisine, Community, Family Melodrama: Repetition, Communication and Reversal in Three Taiwanese Films”
Bart Testa is Senior Lecturer in the Cinema Studies Institute, University of Toronto.

Description

Kuei-Mei, A Woman (1986). Director Chang Yi was a founding member of the Taiwanese New Cinema and contributed a chapter to the seminal anthology film In Our Time (1982). His career climaxed with this family melodrama – much more classically style than many TNC works. The story involves the many travails and years in the life of a woman (played by Hui San Yang) who and makes a disadvantageous marriage to Taipei widower with three children. Kuei-Mei won the most award in Taiwan but, after a final film (and sixth as director) that same year, Chang Yi and Hui San Yang turned to Liuli (traditional Chinese glass making).

Description

Professor Mcgahan’s research on global health deals with a wide range of topics, including issues relating to the dissemination of new business models and how to apply these models to health issues in the global South. In this session, she will provide a picture of global demographics from hundreds of years ago, to the present time, and into the future. Population dynamics are changing the game. Professor McGahan’s argument is that innovative and technically sophisticated approaches are essential, but insufficient on their own in creating better health outcomes. Innovative organizational approaches are equally important for improving global health.

Anita M. McGahan is Associate Dean of Research, PhD Director, Professor and Rotman Chair in Management at the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto. She is cross appointed to the Munk School of Global Affairs; is a Senior Associate at the Institute for Strategy and Competitiveness at Harvard University; and is Chief Economist at the Massachusetts General Hospital Division for Global Health and Human Rights. A passionate advocate of liberal undergraduate education, McGahan has championed the introduction of a history curriculum in business schools.

Description

The dissolution of Qing power in Khalkha Mongolia in 1911, the advent of a brief independent theocracy under the 8th Jebsundamba, and the rise to political power of a native socialist movement in 1921 were part of much broader shifts in the socio-political geography of Eurasia. As institutional and political structures everywhere adjusted, many new types of intellectual transfers and encounters began to occur which ruptured the horizon of traditional Buddhist scholastic endeavors. This paper examines the travels and correspondences of one Khalkha Gobi Buddhist polymath during the twilight of the Qing and the dawn of Mongolian socialism. It will present ways in which new religious, intellectual, political and historical ideas were synthesized with Buddhist models through encounters with figures such as the 13th Dalai Lama, Agvan Dorjiev, Zhamtsarano, Gustaf John Ramstedt, and a Christian missionary named Powell. Further, it will show how radical new ideas stemming from sources as diverse as French museum holdings, German Orientalist scholarship, Russian socialism, Chinese travel literature and Buryat secular education were digested by one of the last heirs of conservative Mongolian Buddhism just prior to the purges of 1937.

Matthew King is a 4th year PhD candidate in the Department for the Study of Religion. He has worked on the revival of Mongolian Buddhism in the post-socialist era, the Tibet-Mongol religious and cultural interface, and the medical content of the Gesar of Ling epic in Tibet, North China and Mongolia. His dissertation analyzes the radical new historiography of late Qing Mongolian Buddhists.

Description

Jayeeta Sharma’s first book, Empire’s Garden: Assam and the Making of India (Duke University Press’s Radical Perspectives book series and Permanent Black, 2011) examines the intersection of colonial tea capitalism with identity contestations in modern and contemporary India. This work links the study of coolie labour, missionary and gentry-generated print culture, and internal migration in South Asia to that of imperial commodities, cultural nationalism, and post-colonial politics of race, language, and ethnicity. She will speak about the writing of this book and the varieties of spaces and epistemes that it seeks to traverse.

Please read SUMIT SARKAR IN CONVERSATION WITH JAYEETA SHARMA here: http://permanent-black.blogspot.com/2011/10/sumit-sarkar-in-conversation-with.html

Jayeeta Sharma is an Assistant Professor in History at the University of Toronto. Born in Assam, she studied at the Universities of Delhi and Cambridge, where she was a Commonwealth Scholar. She is currently Program Director of the Global Asia Studies Program at the University of Toronto Scarborough and an active member of the editorial collective of Radical History Review.

Description

Rana Dasgupta’s fiction has often been set in places he does not know. Here he talks about the productive qualities of ignorance for the writer, and the significance, within global culture, of everything we do not know. According to Salman Rushdie’s claim, Rana is “the most unexpected and original Indian writer of his generation”.

Rana Dasgupta was born in Canterbury, England in 1971 and studied at Balliol College, Oxford and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. After his studies he worked for a marketing consultancy firm which took him to London, Kuala Lumpur and then New York. In 2001, he moved to Delhi to write.His first novel, Tokyo Cancelled, appeared in 2005 and was shortlisted for the John Llewelyn Rhys Prize. Solo (2009) won the Commonwealth Writers’ Prize. His essays have appeared in such places as Granta, The Missouri Review and The New Statesman.