Description

This paper explores the connections between sectarian identity and colonial policy in Vietnam. During the 1920s and 1930s, intellectuals
advancing a unitary, orthodox vision of Vietnamese religion found common cause with colonial officials attracted by its conservative and
hierarchical message. The spread of this understanding of Vietnamese civilization, through state-sponsored cultural projects and curricula as well as religious writings, intensified sectarian tensions and complicated the relationship between Catholics and the colonial state. The paper thus argues that colonial policy had considerable implications for post-colonial sectarian relations in Vietnam, particularly the understanding of Catholics as culturally and politically exterior to Vietnamese nationhood.

Charles Keith is an assistant professor of Southeast Asian history at Michigan State University. He received his PhD from Yale University in 2008. He has published articles in the Journal of Vietnamese Studies and Vingtième Siècle, and he is currently working on a book manuscript entitled “Catholic Vietnam: A Church from Empire to Nation, 1862-1954.”

Description

Mamta Mishra has been the Executive Director of World Literacy Canada (WLC) for 21 years. She founded the India office 17 years ago and has “designed a programming model that actually works”. She is also the founder/curator of the Kama Reading Series now in its 18th year — Kama is WLC’s main fundraising/public awareness initiative.

During her presentation she will speak about WLC and its model and role of NGOs in development. She will also reflect on how the literacy movement in Canada and South Asia are linked by WLC and on her journey of bridging the two worlds through the literacy movement.

World Literacy of Canada (http://www.worldlit.ca) is a non-profit voluntary organization that promotes international development and social justice. World Literacy of Canada supports community-based programs that emphasize adult literacy and non-formal education for both children and adults.

Description

the Asian Institute’s Chu program piloted a field school delegation to Taiwan in December 2009. The students, which comprised both ASI and other A&S students, travelled to Taiwan for a week, during which time they met with and interviewed officials in government (including Taiwan’s former Premier), leaders in industry and academia, as well as social movement / NGO activists. The students also prepared papers in advance of their trip, which they presented “seminar style” to the Taiwan Ministry of Foreign Affairs and at the National Taiwan University and National Chengchi University.

In short, these students experienced a truly global moment. The trip was such a great success that the field school will be continued in the coming years.

The Field School Seminar is a forum for our students to present their work, their thoughts on Taiwan and the Asia region more generally. They will also reflect on the importance of travel and field work.

The program will be as follows:

1. WELCOME

Professor Janice Stein, Director, Munk Centre
Professor Ito Peng, Vice-Dean, Faculty of Arts and Science
Professor Joseph Wong, Director, Asian Institute

2. THE FIELD SCHOOL

Remi Kanji
Weronika Czapla
Arnaud Barry Camu

3. PANEL: POSITIONING GLOBAL TAIWAN

Remi Kanji, Taiwanese National Identity as Portrayed in Popular Culture: A Study of Film Cape No. 7
Discussant, Victoria Wang

Sherry Lu, Taiwanese Identity: From Ethno-nationalism to Civic Nationalism Discussant, Reza Mirza

Mohan Pandit, Preserving Taiwan’s Political Status
Discussant, Arnaud Barry Camu

Weronika Czapla, Challenges and Prospects of the Green Movement in the Republic of China
Discussant, Raha Jahani

Wendy Pan, Taiwanese SMEs: Policies for Survival, Growth and Prosperity
Discussant, Mannu Chowdhury

4. DISCUSSION AND Q&A

Description

In this presentation I will talk about the discourse of “good” leaders, which is discussed at the village level in the post-collective period or the age of self governance in contemporary Vietnam. We can find in the discourse the process of negotiation between paternalism and egalitarian ethics, which make up the collectivity of the village as a locus of “good governance”. Life stories of local cadres of a village in Ha Tinh province, Central Vietnam will be intensively analyzed.

Atsufumi KATO is a visiting researcher at the Department of Anthropology, University of Toronto (from Jan 2010 to Aug 2010). He is a research fellow of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science at Nanzan University in Japan. He has a Ph. D. in Human Sciences from Osaka University where he wrote a dissertation entitled Ethnography of Governance and Morality: Villagers of the Central Vietnam in the Age of Self-Governance (2009, in Japanese). His research projects focus on Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR), Rotating Saving and Credit Associations (ROSCAs), mobilization, the ideology of participatory democracy and life histories of local cadres in the Vietnamese villages.

Description

This paper explores the interactions between migrant non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and the different layers of the Chinese state. The emergence of migrant NGOs suggests the state’s growing inability, and to an extent unwillingness, at the local level to address the numerous challenges migrant workers face. The paper analyzes migrant NGOs in Beijing and Shanghai and their relationship with the central, municipal, district, street neighborhood committee and the residents’ committee. Moreover, the notion of a corporatist Chinese state is reconceptualized. The paper shows that while the local state is indeed corporatist, the varying relationships with NGOs suggests that a) studying migrant NGOs vis-à-vis the central and local states unveils a picture of a diverse Chines, state, and b) the varying forms of relationship between NGOs and the different levels of the state can be beneficial for the development of NGOs. By examining the local levels of the state and their engagement with migrant NGOs, it becomes clear that the local state is a significant stakeholder in the future development of China’s NGOs.

Jennifer Hsu is a Visiting Scholar at the Asian Institute where she is researching on the role of the local corporatist Chinese state in the development of domestic NGOs. She is currently completing a co-authored book titled “HIV/AIDS in China” (Routledge, 2010). She is also the co-editor of “China in an Era of Transition: Understanding Contemporary State and Society Actors” (Palgrave, 2009).

Description

Families have their genealogies and favorite stories; countries have their histories. What history succeeds better for a country than the one capable of molding its citizens into a family? In India, that has been the particular work of a narrative called “the bhakti movement” — bhakti andolan in Hindi. Here bhakti — the religion of the heart, of song and common participation — is seen as a force of history, something like the contagion of North America’s Great Awakenings but spanning a millennium. It formed the religious bedrock that would ultimately, in the 20th century, make the nation possible. Or so we have been taught. This lecture will explore the historical contingencies that actually created this received —and largely Hindu — common sense.

John Stratton Hawley—more informally, Jack—is Professor of Religion at Barnard College, Columbia University. He is the author or editor of nineteen books and is currently working on the twentieth. Several of these focus especially on the worship of Radha and Krishna: At Play with Krishna; Krishna, the Butter Thief; Sur Das: Poet, Singer, Saint; The Divine Consort. Others take a broader view, exploring themes in Hindu poetry and hagiography and in modern Hindu religion: Songs of the Saints of India, Three Bhakti Voices, and (with Vasudha Narayanan) The Life of Hinduism. Several edited volumes stretch beyond South Asia and are comparative—one on exemplary religious persons (Saints and Virtues), one on Fundamentalism and Gender, and a recent book edited with Kimberley Patton called Holy Tears: Weeping in the Religious Imagination.

Jack Hawley has served as director of Columbia’s Southern Asian Institute and has frequently chaired the Religion Department at Barnard College. He has received multiple awards from National Endowment for the Humanities, the Smithsonian Institution, and the American Institute of Indian Studies. He has been a Guggenheim Fellow.

His most recent publications are a posthumously edited collection of essays by Dennis Hudson, Krishna’s Mandala: Bhagavata Religion and Beyond (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2009) and The Memory of Love: Surdas Sings to Krishna (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009).

Description

Speakers:

Ho-fung Hung, Department of Sociology, University of Indiana and editor of China and the Transformation of Global Capitalism (2009) and author of ‘America’s Head Servant? The PRC’s Dilemma in the Global Crisis,’ New Left Review (2009) and ‘The Rise of China and the Global
Overaccumulation Crisis,’ Review of International Political Economy (2008).

R. Taggart Murphy, Graduate School of Business Sciences, University of Tsukuba, Japan, and author of Japan’s Policy Trap (2002) and the The Weight of the Yen (1996), and editor of Japan Focus.

Johanna Brenner, Department of Sociology, Portland State University, and author of Women and the Politics of Class (2000) and Rethinking the Political: Women, Resistance, and the State (1995).

Sam Gindin, Department of Political Science, York University, and author of Global Capitalism and American Empire (2004) and The Canadian Auto Workers (1995).

Description

In 2005, the government of the Republic of Korea established the Truth and Reconciliation Commission in an effort to address the silences embedded within Korean society for the past sixty years. The commission became a project that would eventually encompass anti-Japanese movements from the colonial period to the mass violence from 1945 through the Korean War and the authoritarian regimes. Professor Dong-choon Kim, a former commissioner of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, will give his reflections upon the work achieved and limitations encountered by the commission during his tenure, and the consequences of the Commission’s work on the current socio-political landscape. What kind of legal and social limitations surrounded the beginning of the commission? Was this commission able to break the structuralized silences within Korean society? What kind of “truth” was the commission able to attain? And what kind of obstacles has the commission had to overcome in order to continue its work?

***

Dong-Choon Kim is Associate Professor of Sociology at Sung Kong Hoe University in Seoul, Korea, and formerly served as a Standing Commissioner of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission, Republic of Korea.

Professor Kim received his PhD in Sociology from Seoul National University in 1993. The main areas of Professor Kim’s research have been historical sociology of Korean politics, working class formation, and the Korean War. As an activist, Professor Kim has been at the center of progressive academic movements since the 1980s. Since 1999 he has been writing about Korean War Massacres and working with victims’ families. In 2004, Hankyoreh, South Korea’s progressive newspaper, nominated him as one of “100 people who will lead Korean society.” He was also awarded the 20th DanJe Prize in 2005 for his academic achievements and activism.

His books include Social Movements in 1960s Korea (1991), A Study of Korea’s Working Class (1995), Shadow of Modernity (2000), War and Society (2000), Engine of America-Market and War (2004). War and Society has been translated into German, Japanese, and English (The English language title is The Unending Korean War.)

Description

Information is not yet available.

Description

John Chan (University of Toronto Trinity College alumnus, 1986), an authority on best business practices in China, will share insights with students interested in working or setting up businesses in China. With 16 years of corporate experience in Mainland China and the region, he will share his expertise and open the floor to questions from students who want to learn more about Chinese business practices.

Chan has more than 22 years of experience in the marketing, sales and business development fields and is the author of: “China Streetsmart – What You MUST Know to Be Effective and Profitable in China.” The book was ranked #1 among more than 2200 China business books being sold online and remained in the top 1% of all books sold on Amazon for several years. He has appeared in the media on CNN, BBC, Fox, CNBC and Bloomberg to name but a few and has addressed thousands of businesspeople in more than 30 cities around the globe on China leadership issues and best business practices.

He began his career with Exxon’s retail marketing division overseas but since entering China 16 years ago has run multinational brands such as Foster’s and Beck’s beer which invested hundreds of millions of USD in the China market. Prior to publishing China Streetsmart. He was a director for Asia Online the largest ISP in Asia Pacific. He now lives in Shanghai and runs a boutique management consultancy firm helping foreign executives develop practical effective strategies based on the best business practices of foreign companies operating in China. He is also the Vice Chairman of the Canadian Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai and the Yangzi River Delta Region, and special advisor to the United Nations.

Description

This is a session to launch our film conference, “Taiwan Cinema Yesterday and Today”. Media and Industry will be provided with Passes. The public will be given invitations for tickets for the Opening Night Gala (screening and opening night party) and for film screenings. A light dim sum lunch follows.

Description

9:15–10:00 Opening Remarks
Professor Jack Veugelers, Acting Chair, Department of Sociology, University of Toronto; Ms. Maureen Siu, Director, Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office (Canada); Professor Joseph Wong, Director, Asian Institute, University of Toronto; Ms. Carole Moore, Chief Librarian, University of Toronto

10:00–10:30 Conceptual and Methodological Issues
“Conceptual and Measurement Issues of Return Migration” Eric Fong (Professor, Department of Sociology, University of Toronto)

10:30–11:00 Return Migration- Hong Kong Perspective (1)
“Moving the Goal Post: Middle Class Returnees Encountering Post-1997 Hong Kong and a Growing Chinese Economy” Tai Lok Lui, (Professor, Department of Sociology, HKU)

11:00–11:30 Return Migration – Canadian Perspective (1)
“Return Migration from Canada to Hong Kong: Canada’s Competitive Advantage in Asia?” Terry Wu (Professor and Director, Management Development Centre, Faculty of Business and Information Technology, University of Ontario Institute of Technology)

11:30–12:00 Book Launch
Hong Kong Movers and Stayers: Narratives of Family Migration, by Janet Salaff, Arent Greve, and Siu-Lun Wong (University of Illinois Press)

12:00–1:00 Lunch

1:00–2:00 Return Migration- Hong Kong Perspective (2)
“Hong Kong Return Migrants: What is Newsworthy about Them” Clement So (Director and Professor, School of Communication and Journalism, Chinese University of Hong Kong); “Strangers at Home: Return Migrants in Hong Kong”. Kwok Bun Chan (Chair Professor, Department of Sociology, Baptist University)

2:00–3:00 Return Migration – Canadian Perspective (2)
“Return Migration to Asia: The Role of Families, Social Networks, and Identity, Literature Review and application.” Janet Salaff (Emeritus Professor, Department of Sociology, University of Toronto) and Arent Greve (dr. oecon. Professor in Organization Theory, Department of Strategy and Management The Norwegian School of Economics and Business Administration); “From Hong Kong to Canada and Back Again: Examining the Gendered Experiences of Chinese Return Migrants” Guida Man (Assistant Professor, School of Social Sciences, York University) and Audrey Kobayashi (Professor, Department of Geography, Queen’s University)

3:00–3:15 Break

3:15–4:15 Return Migration – Canada-Mainland China-Hong Kong Link
“Transitional Return Migration via Hong Kong by Overseas Chinese Education Elite”. John Ma (Associate Professor and Director, Center for Demography and Sustainable Development, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology); “A Canada-US Comparison of Highly-Skilled Chinese and Indian Return Migration.” Lucia Lo (Associate Professor, Department of Geography, York University) and Wei Li (Associate Professor, Department of Geography, Arizona State University)

4:15–5:15 Panel Discussion
Stephen Lam (Director, Immigrant services and Community Programs, Catholic Community Services of York Region); Stephen Ma (Program Director, Centre for Information & Community Services of Ontario; John Man (Vice President, Commercial Finances Services and Managing Director, Asian Banking, Ontario, RBC Royal Bank); Nicole Wong (Executive Director, Across Hub)

5:15-5:30 Concluding Remarks (David Ley, Professor, Department of Geography, University of British Columbia)

Description

Traditionally, energy security has been conceptualised as availability of sufficient and reliable supplies at affordable prices. This definition is
too narrow in its scope, as it considers energy security from importers’ perspectives, and outdated, as it disregards the increasingly important
environmental concerns. Moreover, most studies on energy security have focussed on availability of oil and have largely disregarded other energy sources. By analysing recent Asian energy importing and exporting governments’ objectives, policies and strategies, the complex relations between energy security and environmental concerns, and international energy trends and challenges, this paper will offer a correction to the narrow definition of energy security.

The basic assumption is that energy security has a different meaning in different countries based on their geographic location, their resource
endowment, their strategic, economic and environmental conditions and other factors. For example, importing governments’ energy policies are driven by the need to secure energy supplies while faced with dwindling fossil fuel reserves which, environmental considerations notwithstanding, will continue to be burnt for many years; and deliver clean, affordable energy to combat climate change. For exporting governments, and particularly governments of countries that rely on energy exports for much of their export earnings, security of energy production facilities and transportation networks against disruption and security of demand in major importing countries is a primary concern. By focusing on the Asia-Pacific region, and particularly on Australia, China, Japan, and Indonesia, the aim of this paper is to develop a context-dependant theoretical corrective to the oil importer-specific perspective on energy security. The context-specific energy security conceptualisation developed in this paper may provide for a useful energy policy framework for policy-makers in both energy exporting and importing countries in the Asia-Pacific region and beyond.

Dr Vlado Vivoda is Research Fellow at the Centre for International Risk, School of Communication, International Studies and Languages, University of South Australia, Adelaide, Australia. He teaches undergraduate courses in International Relations and International Political Economy. In 2008 he published a book on political bargaining in the contemporary oil industry. He currently specialises on energy security and mining regulation for foreign investment in the Asia-Pacific region. He has published on energy and mining-related issues in journals including Energy Policy, New Political Economy, International Journal of Global Energy Issues, Minerals & Energy and The Australian Journal of International Affairs.

Description

An evening with Ali Eteraz, author of “Children of Dust”: an elegant memoir revealing Islamic fundamentalism and madrassa life in rural Pakistan, the culture shock of moving to the U.S., and a journey of reconciliation to the modern Middle East. Join us for an engaging discussion about the conflict between religious, national and cultural identity of South Asians immigrating to the West in the post 9/11 era.

Description

This presentation draws from my doctoral research on the novels of E. M. Forster, Raja Rao and Arundhati Roy. India, the authors suggest, is essentially a religious society. It is not necessarily a Hindu society, but one that disciplines all religions to adapt to the customs of caste hierarchy and the ideals of Vedantic metaphysics. While such characteristics have been propagated before by orientalists of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the cultural visions of Forster, Rao and Roy are uniquely of the twentieth-century because they are doubly inscribed with critiques of reason, history, nationalism and other grand narratives of modernity. This presentation will focus on the role of E. M. Forster?s A Passage to India (and the episode of the Gokul Ashtami festival in particular) as a foundational event in the literary history of Indianness within global Anglophone writing. I will deconstruct Forster?s portrayal of the festival for signs of caste order and counter-modernity, and also briefly discuss how this idea of Indianness is inherited and contested by both Rao and Roy. Though this presentation grounds itself within the field of literary studies, I anticipate a larger conversation on how these fictions of Indianness distinguish themselves from the phenomena of Hindutva, communalism, orientalism, post/modernism and other contemporary engagements with religion and politics.

Prasad Bidaye is a doctoral candidate in the Department of English and completing his Ph.D. In collaboration with the Centre for South Asian Studies.

Description

Information is not yet available.

Description

What is the relationship between sovereignty, often located on the conjuncture of power and freedom, and revolution, the violent assertion of sovereignty often imagined as the recuperation of a lost freedom? This paper asks about the unsettled relationship between sovereignty and revolution that circulated between the elites and non-elites during the Philippine Revolution (1896-1902). Given the recent surge of scholarly interest in the question of sovereignty in the making of Western modernity, can an inquiry into the history of the Philippine Revolution contribute to our comparative understanding of this topic? In particular, were there ways by which the Filipino revolution, especially in its vernacular articulation, opened up alternative notions of sovereignty and other ways of experiencing freedom distinct from imperial notions of self-determination and absolute mastery?

Vicente L. Rafael is professor of history at the University of Washington. He is the author of several works on the history and political culture of the Philippines, including “The Promise of the Foreign” (2005), “White Love and Other Events in Filipino History” (2000) and “Contracting Colonialism” (1993).

Description

**Tickets for all screenings including opening night can be purchased 30 minutes before start time at the venue box office.**

Orz Boyz (2008) | Directed by Yang Ya-Che | 110 min.

Orz denotes an East Asian emoticon suggesting amazement. And it’s quite likely that the two young boy protagonists of Orz Boys will amaze and delight. They are dubbed Liar No.1 and Liar No.2 by their teachers after they’re caught scamming their classmates with a story of a ghostly Martian lurking under the school building. No.1 seems to have a mute, mentally disturbed, homeless father who lives at the end of a pier, while No.2 is brought up by his alternately threatening and indulgent though always wildly superstitious Grandmother.

The film divides into three parts: the first depicts the boys’ flights of fancy at school (there’s a bronze statue in the courtyard which may or may not come to life), and a schoolboy crush on classmate Lin, who responds with unexpected grace to their immature taunting. Part two is a tale involving an audience of animated characters, loosely based on the Pied Piper of Hamelin. The third section unfolds the boys’ myth of a hyperspace portal located at a water park, whose high price of admission forces them to struggle to earn extra money on the streets.

Hyperspace may in fact be adulthood, and it is director Yang Ya-che’s considerable achievement in this, his first film, to evoke the emotionally freighted pathways between childhood and growing up in ways that are both Rabelaisianly playful and hauntingly real.
— Shelly Kraicer

ORZ BOYZ is distributed by 1 Production Film Co.

Description

**Tickets for all screenings including opening night can be purchased 30 minutes before start time at the venue box office.**

City of Sadness (1989) | Hou Hsaio-hsien | 160 min.

I didn’t make A City of Sadness because I purposely wanted to open up old wounds’...but because I know that we have to face ourselves and our history if we are ever to understand who we are and where we’re going.” – Hou Hsiao-Hsien
“A family epic as expansive as The Godfather” (Godfrey Cheshire, Film Comment), the magnificent A City of Sadness is perhaps the finest film of Taiwan’s Hou Hsiao-Hsien and a breakthrough both politically and popularly for the New Cinema when it was released. Winner of the Golden Lion at Venice in 1989, the film also gave Taiwanese films international currency it had never had before. Hou’s spans the four tumultuous years from 1945 and the Japanese surrender and 1949, when Chiang Kai Shek set up the Nationalist government on the island after fall of the mainland to the Communists. Hou narrates this violent and complex period through the perspective of one family: aging widower Lin, his four sons and their wives. The film treated a subject long excluded from any representation: the brutal repression of the Taiwanese by the Nationalist Chinese. It was only the international prestige A City of Sadness achieved was it shown in Taiwan.

Awards: 1989 Golden Horse Award, Best Actor (Sung Young Chen), Best Director (Hsiao-hsien Hou), Best Editing, and Best Film; 1989 Venice Film Festival, Golden Lion Award and UNESCO Award; 1990 Political Film Society, USA, Special Award; 1991 Kinema Junpo Award, Best Foreign Language Film; and 1991 Mainichi Film Concours, Best Foreign Language Film

Screening is following by a free lecture,

3:40 – 4:30 LECTURE
“Hou Hsiao-hsien and CITY OF SADNESS as Taiwan’s Cultural Ambassadors” Professor James Udden (Film Studies, Gettysburg College in Pennsylvania)

CITY OF SADNESS is distibuted by Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA)

Description

– Free symposium is preceded by free lecture

3:40 – 4:30 LECTURE
Hou Hsiao-hsien and CITY OF SADNESS as Taiwan’s Cultural Ambassadors Professor James Udden (Film Studies, Gettysburg College in Pennsylvania)

JAMES UDDEN is Associate Professor of film studies at Gettysburg College, Pennsylvania. He has lived and researched in Taiwan resulting in his book, No Man an Island: The Cinema of Hou Hsiao-hsien (Hong Kong University Press, 2009), the first English-language book on the filmmaker in English. He has also published widely on Asian cinema in various journals and anthologies, including two in separate upcoming volumes on Chinese cinema to be published by BFI and Blackwell press. His current book project concerns how Iranian cinema managed to penetrate the international film festival circuit.

4:30 – 5:00 BREAK

5:00 – 7:00 SYMPOSIUM | Contemporary Taiwan Cinema

Professor Lee Carruthers (Cinema and Media Studies, University of Calgary)
Mr. Shelly Kraicer (Curator, film programmer, and freelance film critic; Beijing based)
Professor Bart Testa (Cinema Studies Institute, University of Toronto)

LEE CARRUTHERS completed her doctoral degree at the University of Chicago in 2008 and is now Assistant Professor of Film Studies at the University of Calgary (AB, Canada). Her teaching focuses on film theory, American cinema and the European art cinema; she has published and presented work on film theory, film noir, and contemporary directors such as François Ozon, Steven Soderbergh and Tsai Ming-liang. Carruthers’ current book project is called Doing Time: Timeliness and Temporal Rhetorics in Contemporary Cinema; informed by philosophical hermeneutics, this study considers the rich experiences of temporality that contemporary film generates for viewers. Her ongoing research also pursues questions related to time and ambiguity in the writings of André Bazin as well as constructions of space in the cinema of Mike Leigh.

SHELLY KRAICER is a Beijing-based writer, critic, and film curator. Born in Toronto, Canada, and educated at Yale University, he has written film criticism in Cinema Scope, Positions, Cineaste, the Village Voice, and
Screen International. Since 2007, he has been a programmer of East Asian films for the Vancouver International Film Festival, and has consulted for the Venice, Udine, Dubai, and Rotterdam International Film Festivals.

BART TESTA is senior lecturer at the Cinema Studies Institute, Innis College, University of Toronto. His teaching includes courses on Chinese cinemas, European art films, urbanism and film, avant-garde cinema, Science Fiction movies and other popular film genres. He has authored two books on experimental films, Back and Forth: Early Cinema and the Avant-Garde (1993) and Spirit in the Landscape (1989) and edited an anthology on Pier Paolo Pasolini, as well as journal articles and anthologized essays.

Description

Information is not yet available.

Description

In this paper, I draw on archival documents to consider the “birth of the clinic” in the U.S. occupied Philippines, with the clinic here being understood as a puericulture centres (i.e. centres for the care of young children) and their personnel. Foucault’s (1994) account of the birth of the clinic focuses on the development of la clinique, understood both as clinical medicine and teaching hospital, the shared characteristic of each of which is the examination and discussion of actual cases. He describes the birth of practices, and the birth of new ways of seeing; both lead to constructing something previously invisible as visible. In English, however, clinic has an additional definition, as a facility for diagnosis and treating outpatients. Here I consider the ways that the birth of the outpatient clinic led to a form of “visibility” for Filipino families, as state knowledge and surveillance of family practices increased. But the focus on clinics, and social medicine, could also be seen as a critique, sometimes explicit and sometimes implicit, of the focus of American biomedicine on scientific research and contagious disease. In addition, I consider the ways that initiatives addressing maternal and child health (MCH) in local puericulture clinics became a mechanism for the demographic inscription of Filipinos into the colonial and protonational state, one which was nonetheless a contested extension of state surveillance and power into the intimate politics of family life. The Philippines is compared to and contextualized within a rich, recent literature on interventions into domestic life, especially through maternal and child health, in European and American national and colonial settings (Boddy 1998, 2007; Briggs 2005; Hunt 1999; Hattori 2004; Jones 2002; Jolly 1998b; Manderson 1998; Turrittin 2002). This essay thus joins a recent set of essays (Go and Foster 2005) which argue that scholars need to analyze the U.S. colonial state in the Philippines from a global perspective, not to affirm or deny whether the U.S. colonial occupation was more benign than others (the well-worn “exceptionalist” argument), but rather “to appropriate critically the global perspective that exceptionalist reasoning necessarily entails” (Go 2005:3).

Bonnie McElhinny is Director of the Women and Gender Studies Institute, and Associate Professor of Anthropology and Women and Gender Studies at the University of Toronto. Her SSHRC-funded research focuses on historical and contemporary investigations of North American interventions into Filipino health care and childcare practices, and reactions and resistance to these. Her current work includes an investigation into early 20th century attempts to address high infant mortality rates in the Philippines during the American colonial occupation, as a case study in imperial attempts to restructure affect and intimacy, and the ways debates about children were used as a terrain for imperial and nationalist arguments. McElhinny is also the founding co-editor of the journal Gender and Language, and has recently written a number of theoretical papers on the role of language in an era of globalization, corporatization and neoliberalization. Recent and representative publications on these topics include: (1) Words, Worlds, Material Girls: Language and Gender in a Global Economy (2007); (2) “’Kissing a Baby is Not At All Good For Him’: Infant Mortality, Medicine and Colonial Modernity in the U.S.-Occupied Philippines” American Anthropologist (2005); (3) “Prétextes de L’Empire Américain aux Philippines: Recontextualisation des Histoires de la Médecine Impériale” Anthropologie et Sociétés; (2007); (4) Bonnie McElhinny, Shirley Yeung, Valerie Damasco, Angela DeOcampo, Monina Febria, Christianne Collantes, and Jason Salonga “Talk about Luck”: Coherence, Contingency, Character and Class in the Life Stories of Filipino Canadians in Toronto. Language and Asia-Pacific Americans, edited by Adrienne Lo and Angela Reyes. Oxford University Press (2009); and (5) Producing the A-1 Baby: Puericulture Centres and the Birth of the Clinic in the U.S. Occupied Philippines 1906-1946. Philippine Studies Special Issue on Public Health in the Twentieth Century Philippines.

Description

This paper will explore a spatial configuration that constitutes an enduring part of the urban imaginary of the city of London, one that makes its way into cinematic renderings of the city. My paper operates from the supposition articulated by Ben Highmore among others that the imaginary of a city is intensely historical, always haunted by its past and as such, can only be analyzed through recourse to the past.

Drawing from the work of scholars such as Frank Mort, John Orr and Murray Fraser, I argue that a dichotomous understanding of city space, that between “high” London, with all of its glamour and iconicity and “low” London, its gritty and dilapidated counterpart, is a spatial division with a long history that reaches back to the Victorian era, which is reconfigured within the context of the end of empire and the subsequent dawn of London as post-imperial city. More specifically, I will explore what Orr refers to as the ?neo Dickensian art of the city? in relationship to the representation of space in the film My Beautiful Laundrette (1984),one of two cinematic collaborations between writer Hanif Kureishi and filmmaker Stephen Frears that revolves around a diasporic Pakistani family living in London during the height of Thatcher’s reign. While my talk will focus on a close analysis of this film, I will make reference to films that predate My Beautiful Laundrette as well as those that come after it,in order to demonstrate how this particular legacy of “high” and “low” London remains part of the fabric of the city in its cinematic guise.

Malini Guha has recently been awarded her PhD from the University of Warwick, from the department of Film and Television Studies. Her dissertation is about the representation of London and Paris as post-imperial, cinematic cities. She has recently published on the subject of Black British cinema, including an interview with veteran Black actor Earl Cameron and an article about the trope of the cinematic street in a number of films that concern post-imperial Caribbean migration and settlement in London. Both can be found in recent editions of the Journal of British Cinema and Television.

Description

We want to give a chance for high profile leaders, academics, and inspirational figures to contribute their insights and knowledge to the academic community, general public and the new generation of Asian diaspora. Our goal is to give a forum for them to share their experiences and struggles, as well as academic or personal insights towards issues related to the Asians living in Canada and beyond. Not only will our variety of speakers consist of members of the Asian diaspora community, but will also comprise of scholars of non-Asian descent who will provide their expertise regarding issues related to the intensively interesting range of Asian populations living around the globe.

9:30AM Opening Address: Senator Vivienne Poy (108N)
9:45AM Keynote Address: Professor Ato Quayson (108N)

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10:10AM – 12:00PM Arrival and Integration: Diaspora Settlements (108N)
-Professor Donald Rickerd, York University, Asian Institute, University of Toronto
-Kenichiro (Ken) Noma, National Association of Japanese Canadians, “The Japanese Canadian Internment and its impact on the Future of the Japanese Canadian Community”
-Professor Ann Kim, York University
-Professor Shuguang Wang, Ryerson University, “Contemporary Asian Immigrants in Canada”
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10:10AM – 12:00PM Engagement and Expression: Diaspora In Transition (208N)
-Councillor Chin Lee
-Professor Shaun Tanaka, University of Toronto, Scarborough Campus, “Traditional Sushi Pizza: The Constructed Image of Japanese Culinary”
-Professor Yunxiang Gao, Ryerson University, “Soo Yong: Hollywood Star and Cosmopolitan of the Asian Diaspora”

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12:00PM – 12:40PM Lunch

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12:40PM – 2:30PM Faith, Identity and Education: Diaspora Dialogues (108N)
-Professor Vincent Shen, East Asian Studies Chair, University of Toronto, “Reflections on the Meaning of Chinese Diaspora”
-Professor Golam Dastagir, Visiting Scholar, Asian Institute, “Intercultural Understanding for Asian Youth and Shared Responsibilities”
-Professor Qiang Zha, York University, “A Chinese Model of the University: A Fantasy or a Reality?”
-Professor Victor Li, University of Toronto, “Diasporas within Diaspora, Identities within Identity”
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12:40PM – 2:30PM Politics and Society: Diaspora Voices (208N)
-Olivia Chow, Member of Parliament
-Professor Victor Falkenheim, University of Toronto, “Prospects for Reform in 21st Century China”
-Dr. Joseph Wong, Association for Learning and Preserving of the History of World War II in Asia (ALPHA)

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2:40PM – 4:00PM Entrepreneurship, Philanthropy and Cultural Exchange: Diaspora Leaders (108N)
-Aditya Jha, Philanthropist and Entrepreneur
-Albert Wong, President, AKW Global Enterprises, “Being Canadian – the experience of an immigrant representing Canada to the world”
-Ms. Heather Keung, Artistic Director, Toronto Reel Asian International Film Festival, “Significance/importance of Cinema to Asian Diaspora and contemporary culture”
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2:40PM – 4:00PM Tibet and Diaspora: Hosted by the Tibetan-Chinese Youth Dialogue Project (208N)
-Dasay WangKhang Silva, President, Canada Tibet Committee (Toronto Chapter)
-Norbu Tsering, President, Canadian Tibetan Association of Ontario
-Jigme Tenzing Dekyikhangsar, Executive, Tibetan & Chinese Youth Dialogue

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Description

Based on his long personal experience of Northeast Asia, as well as his unusual position as Ambassador to two of world’s most different societies, Ted Lipman will reflect on where North and South Korea are today, their differences and similarities, and what their future holds. He will be speaking at the Munk Center fresh from his most recent trip to Pyongyang, and will share his impressions of the current state of affairs there, as well as the changes he’s observed over the years. He will also comment on the growing partnership between Canada and South Korea (both of which are hosting G20 Summits this year), and Canada’s role in international efforts to achieve peace and security on the Korean peninsula.

Ambassador Lipman has had an eye on the Korean peninsula since his days as a student at Peking University in the 1970s, where North Koreans numbered among his classmates. Much later, in 1999-2001, he was one of Canada’s senior diplomats in Beijing responsible for negotiating the opening of Canada’s official relations with the DPRK. He also served as Consul General in Shanghai, Head of Mission in Taipei, Director General for East Asia in the Canadian foreign ministry, and visiting scholar at the Institute of Asian Research at the University of British Columbia, before taking up his current post in 2007 as Canada’s Ambassador to both North and South Korea.

Description

In the international relations literature, national security is often equated with threats to national territory and the effective exercise of state control within national boundaries. In the case of the People’s Republic of China, additional insights can be gained by disaggregating the elements of China’s national security situation. Over the early years of the PRC we can argue that China faced at least four different kinds of security threats (and possibly more). The four were: the threat of a revolutionary socialist state in a capitalist world economy; the existential threat posed by nuclear weapons; the threat to legitimacy posed by the existence of an alternative regime resident on Taiwan; and the more traditional border defense notion of security. No one uniform grand strategy or security policy could fully addressed all of them. The various kinds of threats could be met by different strategies, but over time, the strategies themselves became increasingly incompatible with each other.

Mao, as the final arbiter of Chinese national security policy, prioritized different security challenges and responses at different times, but most of the time he pursed strategies focusing on (in Waltz’s terms) internal balancing rather than external balancing, with high commitment to defense industrialization. Even during the heyday of the Sino-Soviet alliance, internal balancing was a, and probably, the crucial basis of Chinese grand strategies. Indeed, for most of Mao’s rule, defense industrialization was the focal point of grand strategy, China’s political economy, and many aspects of higher educational policy. It is hard to understate how central defense industrialization was to the Maoist period.

David Bachman is the Associate Director of the Jackson School of International Studies at the University of Washington. His areas of interest are government and politics of contemporary China; US-China relations and Chinese foreign relations. He is also the author of Bureaucracy, Economy, and Leadership in China: The Institutional Origins of the Great Leap Forward (Cambridge University Press, 1991).

Description

– THIS EVENT IS OPEN TO HIGH SCHOOL STUDENTS IN GRADES 11 AND 12 ONLY –

Asia is a continent of great historical depth and cultural richness, a region comprising more than half the world’s population and the second and third largest economies. Its growing international influence is dramatically transforming global affairs in the 21st century.

An intensive one-day workshop during March break is being organized at the University of Toronto. Students from Grades 11 and 12 are invited to be part of this interesting extra-curricular program that will help them explore and generate informed awareness of this globally important region.

AGENDA

8:30 – 9:00 Registration and Orientation [South House Lounge]

9:00 – 9:30 SESSION 1: What is Asian Studies?
Professor Joseph Wong (Director, Asian Institute)
Professor Chelva Kanaganayakam (Director, Centre for South Asian Studies)
Professor Frank Cody (Department of Anthropology)

9:30 – 9:45 Munk Centre Tour

9:45 – 10:25 SESSION 2: Rising Phoenix, Economic Giants of the Future
Professor Anil Verma (Director, Centre for Industrial Relations; and Rotman School of Management)
Professor Joseph Wong (Department of Political Science)

10:25 – 10:40 Break [South House Lounge]

10:40 – 11:20 BREAKOUT SESSIONS

SESSION 3-A: Sophisticated Ancient Civilizations: China [Room 108N]
Professor Chen Shen (Department of East Asian Studies; and Senior Curator, World Cultures, ROM)

SESSION 3-B: Sophisticated Ancient Civilizations: India [Room 208N]
Professor Sudharshan Durayappah (Lecturer, U of T)

11:20 – 12:20 Pan-Asian Lunch [South House Lounge]

12:20 – 1:45 SESSION 4: ROM Trip
Highlights of Early Chinese and South Asian Galleries

1:45 – 2:00 Break [North House – Second Floor Lounge]

2:00 – 3:30 BREAKOUT SESSIONS

SESSION 5-A: Movie clips of Hong Kong films & discussion [Room 108N]
Mr. Peter Kuplowsky (Toronto After Dark Film Festival)
Mr. Luke Kuplowsky (CINSSU, University of Toronto)

SESSION 5-B: Movie clips of South Asian films & discussion [Room 208N]
Professor Malini Guha (Lecturer, Cinema Studies Institute)

3:30- 4:10 SESSION 6: Career Pathways of Asian Studies [VDCCF]
Mr. Tony Gostling (Director-Member Services, Canada China Business Council)
Mr. Aditya Jha (National Convenor of Canada India Foundation and Chairman, POA Educational Foundation)
Other panellists TBC

4:10- 4:30 Camp evaluation and closing ceremony

Students will have an opportunity to listen to speakers from Canada’s premier research university and learn about cutting-edge research in the fields of Asian studies, including politics, business, history, culture, art, and cinema. Exciting sessions such as Asian Studies career pathways that include, hiring expectations, on the job experiences, interacting with specialists of the region, and also with today’s leading professionals working in Asia. A pan-Asian lunch will reflect on the culture of food. There will also be an off-campus visit to the early Chinese and South Asian collections at the ROM.

A nominal registration fee of $20 will be charged to cover the ROM admission fee, lunch, snacks during breaks, and a souvenir.

For further information: jessie.lam@utoronto.ca / 416 946 8832

Description

Marcus Noland will speak about economic change in North Korea (including the failure of recent currency reforms) and the criminalization of economic activity in North Korea (including the expanded use of the penal system). His talk is based on two large scale refugee surveys conducted by Noland, who will also touch upon nascent dissent and political attitudes in North Korea based on his findings.

Marcus Noland is the deputy director and senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics, where he has worked since 1985. His research encompasses a wide range of topics including the political economy of US trade policy and the Asian financial crisis. His areas of geographical knowledge and interest include Asia and Africa where he has lived and worked. In the past he has written extensively on the economies of Japan, Korea, and China, and is unique among American economists in having devoted serious scholarly effort to the problems of North Korea and the prospects for Korean unification. He won the 2000–01 Ohira Memorial Award for his book “Avoiding the Apocalypse: The Future of the Two Koreas”.

Noland was educated at Swarthmore College (BA) and the Johns Hopkins University (PhD). Noland has served as a Senior Economist at the Council of Economic Advisers in the Executive Office of the President of the United States and as a consultant to organizations such as the World Bank and National Intelligence Council.. He has held research or teaching positions at Yale University, the Johns Hopkins University, the University of Southern California, Tokyo University, Saitama University (now the National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies), the University of Ghana, the Korea Development Institute, and the East-West Center. He has received fellowships sponsored by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, the Council on Foreign Relations, the Council for the International Exchange of Scholars, and the Pohang Iron and Steel Corporation (POSCO).

Description

The Korean War is probably the least understood war of the twentieth century. Scholars of the war cannot even agree upon the war’s origins. Was it a local war whose origins lay in the nationalist ambitions Kim Il Sung? A civil war between two radically opposing visions of political order for the peninsula? Or was it an international war whose origins lay with Stalin and communisms’ design for world domination? Different historians’ account of the war’s origins is like, in the words of the historian Robert Beisner, “walking through a revolving door.” The purpose of this talk is to not to interject new arguments into these already crowded disputes about origins and endings, but rather to investigate the inadequately explored “middle,” that is, the war as an on-going conflict. Specifically, we will examine how this “unfinished” war, and changing memories of it, has influenced regional and world events to the present day.

Sheila Miyoshi Jager is an Associate Professor of East Asian Studies at Oberlin College. She is the author of “Narratives of Nation-Building in Korea: A Genealogy of Patriotism” and (with Rana Mitter) “Ruptured Histories: War, Memory and the Post-Cold War in Asia”. In 2006-8 she was a Visiting Professor of National Security Studies at the Strategic Studies Institute, U.S. Army War College where she worked on issues relating to historical memory and national security. She is currently finishing up a book about the Korean War.

Description

Is China developing a capitalist class that will rise to demand democracy? Based on an original national survey of business owners and extensive field research, Professor Tsai finds little evidence for such popular expectations. Nonetheless, private entrepreneurs have profoundly reshaped China’s political economy through a myriad of adaptive informal institutions.

Kellee S. Tsai (Ph.D., Columbia University) is Professor of Political Science and Director of East Asian Studies at Johns Hopkins University. Her publications include Capitalism without Democracy: The Private Sector in Contemporary China (Cornell University Press, 2007), China and Japan in the World Political Economy (co-edited, Routledge, 2005), Rural Industrialization and Informal Finance: Wenzhou’s Experience (co-authored in Chinese, Shanxi Economics Press, 2004), Back-Alley Banking: Private Entrepreneurs in China (Cornell University Press, 2002), and several articles. Dr. Tsai is on the board of the National Committee on US-China Relations, and the editorial board of Pacific Affairs and Stanford University Press’s Contemporary Issues in Asia and the Pacific Series.

Description

The exhibit, « Living in the Sacraments : Catholic Culture in Contemporary Viet nam « on display at the Museum of Ethonoly in Hanoi, December –May 2009, marked the first time that an exhibit on Catholicism appeared in Ha Noi. The Exhibit’s key message was that Catholicism is a key part of Vietnamese Culture, despite popular discourses representing it as a foreign faith. This exhibit, the first of its kind at a national museum in Viet Nam, reflects a developing relationship between the Vietnamese State and the populace, but there remain difficulties and tensions between the two parties. This paper examines the circumstances that enabled the research, including the negotiations between the different parties with a stake in the exhibit. It also explores possibilities on how the argument of the exhibit, that Catholicism is a key component of the multiple facets of Vietnamese culture, can be accepted into everyday discourse. The presentation also examines the role of public history in civil discourse.

Nguyen Van Huy was the founding director of the Vietnam Museum of Ethnology (1995-2006). He received his doctorate in ethnology at the Vietnam Institute of Ethnology of the Vietnam Namtional University. Professor Huy was one of the first Vietnamese ethnographiers to study the relationship between economic dvelopment and ethnic relations in Vietnam. Since the 1960s, he has been an active and vocal advocate for ethnic minority groups in Viet Nam, as evidenced in the vision of the Vietnamese Museum of Ethnology that he founded. He is the author of over sixty journal articles and ten monographs. His most recent publications include Faces, Voices and Lives: Experience of a Director in Building a Museum for Communities (The gioi Publisher, Hanoi, 2008) and Vietnam: Journeys of Body, Mind and Spirit (co-edited with Laurel Kendall, University of California Press, Berkeley, 2004), a companion to the exhibit of the same name at the American Museum of Natural History in New York (2004). He has received the Chevalier de L’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (République Française, 2007), Aid to Artisans Award (2002), and Rockefeller 3rd Award (Asian Culture Council, 1999).

Description

In Anglophone Indian literature, Bombay is depicted as infinitely fragmented, a city whose rapid, ceaseless growth speeds its decay. Using examples from Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children, The Satanic Verses and The Ground Beneath Her Feet, I examine how narrators order the city’s chaos to reveal the social dynamics of particular versions of Bombay. In my dissertation, I look at the fiction of Vikram Chandra, Rohinton Mistry, Manil Suri and Salman Rushdie and follow characters through street spaces, apartment houses, and international travel in order to explore how the narrative negotiation of local and global communal associations create different types of privileged narrative perspectives and map various versions of the city. In these texts, the city remains an unwelcoming place that characters struggle to call “home,” even as it becomes an inextricable part of their conceptions of their own identities. The formal emphasis on narration foregrounds individual control over the manipulation of identity and saves each narrator from the realm of the silenced subaltern masses or the anonymous urban crowd, but the narration simultaneously renders other individuals invisible within the narratives. In the novels of Salman Rushdie in particular, this struggle against alienation and against communalism often manifests as the interaction of specific locales in Bombay with the dangerous instability of ground beneath our feet.

Kelly A. Minerva is a doctoral candidate in the English Department in collaboration with the Centre for South Asian Studies.

Description

The Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK, North Korea) has long been a destabilizing element in the Asia-Pacific region. The development and testing of nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles by North Korea creates increasing unease. The failure of the North Korean economy to provide for its people is a continuing concern. The region is important to Canada for historic, economic and political reasons. Canada has taken a close interest in and strongly supported efforts to integrate North Korea more fully into the community of nations. While playing only a limited role to date, Canada is well positioned to take a more active part. Kroll will be discussing the potential for Canadian engagement with North Korea and touch upon the lack of action at the present.

Hartmuth Kroll is a retired foreign service officer, who now consults on foreign affairs issues. He served six postings abroad, including South Korea. Prior to his retirement, he was the lead officer in DFAIT for Canada’s relations with the Korean Peninsula.

Description

China: Changes and Challenges

In 2010, having recently celebrated its 60th anniversary and achieved such milestones as hosting the 2008 Olympics Games in Beijing, we hope to reflect on the history and development of the People’s Republic of China since 1949, and thus this year’s theme is “China: Changes and Challenges”. The University of Toronto China Conference will be multi-faceted, with topics spanning finance and trade, society and law, education, culture, environment and many other fields of interest.

Early Bird Tickets available now. Visit our website at: http://www.utcc.ca/2010/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=66&Itemid=76 or our booth at 2nd floor Robarts 12-4pm to purchase.

Conference Schedule

Day 1, Saturday, March 27th

1:00PM-2:00PM Registration and Welcome
2:00PM-2:30PM Keynote Speech
2:30PM-4:00PM Society, Policy & Law Panel
4:00PM-4:15PM Break
4:15PM-5:45PM Science & Technology
6:00PM-8:00PM VIP Charity Dinner

Day 2, Sunday, March 28th

9:00AM-10:00AM Registration and Welcome
10:00AM-11:30AM Culture Panel
11:30AM-1:00PM Lunch Break
1:00PM-2:30PM Finance & Trade Panel
2:30PM-2:45PM Break
2:45PM-4:15PM Environment Panel
4:15PM-5:00PM Closing Remarks

Description

The nature of Asian urbanization has been the object of theoretical attention for almost two decades. A central theme in the discussion revolves around the dissolution of the city and countryside divide; and the focus is largely on questioning whether the city is winning (through urbanization) or if the countryside is losing in the development game. Such issues however are much more complex in Asia. For instance, for Terry McGee (who is among the first to consider the specificity of the region), urbanization means “the emergence of (peri-urban) regions of highly-mixed rural and non-rural activity surrounding the large urban cores of many Asian countries” that are “significant foci of industrialization and rapid economic growth.” Yet, with studies mostly centered on the processes of urbanization, very little attention has been given to the political formation of the extended peri-urban space. This talk, through a case study of Indonesia, will make an attempt to place these extended spaces in their historical context in order to understand the political processes that have made their formation possible.

Abidin Kusno is Associate Professor at the Institute of Asian Research where he holds Canada Research Chair in Asian Urbanism and Culture (Tier II). An architectural and urban historian with interests in sociology, anthropology, visual cultures, history, and politics, his research examines the roles of built environment in shaping the political cultures of decolonization, nation building, and development. He wrote The Appearances of Memory: Mnemonic Practices of Architecture and Urban Form in Indonesia (Duke University Press, 2010) and Behind the Postcolonial: Architecture, Urban Space and Political Cultures in Indonesia (Routledge, 2000).

Description

For decades the study of modern Southeast Asian history has been organized around a nationalist teleology: the rise of nationalist consciousness, the emergence and mobilization of nationalist movements, and the triumphal achievement, through nationalist struggle, of independence for the new nation-states of the region. Recent scholarship on Southeast Asia and other parts of the world, however, suggests that this ‘nationalist’ frame may obscure as much as it illuminates, providing only a partial and biased descriptive account and leaving unexplained the dramatic differences and divergences of historical change observed across the region. A re-examination of modern Philippine, Vietnamese, and Indonesian history reveals that the revolutions experienced in these three countries were in crucial ways enabled by international conjunctures and impelled by transnational ideological currents, mobilizing structures, and social forces lying outside the ‘nationalist’ narrative.

John T. Sidel is the Sir Patrick Gillam Professor of International and Comparative Politics at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). He is the author of Capital, Coercion, and Crime: Bossism in the Philippines (Stanford University Press 1999), (with Eva-Lotta Hedman) Philippine Politics and Society in the Twentieth Century: Colonial Legacies, Postcolonial Trajectories (Routledge, 2000), Riots, Pogroms, Jihad: Religious Violence in Indonesia (Cornell University Press, 2006), and The Islamist Threat in Southeast Asia: A Reassessment (East-West Center, 2007).

Description

Late-twentieth century Indian-language writing includes the largest /multilingual/ clustering of chronologically and qualitatively “modernist” works outside the circuits of anglophone or europhone textuality and performance. The entire formation has remained peripheral in the “new modernist studies,” however, because of the serious problems of linguistic and cultural access. This talk considers some of the general conditions of cultural and literary rupture and experimentation that shaped modernism as a dominant aesthetic of the 1945-75 period in more than a dozen active literary languages. In more particular terms, it takes up antitheatricalism as a modernist topos that first emerges in the late-nineteenth century, and has defined the distinctive urban theatre culture of post-independence India.

Professor Dharwadker joined the University of Wisconsin faculty in Fall 2001. She is currently Associate Professor in the Departments of Theatre and Drama and English. Her principal research and teaching interests are in modern Indian and postcolonial theatre, comparative modern drama and theatre theory, and Restoration and eighteenth-century British theatre. In 2006, she received the Joe A. Callaway Prize for Theatres of Independence: Drama, Theory, and Urban Performance in India Since 1947 (judged the best book on drama or theatre published in 2004-05), and the H. I. Romnes Faculty Fellowship from the UW Graduate School and Alumni Research Foundation for outstanding scholarship in the Humanities. Professor Dharwadker’s essays and articles have appeared in a range of journals and collections, including PMLA, Modern Drama, Theatre Journal, New Theatre Quarterly, English Postcoloniality, Studies in English Literature, Studies in Philology, The Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation, Theatre Research International, South Central Review, Theatre India, and The Blackwell Companion to Restoration Drama. She has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Institute of Indian Studies, the Folger Library, and the Newberry Library, among others. Professor Dharwadker has also lectured widely at institutions in the U.S. and abroad, including the University of Chicago, University of Pennsylvania, Yale University, the University of Georgia, Texas A&M University, Delhi University, Jawaharlal Nehru University, and the Indian Institute of Technology. Her current project is an edited collection of modern Indian theatre theory and criticism, titled A Poetics of Modernity: Indian Theatre Theory, 1860-Present, and scheduled for completion in 2010.

Description

Malaysia presents a notably curious mixture of celebratory and censorious preoccupations with its refugees, or ‘illegal migrants’, as they are termed under the country’s Immigration Act. On the one hand, UNHCR and its local partners in Malaysia have celebrated World Refugee Day with a number of ‘awareness-raising’ activities and festive events each year, starting in 2005 (Hedman 2009). On the other hand, the Malaysian authorities have pursued a range of increasingly punitive measures targeting ‘illegal migrants’ during this period, including the frequent deployment of the Immigration Department’s notorious auxiliary enforcement unit, Rela (Ikatan Relawan Rakyat, or People’s Volunteer Corps) whose powers were considerably expanded by government decree in 2005 (Hedman 2008).

Somewhere betwixt and between this strange brew of international humanitarian and national government campaigns, a motley crew of local non-governmental organisations have come to focus their comparatively low profile and low budget efforts on refugees and other (illegal) migrants in Malaysia. By contrast with the marked emphasis upon the celebratory and the censorious, respectively, in the high-profile campaigns surrounding the figure of the refugee in Malaysia, the activities of these NGOs have remained primarily concerned with practical interventions in the day-to-day lives of refugees and other non-citizens. While such activities span a wide spectrum – health and livelihood, children and education, human rights and due process – they reflect a deeper underlying concern with improving the lives of refugees and other (illegal) migrants in Malaysia.

This paper explores the social space and political dynamics that shape this third kind of intervention in the lives of refugees and other Others in contemporary Malaysia. To that end, the paper also reflects upon the nature and direction of (some of) the NGOs involved, and the significance of their own ‘Otherness’ in contemporary Malaysian politics and society, a phenomenon also noted elsewhere. Finally, the paper points to the emergence with the figure of the refugee a humanitarian space of sorts for certain NGOs to occupy on the otherwise largely inhospitable terrain of civil society in Malaysia.

***

Dr Eva-Lotta E. Hedman (Ph.D. Cornell University) is Research Fellow in the Southeast Asia International Affairs Programme at LSE IDEAS, and Research Associate at the Refugee Studies Centre at the University of Oxford. She has previously held appointments at the University of Oxford, and the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. Dr Hedman has also been a visiting scholar at Cornell University’s Southeast Asia Program, U.C.L.A.’s Center for Southeast Asia Studies, and the Centre for International Studies at Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM). Her recent scholarly publications include In the Name of Civil Society: From Free Election Movements to People Power in the Philippines (University of Hawai’i Press, 2006); Conflict, Violence and Displacement in Indonesia (editor) (Cornell University Southeast Asia Publications, 2008); and Tsunami in a Time of War: Aid, Activism & Reconstruction in Sri Lanka and Aceh (editor, with M de Alwis) (ICES, 2009).

Description

Interested in International Relations, Politics, Economics, Cultural Studies and Contemporary Global Issues? Want to travel to Asia?

Then you should consider a Major in Asia-Pacific Studies

o Interdisciplinary exploration of contemporary issues in the globally important Asia-Pacific region
o Vibrant and intimate community of students and faculty
o Seminars by leading scholars from around the globe
o Field schools in Taiwan, Korea, Indonesia and more
o Dr. David Chu Scholarships for travel to Asia
o Internship opportunities

This info session will include short presentations by the Program Director and current students, introducing the program and offering the opportunity for prospective students to have their questions answered.

Description

Professor Fujitani’s presentation will be drawn from his forthcoming book, Race for Empire: Koreans as Japanese and Japanese as Americans in WWII. The book is a comparative and transnational study of ethnic and colonial soldiers during the Asia-Pacific War (or the Second World War in the Asia-Pacific) that focuses on Japanese Americans mobilized to serve in the United States Army and Koreans who were recruited or drafted into the Japanese military. His research utilizes the two sites of soldiering as optics through which to examine the larger operations and structures of the changing U.S. And Japanese national empires as they struggled to manage racialized populations within the larger demands of conducting total war. He seeks to show how discussions about, policies, and representations of these two sets of soldiers tell us a great deal about the changing characteristics of wartime racism, nationalism, imperialism, colonialism, capitalism, gender politics, the family, and some other related issues on both sides of the Pacific that go well beyond the soldiers themselves, and whose repercussions remain with us today. The seminar will focus on the Korean Japanese side of his research.

Takashi Fujitani is Professor of History at the University of California, San Diego. His primary areas of research are modern and contemporary Japanese history, East Asian history, and transnational history (primarily U.S./Japan and Asia-Pacific). His publications include: Splendid Monarchy: Power and Pageantry in Modern Japan (UC Press, 1996; Japanese version, 1994; Korean translation, 2003); Perilous Memories: The Asia Pacific War(s) (co-editor, Duke, 2001); and Race for Empire: Koreans as Japanese and Japanese as Americans in WWII (forthcoming, UC Press; Japanese version, Iwanami Shoten); as well as numerous book chapters and articles published in Korean, Japanese and English. His recent research has been funded by the John. S. Guggenheim Foundation, ACLS, NEH, and SSRC.

Description

Diplomacy affects every conflict, global institution, country, and citizen. This year’s Munk Centre for International Studies and World Bank Graduate Student Conference will examine how diplomacy has evolved and its impact on some of the most politically sensitive and complex questions of modern politics.

For more details, please visit: www.themunkgraduateconference.org

AGENDA

April 8th, 2010

5:00pm – Registration begins

5:30pm – Evening keynote address: “Information Flow and Media Impact on Foreign Policy and Diplomatic Outcomes”

Mr. Brian Stewart, Renowned Canadian foreign correspondent

6:30pm – Reception

April 9th, 2010

8:30am – Registration opens

9:00am – 11:00am – Panel 1: Diplomacy in Flux?

Speakers:
Dr. Alan Alexandroff, Associate Director, G20 Research Group, University of Toronto

Dr. Robert Bothwell, Director, International Relations Program, University of Toronto

Dr. Stanislav J. Kirschbaum, Department of International Studies, York University

11:00am – 11:20am – Break

11:20am – 12:00pm – A Practitioner’s View [Speakers: TBC]

12:00pm – 12:30pm – Lunch is served
12:30pm – 1:15om – Lunchtime keynote address: “How Canada Stayed out of Iraq”

Ambassador Paul Heinbecker

1:15pm – 2:50pm – Panel 2: Ethnic Conflicts

Speakers:
Dr. Andrew Andersen, National Fellow, University of Calgary, Centre for Military and Strategic Studies

Dr. Howard Adelman, York University, Founder of the Centre for Refugee Studies

2:50pm – 3:10pm – Coffee Break

3:10pm – 4:45pm – Panel 3: Post-Conflict Resolution

Speakers:
Dr. Rex Brynen, Political Science, McGill University

Dr. John Murray, Harvard Negotiation Project, John Hopkins University, School of Advanced International Studies

Dr. Arnold M. Noyek, Senior Ashoka Fellow; Director, Peter A Silverman Centre for International Health, Mount Sinai Hospital; Founder, Canada International Scientific Exchange Program (CISEPO)

Description

Registration 6:00 pm

Discussion 6:30-8:30 pm

For more information contact Canadian Tamil Congress @ (416) 240 0078

Description

This talk presents a general model of social change developed from the theories of Max Weber and Herbert Spencer. The model is applied to address numerous research questions and historical patterns crucial to understanding the Chinese past, especially the history of the Spring-Autumn and Warring States (SA&WS) era (770-221 BCE). Some of those research questions and historical patterns include: Why was China able to achieve an unusual pace of development in politics, ideology, military and economy in the SA&WS era? Why was the state power able to attain increasing domination during the SW&WS, leading to the rise of the strong and militarized bureaucratic state? Why could China end in unification in 221 BCE and why was it Qin rather than the other states that won out in the fierce military conflict? Why could a similar imperial system persist in China most of the time from 221 BCE to the early 20th century? Why did military commanders play little role in politics except during civil wars? Why did transcendental religions fail to have a great impact on Chinese politics? What were the forces that shaped nomads-Chinese relationships in imperial China? Why didn’t an industrial revolution take place in China despite of the existence of a highly developed market economy in late imperial China?

Dingxin Zhao is Professor of Sociology at the University of Chicago. He is interested in political and historical sociology broadly defined. His research covers the areas of history and historical sociology, social movement and revolution, nationalism, social change and economic
development. His interests also extend to sociological theory and methodology. Zhao has publications in journals such as American Journal of Sociology, American Sociological Review, Social Forces, Sociology, Problems of Post-Communism and China Quarterly. He has published an awards-winning book entitled Power of Tiananmen (2001), which studies the 1989 Pro-democracy Movement in Beijing. He has also published two books in Chinese. They are Social and Political Movements (2006) by the Academy of Social Science Press, and Eastern Zhou Warfare and the Rise of the Confucian-Legalistic State (2006) jointly published by the Huadong Normal University Press and Sanlian Press. He is a current fellow of the Center for Advanced Study for the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University.

Description

Tom Boellstorff is Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of California, Irvine, and Editor-in-Chief of American Anthropologist, the flagship journal of the American Anthropological Association. He is the author of The Gay Archipelago: Sexuality and Nation in Indonesia (Princeton University Press, 2005); A Coincidence of Desires: Anthropology, Queer Studies, Indonesia (Duke University Press, 2007); and Coming of Age in Second Life: An Anthropologist Explores the Virtually Human (Princeton University Press, 2008).

Abstract:

Since it was apparently first coined in 1994, the term MSM (men who have sex with men) has enjoyed enormous success as a term that ostensibly separates behavior from identity and is thereby more inclusive than the term “gay.” In this talk, I draw upon ethnographic and historical data from Indonesia and Western contexts to both critique the MSM concept and trace ways in which it has been taken up as a subject position.

I undertake this critique through four interlinked lines of analysis and one ethnographic case study. In the first line of analysis, I explore the culturally specific notions of behavior, identity, and sex that have shaped notions of MSM since the concept’s inception. Second, I address the varied conceptions of masculinity and maleness presupposed by the MSM category. Third, I examine the unlexicalized assumptions about race built into the MSM category, focusing on how one unexpected consequence of the term has been the attempted (but failed) exclusion of nonwhite men from categories of gayness. Fourth, I discuss how discourses of HIV prevention have been central to the formulation, dissemination, and reinterpretation of the MSM category worldwide.

I then build upon these four lines of analysis to address the ethnographic case study of the MSM category in Indonesia. In particular, I discuss how the reterritorialization of the MSM category in Indonesia as LSL (lelaki suka lelaki) has conceptually conflated gay-identified men and warias (male transvestites) in a historically unprecedented manner, leading to new configurations of these subject positions in the context of ongoing postcolonial transformations of the Indonesian nation-state a decade since the fall of Soeharto’s “New Order” government.

Description

This workshop involves a roundtable discussion of the 2006 monograph, The Language of the Gods in the World of Men: Sanskrit, Culture, and Power in Premodern India (www.ucpress.edu/books/pages/10277.php) with the author, Professor Sheldon Pollock of Columbia University, along with Professor Yigal Bronner of the University of Chicago and Professor Lawrence McCrea of Cornell University.

Pollock’s work, a landmark in contemporary Indology, is “the kind of scholarly synthesis and insightful interpretation that comes along, at
most, once in a generation or two” (Journal of Asian Studies). Cutting across the boundaries of comparative literature, history, and religious studies, The Language of the Gods in the World of Men forms an ideal site for area studies specialists across the disciplines to come together to explore critical issues in social theory. Pollock explores culture and power in South Asia, charting two historical shifts: 1) the use of Sanskrit, previously exclusively a sacred language, in public political discourse and poetry from the first centuries of the Common Era; and 2) the rise of vernacular literary cultures and displacement of Sanskrit from the beginning of the second millennium.

The roundtable discussion culminates a year-long reading of The Language of the Gods in the World of Men by faculty and graduate students at the University of Toronto. All are welcome to attend.

Description

Jin Yufu (1887-1962) was one of the foremost historians of twentieth-century China and was closely associated with the region of Northeast China. Prof. Annping China will examine his what his diary can teach us about how such a man contended with such events as the anti-Japanese War, the rise of the Chinese Communists, and the anti-Rightist campaign.

Annping Chin received her PhD from Columbia University in 1984. She has taught at Wesleyan and now Yale University. Among her books include:

Children of China: Voices from Recent Years (1989)
Tai Chen on Mencius (1990)
Chinese Century: A Photographic History of the Last Hundred Years (1996)
Four Sisters of Hofei (2002)
The Authentic Confucius: A Life of Thought and Politics (2007)