Description

For the Vietnamese communist leadership, the showdown between the French and the Vietnamese at Dien Bien Phu in 1954 is a glorious victory, part of the “inevitable” march towards full victory in 1975. It is certainly a party of this state’s nationalist legitimacy. This talk breaks with this myth of war to provide what is missing in this heroic account of war – the unprecedented, violent assault on the Vietnamese body. Goscha argues that Viet Minh bodies were particularly vulnerable to the technological destruction of modern war as decolonization and the Cold War combined in northern Vietnam in an explosive yet uneven mix. Lastly, he tries to suggest in this talk why some soldiers refused to go over the top at Dien Bien Phu, hypothesizing that they were not opposed to the war’s aims but disagreed with the Party asking them to die senselessly.

—
Christopher Goscha is Professor of History at the Université de Québec à Montréal (UQAM). He is a specialist of Southeast Asian studies, History, and International relations. His many books include a Historical Dictionary of the Indochina War (2010), Connecting Histories: Decolonization and the Cold War in Southeast Asia (2008), l’Echec de la Paix: L’Indochine entre les deux accords de Genève (2008), l’Espace d’un regard: Paul Mus et l’Asie (2006), Le Viet-Nam depuis 1945 (2004), Contesting Visions of the Lao Past (2004), La Guerre du Vietnam et l’Europe (2003), Vietnam or Indochina? Contesting Concepts of Space in Vietnamese Nationalism (1995).

Description

Registration is now full.

Celebrating 40 Years of Canada-China Relations

Reflections on Sino-Canadian political, economic & social relations

Reception to follow

This event is free but registration is is required as seating is limited.

Online: http://cictorontosept162010.eventbrite.com/

Via Email: toevents@onlinecic.org

Call: 416-590-0630

Fax: 416-590-0773

*Notice to branch members: CIC-Toronto Branch Annual General Meeting, 5pm, Room 208N

Description

Often what gets lost in a discussion of disasters like the recent floods in Pakistan displacing nearly 20 million people is the production of vulnerability both physically and institutionally. Media coverage of this disaster has been unable to capture the variation in the vulnerability of the people and state given the diversity of social structures that exist in Pakistan. We can take this perspective on the production of vulnerability even further to discuss the way in which an uncritical media reproduces not only stereotypical depiction of hazards and disasters as natural but, in this particular case, has contributed to vulnerability by creating a particular depiction of Pakistan, its people and government. Therefore, what we propose is a critical discussion of the politics and complexity of vulnerability in Pakistan. This would imply a deeper examination of how the crisis has been handled domestically (federally and provincially), the response of the international community, and role played by the media.

Description

Sizeable numbers of labour migrants moving for care work characterise the transnational flows from less well-off countries to richer economies. Like many developed countries with a high level of female force participation alongside an ageing population, Singapore is alleviating its eldercare crisis by looking to foreign domestic workers and healthcare workers to shore up its homes and nursing homes. Research on care work has tended to focus on the transnational migration of women for either domestic work (regarded as unskilled) or nursing (regarded as skilled), and the two bodies of work have remained largely separate. Recognising that the transnational labour migrations of women as domestic and healthcare workers are integrally linked in the care chain, this paper attempts to bring the two together. The paper first examines state policy that differentially regulates the entry of these two groups of female migrant workers into Singapore. Drawing on interviews with employers, the paper goes on to argue that while the institutional mechanisms differ for the two groups, Singapore’s solution to its care predicament – employing migrant domestic workers in the reproductive space of the home and foreign healthcare workers in the productive space of the nursing home – is one that is predicated on the construction of the worker’s body as a (re)productive subject governed not just by gendered discourses but also those of race and nationality.

An alumnus of the University of Toronto, Shirlena Huang is currently Associate Professor at the Department of Geography, National University of Singapore and Research Associate at NUS’ Asia Research Institute. She is also a Regional Editor (Asia) of Women’s Studies International Forum and on the editorial boards of the Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography and the soon-to-be launched International Journal of Population Research. Her research and publications focus mainly on gender and migration (particularly within the Asia-Pacific region), as well as urbanization and heritage conservation. Her current research projects examine transnational mobilities in the contexts of healthcare worker migration (in Asia), transnational families and national identity (comparing PRC and American families in Singapore), as well as the internet and religion (comparing Singapore and Los Angeles). She was also Head of Department of Geography, NUS, from 2005-2010.

Description

The talk will engage with the literature on cosmopolitanism and the city. I ask the question of how one might read a city contrasting the security state’s attempt to read cities and the effort to understand them in terms of layers of geo-historic-cultural stratification and the inter-penetration of cultures. Imperial and nation-statist ways cartographies have occasioned the many and particularly violent territorial partitions of Asia including those of India and Palestine and have led to the recent near annihilation of several ancient/medieval cities. One might then reframe Lefebvre’s question who has the right to the city? Also ask the question as to whether cities have rights? Building on my recently released book The other global city, I challenge the “global cities” literature. Using the chapters put together by the contributors to the book I attempt to map the topography of an alternative cosmopolitanism in Asia including cities such as Cairo, Istanbul, Beirut, Bukhara, Singapore, Delhi, Lhasa, Singapore and Tokyo.
—
Shail Mayaram is Professor at the Centre for the Study of Developing Societies, Delhi. Publications include Against History, Against State: Counterperspectives from the Margins; Resisting Regimes: Myth, Memory and the Shaping of a Muslim Identity; ; coauthored with Ashis Nandy et al, Creating a Nationality: The Ramjanmabhumi Movement and the Fear of Self ; coedited, Subaltern Studies: Muslims, Dalits and the fabrications of history vol 12; edited, The Other Global City.

Description

The eruption of bubonic plague in Hong Kong in 1894 was the flashpoint of the Third Pandemic, marking a critical juncture in the story of plague and plague fighters, and also a galvanizing moment in the history of the port colony. The spread and containment of plague was accomplished through the agency of human actors, among them a rapidly growing Chinese population in the basin of Victoria Peak, a colonial regime governing from atop the Peak, an emerging class of Chinese elites, and teams of foreign scientists arriving in Hong Kong in hot pursuit of the pathogen. The arc of the plague was potentiated, also, by non-human agents: Hong Kong’s subtropical, monsoonic environment, the mountainous geography of the territory that supported various configurations of power, migratory and commercial flows between China, the British empire and Hong Kong’s harbour, the ghosts of Chinese socio-religious tradition, heterogenous schemas of the body and disease in Chinese and Western medicine, and, of course, the fleas that bite rats, vectors of infection. I suggest that the writing a history of plague in Hong Kong hinges on weaving together these streams of human and non-human agency. In particular, looking at Hong Kong in this moment of iatric crisis through the lens of the mangle, Andrew Pickering’s contribution to the evolving field of science studies, reveals how human and non-human agents constitute the experience of embodiment, the practice of medical science, and the logics of imperialism, and not merely the writing of the histories of such.

Meaghan Marian is a doctoral candidate in the Department of History at the University of Toronto preparing a dissertation on the intersections of Chinese and Western medical science in Hong Kong, Macao, and China. Her research has been supported by the SSHRC Canada Graduate Scholarship, the Ontario Graduate Scholarship and the Lupina Senior Doctoral Fellowship. She has presented papers on the history of medicine, ethnomathematics, and an ethnography of Tibetan martial arts at graduate conferences.

Description

The future of independent critical publishing is at risk. To begin with political economy: book, newspaper, television, radio and film ownership is everywhere concentrated in the hands of a small number of mega-corporations. Two other intertwined phenomena herald the decline, and perhaps ultimately the disappearance of the newspaper, the journal, and the book, certainly as we know them. First is the fact that the new technologies that gave rise to the internet and multiple electronic publications and new forms of communication such as blogs and social communication networks, have transformed both the economics of publishing and the nature, quantity and quality of readership. Notable trends include the radical decline in newspaper, magazine and journal readership and subscribers, and the shift from print to predominantly on-line publication and reading. This, together with declining advertising revenue for print journals and magazines, is one of many harbingers of the permanent decline of print publication. More important, the readership of journals is shifting to online readership, while personal paid subscriptions plummet. While some lament the imminent demise of print publication, and perhaps even the decline in literacy, it is worth noting that electronic publication offers new opportunities that print cannot match. For example, electronic publishing permits far greater versatility in the use of images and sound, including color, music, voice, and moving images, as well as interactive texts and comment functions that have the potential to redefine the relationship between author and text and to expand the scope of media. Third, over the last decade, coinciding with the centralization of ownership and control of print newspapers and magazines, there has been a proliferation of electronic sources, including some notable for their independent and critical spirit across the political, social and cultural spectrum. Yet these new initiatives face formidable problems in competing with centralized corporate media in a David and Goliath battle. We consider these themes with particular respect to the question: how do we gain command of developments historical and contemporary in the Asia-Pacific in the new millennium?

—
Mark Selden is a Senior Research Associate in the East Asia Program at Cornell University, Professor Emeritus of Sociology and History at Binghamton University, and a Coordinator of The Asia-Pacific Journal at http://www.japanfocus.org which provides in-depth critical analysis of the forces shaping the Asia-Pacific and the world. A specialist on the modern and contemporary geopolitics and political economy of the Asia Pacific, his books include China in Revolution: The Yenan Way Revisited, Chinese Society: Change, Conflict and Resistance, Chinese Village: Socialist State, War and State Terrorism: The United States, Japan, and the Asia-Pacific in the Long Twentieth Century, Censoring History: Citizenship and Memory in Japan, China and the United States, China, East Asia and the Global Economy, The Resurgence of East Asia: 500, 150 and 50 Year Perspectives. He is the editor of book series at Rowman & Littlefield, Routledge, and M.E. Sharpe publishers.

Description

Popular support for the incumbent regime is widely recognized to facilitate the durability of democratic regimes, but its role in sustaining non-democratic regimes has not received systematic empirical inquiry. This paper will address two critical and much debated theoretical questions: (1) how do non-democratic regimes generate popular support; and (2) what factors influence popular attitudes towards the current regime, and the potential support for regime change? These theoretical questions are derived not only from current debates about political developments in China, but also reflect ongoing scholarly debates regarding the sustainability of authoritarian regimes and the cultural, structural, and strategic variables that influence regime survival. This paper examines the influence of public goods provision, assessments of the government’s policy performance, and political attitudes on the level of popular support for the local and national governments

Bruce J. Dickson is professor of political science and international affairs at the George Washington University. His research and teaching focus on comparative politics, the political dynamics of authoritarian regimes, and the prospects for political change in China. His research has been funded by the National Science Foundation, the Smith Richardson Foundation, and the U.S. Institute of Peace. His most recent books are Wealth into Power: The Communist Party’s Embrace of China’s Private Sector (Cambridge University Press, 2008), and (with Jie Chen) Allies of the State: China’s Private Entrepreneurs and Democratic Change (Harvard University Press, 2010). His articles have appeared in China Quarterly, Comparative Political Studies, Comparative Politics, Journal of Democracy, Political Science Quarterly, and other journals. He received his PhD in political science from the University of Michigan.

Description

The architect of Indo-US nuclear deal during his tenure as foreign secretary, career diplomat Shyam Saran’s current job as Special Envoy to the Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh is to garner support from developed nations in favor of the deal.

A1970 batch of Indian Foreign Service officer, Shyam Saran was India’s ambassador in Nepal, Indonesia and Myanmar, High Commissioner in Mauritius, Deputy Chief of Mission in Tokyo and Counselor in Indian Embassy in Beijing besides Joint Secretary in Prime Minister’s Office. He was to retire in 2006, but the government has extended his service as Special Envoy of Prime Minister with the sole aim to exploit his abilities in taking the world in its favor while pushing through the nuclear deal. As foreign secretary, Shyam Saran also played a key role in easing tension with Pakistan and China.

As Special Envoy of Prime Minister, Shyam Saran visited several countries to explain the content of Indo-Us nuclear deal. In He went to Australia Japan and Russia and briefed them on the background and status of India’s discussions on civilian nuclear cooperation with the USA, International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and Nuclear Supply Group. Shyam Saran also highlighted India’s unblemished record of non-proliferation, as well as present legislative developments to bring India’s export controls in line with existing global arrangements. He referred to India’s growing energy requirements in the context of its economic growth. In order to maintain both economic development and its commitment to reducing green house gas emissions, India was also looking to move away from fossil fuels to the extent possible. Nuclear energy would play an important part in this. He also assured that India is committed to the goals of non-proliferation and nuclear disarmament remained.

Shyam Saran is successful in getting support from Australia, Russia and other developed countries in standing positive in the Nuclear Supply Group, before the nuclear deal was put to vote in US Congress. Prime Minister, Manmohan Singh largely depends on his diplomatic skill in successful completion of the nuclear deal.

Description

This seminar features presentations by U of T students who took part in a recent interdisciplinary field courses taught in Indonesia for undergraduate and graduate student by Anthropology, Planning, and Geography faculty. The students will reflect on transformations in the contemporary development landscape of Indonesia, and responses from faculty members will follow.

Chair:
Rachel Silvey (Geography; Interim Director, Dr. David Chu Program in Asia Pacific Studies)

Description

Even though Jainism appeared in India at the same time as Buddhism, as a reaction to Brahmanism, it had a very different destiny: whereas Buddhism almost disappeared there in the 13th century, Jainism succeeded in coexisting with Hinduism and other religions throughout the centuries. At the moment of the founding of the Indian democratic state, the members of this community were so much part of the Indian society that their status is ambiguous in the constitution: on the one hand, in article 25, the Jains are considered as Hindus; on the other hand, however, the Jains are treated as distinct for certain legal purposes. The current situation continues to reflect this double identity: in the big movement for reservation policy, the Jains ask to be given the status of a national minority on the ground that they form an independent community.

When studying the specificity of Jainism as well as the process of its acculturation to a larger community, there has been an emphasis both on the peculiar religious and philosophical aspects of Jainism and on its adaptation to the Hindu religion and society. However, the role of Jain literature in this process of adaptation and self-definition is still to be explored. In particular, it has been largely ignored that the Jains have used the language of their own, i.e., Prakrit, to compose works in the style of the famous Kadambari. Thus, this paper intends to give an insight into the characteristics of Jain belles-lettres and their contribution to Indian literature.

If Jain authors were acquainted with of their own canonical, exegetical and literary tradition, they were also no doubt well-versed in the worldly treatises of love, politics and poetry, as well as in the works of Classical Indian literature. The question was for them rather how to take a position in the genre of belles-lettres in order to deftly represent their community, as is fortunately shown by the prologues of their works. Once they had decided to write such a work, on one hand, Jain authors derived their inspiration from Brahmanical writers by assimilating the themes and the style of their chefs-d’oeuvre; on the other hand, they knew how to differentiate themselves by subordinating them to their specific tradition. Furthermore, they showed that Prakrit could perfectly serve literary purposes even better than Sanskrit and, lastly, they even developed new genres, like the campu, a novel mixing prose and verse, which was to be adopted throughout the medieval period. Thus, while being part and parcel of a larger Indian tradition and creating their original works, Jain writers gave a new impetus to Indian literature and contributed to the richness of the Indian culture.

—
Christine Chojnacki is currently Professor of Indian Languages and Cultures at the University of Lyon, France. Her last publication is a translation and study of Uddyotana’s Kuvalayamala, a novel in prose and verse dating from 779, in the collection Indica et Tibetica printed in Marburg, Germany. She is now finishing a book on the Hindu and Jain traditions of Krishna in collaboration with André Couture, University of Laval, Canada. In progress is the study of Jain works during the muslim period to explain the formation of contemporary situations and identities.

Description

Information is not yet available.

Description

A Presentation on Demographic Changes, Migration, and Social Policy Reforms in South Korea

Population ageing and changes in the economy in South Korea raises a variety of social policy issues, including pension and healthcare, social care, labor migration, and education reforms to prepare young people for the new economy. Three prominent academics from South Korea will discuss the social and economic changes and innovations and reforms in social, immigration, and education policies in that country.

10:00 Welcoming Remarks by Professor Andre Schmid, Director, Centre for the Korea Study

10:10 Introduction by Professor Ito Peng, Associate Dean, Faculty of Arts and Science

10:20 Workshop Presentations

Chair: Professor Ito Peng

Kyung Hee Kim (Chung Ang University)
“Work-Family Harmonization and Childcare Policy Reform in South Korea”

Hyekyung Lee ( Pai Chai University)
“Marriage Migration and Immigration Policy Reform in South Korea”

Soomyung Jang (Korean National University for Education)
“5.31 University Expansion Policy and Its Implications on Labor Market and Fertility in the case of Korea”

11:35 Q&A

11:55 Conclusion

Description

South Korea has achieved remarkable economic growth in the late 20th century. The economic growth was made possible by Korea’s techno-scientific growth regime. Under this techno-scientific growth regime, sciences and technologies are expected to serve only as a means of economic growth. Technocratic policymaking not allowing any meaningful public participation is a distinguishing feature of this growth regime. In this sense the techno-scientific growth regime can be characterized by its economism and elitism.
This techno-scientific growth regime did not receive any serious challenges from civil society under the military government. Military-political regime, not techno-scientific growth regime, was the main target. However, with the political democratization of the early 1990s, various social movement agendas to democratize economy and society began to appear, including democratization of science and technology. The purpose of this talk is to introduce the democratization movements in Korean science and technology and then to evaluate their contributions and limitations.

—
Young Hee Lee is Professor in the Department of Sociology at The Catholic University of Korea. Professor Lee is currently a Visiting Scholar at UC San Diego, U.S. He received his PhD in Sociology from Yonsei University in 1994. His research interests include Science, Technology and Society (STS), technology and work, and public participation in techno-scientific and environmental decision making. He has been actively involved in the “democratization of science and technology” movement in Korea since 1997, when he founded the Centre for Democracy in Science and Technology with his colleagues, a civil organization focusing on socio-political issues around science and technology policy. His books include Fordism and Post-Fordism: Hyundai, Toyota and Volvo (1994), Towards a Reflexive Sociology of Science and Technology (2000), Public Participation in Science, Technology and Environment (2002).

Description

The speaker will be discussing her personal experiences working with women in rural India who have utilized microcredit to their advantage, as well as her recently published book “Saris on Scooters: How Microcredit is Changing Village India”. The book will also be available for sale at the event.

Description

Coincidentally or otherwise, the process of globalization in India has been accompanied by the still more momentous process of Manadalization involving transfer of political power to and the general empowerment of the hitherto marginalized (in North India) middling caste groupings known as Other Backward Classes (OBCs).From the point of view of the upper castes, the most unpalatable part of Manadalization is the reservations in government jobs and more importantly in government-funded educational and professional institutions. While the upper castes had rightly been made to feel guilty for the treatment meted out to the erstwhile untouchables, now known as Scheduled Castes (SCs), and atone for it to the extent possible, newly introduced reservation for OBCs is seen as usurpation. If globalization had not occurred, it is very likely that Mandalization would have eventually produced an equilibrium state in which the upper castes would have willy-nilly accepted a diminished role consistent with their actual numbers. Globalization has disrupted this social process in the sense that the upper caste-dominated Indian middle class has chosen to effectively distance itself from the new mainstream and attach itself to the West.

The philosophical basis for the defection of the middle class to the West was created 200 years ago in the form of Indo-Europeanism whereby Europeans and upper caste Hindus were declared to be brethren to the exclusion of lower castes and others. I shall be discussing this phenomenon in some detail with special focus on how the De-Nationalized Middle Class is carrying out a multi-stage exercise to establish its identity and acquire legitimacy.

—
Professor Rajesh Kochhar is currently a CSIR Emeritus Scientist at IISER: Indian Institute of Science Education and Research Mohali, Chandigarh 160019 . He is the vice-president of International Astronomical Union Commission 41 on History of Astronomy. He is working on a research project ” Modern science in India: Colonial compulsions, nationalist aspirations and global circumventions”. He obtained his M.Sc. Honours School in Physics in 1967 and Ph.D. in 1973, both from Panjab University, Chandigarh, where he began his career as a lecturer. He was a Professor at Indian Institute of Astrophysics, Bangalore, in 1999, when he moved over to New Delhi to take charge as Director NISTADS: National Institute of Science, Technology and Development Studies, New Delhi (CSIR). He has been Professor of Pharmaceutical Heritage in NIPER: National Institute of Pharmaceutical Education and Research (Government of India), Mohali. At NIPER he was additionally in charge of Communication and Soft Skill Programme.

Description

The panel of speakers from the Faculty of Law of the Chinese University of Hong Kong will discuss:

· Hong Kong’s latest economic developments and a projection of its future industries

· The legal impact of various economic concessions granted by the Beijing Government, especially in Guangdong Province

· Hong Kong’s legal education reform and its legal profession today

· Changes in the Judiciary and the importance of Alternative Dispute Resolution in place of litigation

Speakers:

Professor Mike McConville
Professor of Law, Dean
Faculty of Law, The Chinese University of Hong Kong

Obtained his Ph.D from the University of Nottingham, Prof McConville has wide international experience, having taught at the Universities of Nottingham, Birmingham, Warwick (where he was Dean for nine years) and New York University (where he was Walter E. Meyer Research Professor), as well as having undertaken advisory work in restructuring legal systems in countries such as Latvia, Malawi, Peru, Turkey and China.

Dr. Arthur McINNIS
Professional Consultant,
Faculty of Law, The Chinese University of Hong Kong

Dr McInnis’ first degree was in Economics and Political Science from the University of Regina and was followed by a Bachelor of Laws degree from the University of Saskatchewan. He also holds a Master of Laws degree from McGill University and a Ph.D in law from the University of London. He was admitted to practice as a barrister and solicitor in Saskatchewan in 1981 and British Columbia in 1985 and as a solicitor in Hong Kong in 1990. He is a past President of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce in Hong Kong.

Mr. Dennis Hie
Professional Consultant,
Faculty of Law, The Chinese University of Hong Kong

Mr. Hie is a solicitor admitted in Hong Kong and England and Wales. He is a commercial lawyer in the areas of corporate law, mergers and acquisitions, and China-related matters. He has published in the area of commercial and PRC law and continues to provide consultancy services on commercial and China-related matters. He is currently a member of Standing Committee on Compliance of the Law Society of Hong Kong.

REGISTRATION FEES: $35 (Includes lunch and HST)

For information:
Contact The Hong Kong Economic & Trade Office (Canada) at Tel: 416-924-5544 or Email: info@hketotoronto.gov.hk

For e-registration: http://vip.buzsoftware.com/hkcba/index.cfm?ID=262

Description

This seminar features presentations by U of T students who took part in a recent course taught by Joseph Wong at Fudan University in Shanghai. The students will reflect on the rise of China, and responses from faculty members will follow.

Student Panellists:
Melinda Jacobs (Specialist in International Relations)
Rajin Singh (Specialist Political Science and History)
Lucas Xu (Commerce, UTM)
Zhiying Zhang (Major in Asia-Pacific Studies and Economics)

Chair:
Joseph Wong (Canada Research Chair, Political Science; Director, Asian Institute)

Discussants:
Victor Falkenheim (Professor, East Asian Studies)
Lynette Ong (Professor, Political Science and Asian Institute)
Yiching Wu (Professor, East Asian Studies and Asian Institute)

Description

Financial systems are central to the orderly function of modern capitalist economies, yet the financial systems of most emerging market economies remain underdeveloped, fragile, and subject to exploitation by economic and political elites. This paper explores the political origins–and the political consequences–of financial development in Southeast Asia. Recognizing that financial development can be both politically useful and politically threatening, it demonstrates how the postcolonial regimes of Southeast Asia created different kinds of financial systems that were designed to support different kinds of political systems. The various kinds of postcolonial challenges facing these countries accordingly shaped their subsequent trajectories of financial development. These findings have important consequences for our understanding of the origins of financial systems in emerging economies, and speak to fundamental debates about the role of the state in economic development.

—
Thomas Pepinsky is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Government at Cornell University, where he is also the Director of the International Political Economy Program and Associate Director of the Cornell Modern Indonesia Project. His research focuses on comparative politics and international political economy, with a focus on emerging markets in Southeast Asia. He is the author of Economic Crises and the Breakdown of Authoritarian Regimes (Cambridge University Press, 2009), as well as articles in World Politics, Political Research Quarterly, Studies in Comparative International Development, Journal of Democracy, Journal of East Asian Studies, and several other journals and edited volumes. His current research focuses on comparative responses to the Great Meltdown of 2008-09, the financial politics in emerging economies, and political Islam and the economy in Indonesia.

Description

An influential social-cultural anthropologist and reader of the global, Arjun Appadurai is Goddard Professor of Media, Culture and Communication at New York University. He has held prominent positions at many major research universities, having served most recently as Senior Advisor for Global Initiatives as well as the Provost for Academic Affairs at The New School, New York City. Previously, he held professorial chairs at Yale University, the University of Chicago, and the University of Pennsylvania, and visiting appointments at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (Paris), the University of Michigan, the University of Iowa, and Columbia University. Known for theorizing the “scapes” of global cultural flows, he has authored numerous books and scholarly articles including Fear of Small Numbers: An Essay on the Geography of Anger (2006, Duke University Press) and Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization, (1996, University of Minnesota Press; 1997, Oxford University Press, Delhi).

Appadurai is one of the founding editors, along with Carol A. Breckenridge, of the award-winning journal Public Culture. He is also founder and President of PUKAR (Partners for Urban Knowledge Action and Research), a non-profit organization based in and oriented to the city of Mumbai, and has served as a consultant or advisor to a wide range of public and private organizations, among them The Ford and Rockefeller Foundations; UNESCO; UNDP; and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Description

Information is not yet available.

Description

Abstract:
The lecture will begin with a brief overview of United States – Ceylon(Sri Lanka) relations since their inception in the nineteenth century.As the period since Ceylon’s(Sri Lanka’s) independence in 1948 to 1977 is much written about, attention will be on developments post-1977 when arguably U.S.- Sri Lanka relations were stepped up to a point not reached before.The focus will be on the role of the U.S. in the internal conflict(i.e., between the State and the Liberation Tigers of Thamil Eelam) in Sri Lanka and prospects for future U.S- Sri Lanka relations with the projected rise of China and India in the coming years and amidst the emerging power realignments in Asia in general.

Speaker Bio:
Tissa Jayatilaka has served as the Executive Director of the bi-national United States – Sri Lanka Fulbright Commission(US-SLFC) since 1989. The US-SLFC, established in 1952, administers the two-way education exchange programme between the two countries with a view to promoting mutual understanding between Americans and Sri Lankans.

Jayatilaka has taught English and American Literature at several Sri Lankan universities since 1975 and is currently attached to the University of Sri Jayewardenepura, Nugegoda, Sri Lanka as a Visiting Lecturer in English and American Literature. His interests include international relations, politics, literature and sports. He has been a keen student of U.S. – Sri Lankan relations since 1977 when he became the Director of the American Cultural and Information Centre, Kandy, Sri Lanka. Subsequent to several years of post-graduate study in the United States(at Smith College, Northampton, Massachusetts and at Wake Forest University, North Carolina) , he returned to Sri Lanka and worked for five years(1984 to 1989) as Special Assistant to the Director of the 26-member inter-governmental organisation The Colombo Plan for Economic and Social Development in the Asia Pacific of which Canada was until recently a member.

Jayatilaka is married to the former Lilani Appaduari, one time lecturer in English at the University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka, and a teacher of English at Ladies’ College, a leading Girls’ Secondary School in Colombo, Sri Lanka. They have a daughter, Lara, aged 21 and make their home in Rajagiriya, Sri Lanka.

Description

The image we have of the Buddha – as a kṣatriya Aryan prince who renounces wealth and power to follow the Aryan path of renunciation and who founds a new religion which is a reaction to and reformulation of Vedic and Upaniṣadic teachings – is a later Aryanization of his life, begun by Aśvaghoṣa in his Buddhacarita biography and by the author of the Lalitavistara biography, some five hundred years after his passing. This view is still current among many modern academics. By examining the earliest biographical sources of the Buddha’s life and lineage we can learn several important facts about his heritage and philosophy: the Buddha’s renunciant tradition did not stem from Vedism, but from the native religious practices of the authocthonous tribes. The Sakya tribes were a Muṇḍan speaking aboriginal group who lived on the fringes of Aryan India and practiced a religious which was uniquely non-Aryan. Their belief in reincarnation and karmic retribution, for example, is indigenous to the native tribes and adopted from them into the Aryan belief system, not the other way around. The Buddha also never called himself a kṣatriya and in fact did not believe in caste; his so-called kṣatriya status is problematized and shown to be assigned by the Aryan hegemony who assimilated and conquered the tribes, calling the ones who helped them kṣatriyas and the ones who opposed them śūdras or dāsas. By the Buddha’s time there was significant assimilation and miscegenation between the local Muṇḍan and immigrating Aryan ethnic groups, and the Buddha’s position between the two was a primary factor in early Buddhism’s success.
__

Bryan Levman is a PhD student in the Department of Religion, Buddhist Studies at the University of Toronto. His principal research interest is the language of the earliest Buddhist tradition; what it is and how it was understood by native speakers and by later interpreters. In studying the earliest Buddhist writings he discovered that many of the commonly accepted “facts” of the Buddha’s biography and teachings were not supported by the textual sources, but appeared to be re-constructions by his biographers, assimilating the movement to the dominant Aryan hegemony, centuries after his passing. Hence the genesis of this talk.

Description

The Tuol Sleng Genocide Museum in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, was established on the site of of S-21, a former Khmer Rouge security prison where more than 14 000 prisoners were interrogated prior to their execution in the nearby killing fields of Cheoung Ek. This illustrated presentation will look at the evolution of the Tuol Sleng Museum, from the immediate post-Khmer Rouge period (1979-1981), whose permanent exhibition is informed by the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, to the present day, where recent exhibitions focus on more individuating portraits of victims and perpetrators, and on notions of justice, particularly as they relate to The Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (ECCC), the current trials of senior Khmer Rouge leaders. A detailed look at the content and form of the permanent and temporary exhibitions at S-21 will reveal how the representational legacies of the Holocaust and the pursuit of accountability are displayed and expressed.
—
Carla Shapiro is an Asian Institute Research Fellow at the Munk School of Global Affairs, University of Toronto. She received her PhD in Media and Cultural Studies from The University of Sussex and her Master of Museum Studies from the University of Toronto. While locating her SSHRC-supported research primarily in the field of Holocaust Studies, her writings reflect an interest in genocide, human rights and social justice and their nexus in contemporary culture. Of particular interest is the efficacy of museum, gallery and community-space exhibitions as points of embarkation for historical learning and commemorative practices. She is also an independent curator whose praxis involves artistic and museological approaches to visualizing the experiences of survivors of gross human rights abuses.