Description

This presentation challenges some assumptions inherent in recent accounts of the virtues of civil society, social capital and participatory development. Favouring the concept of ?political society? It considers how local political intermediaries structure the interaction of the rural poor and the state in two locales in West Bengal. These relations are illustrated with the example of a national development scheme aiming to generate wage employment in the agricultural lean season. The findings imply that participatory development in a state like West Bengal, where civil society is poorly developed, needs to be considered in relation to particular constructions of local political society and the ?everyday? State.

René Véron is Associate Professor of Geography and active contributor to the International Development Studies programme at the University of Guelph. He has been involved in various research and policy-oriented projects in India focusing on rural and urban development issues in Kerala, West Bengal, Madhya Pradesh and Delhi.
His research has explored socioeconomic, environmental and political aspects of development including the impacts of crop markets on sustainable development, the implications of globalisation and related reform policies for rural livelihoods, as well as the politics around the implementation of poverty-alleviation schemes, the provision of elementary education or the introduction of urban air pollution measures.

Description

As the world slides into the worst economic recession since the 1930s, anthropologists and other social scientists should not allow ‘recession studies’ to be hijacked by economists. How do people experience turbulent economic times? To what extent do economic crises provoke, and in turn provide researchers with a window on, major societal reconfigurations? And how should we explore these questions through comparative research?

This paper explores the experience of the economic recessions of the 1930s, 1960s and late 1990s in the region of Yogyakarta in southern central Java. Each downturn generated its own ‘winners’ as well as ‘losers’. Patterns and institutions of social solidarity and ‘social safety nets’ may be key elements in the vulnerability or resilience of particular social groups and individuals. Finally, crises generate, and responses to them are influenced by, specific discourses of crisis.

Ben White (1946) is Professor of Rural Sociology at the Institute of Social Studies, The Hague, and Professor in Social Sciences at the University of Amsterdam. He has a B.A. from Oxford University, and a PhD in Anthropology from Columbia University. He is Chair of the Editorial Board of the interdisciplinary development studies journal Development & Change. His main research interests focus on agrarian change processes and the anthropology and history of childhood and youth. He has been engaged in research on these topics in Indonesia since the early 1970s.

Description

The presentation examines the way in which issues of colonialism have found channels of expression in generic conventions and tropes of horror film in South Korea. It interrogates problem of representation concerning colonialism in South Korean cinema in general and advances to convey how the repressed history of colonialism comes to surface through stories of specter and apparition. In particular, the presentation brings attention to a recent horror film called “Epitaph”, and the way it rehearses and thematizes thorny issues of colonialism, including inter-ethnic romance, historical amnesia and erasure, and reconciliation.

Jinsoo An is Assistant Professor at School of Design and Media of Hongik University in Korea. He completed Ph.D. at UCLA with the dissertation on golden age melodrama films of Korea (from 1953 to 1972). He has written on the topics related to Korean cinema of the 1960s including representation of Christianity, historical drama, courtroom drama, cult film and Manchurian action film. His current project focuses on representation of colonialism as historical past in South Korean cinema. His other interest includes history and visuality of interactive media art.

Description

Why were Company officials so invested in questions of forgery and perjury and why did so many inhabitants appear to proffer false testimony? This talk investigates the relationship between graphic culture and the making of early colonial governance under Company rule. With the acquisition of the Madras hinterland in 1800, Company officials, hard pressed to discern the credibility of the spoken and written claims made to them but determined to render Madras governable, began to tame practices of attestation through forgery and perjury regulations. The apprehension about the credibility of inhabitants thus opened up a struggle over norms of acceptable evidence and testimony shaping the relationship between the Company’s Document Raj and its subjects.

Bhavani Raman is an assistant professor at the History Department, Princeton University where she teaches South Asian History.

Description

James Scarth Gale (1863-1937) was one of the earliest Westerners to reside in Korea for any length of time. Although he is known to history mainly for his missionary activity in Korea, he did pioneering work in the fields of Korean language, linguistics, and literature. The significance of his accomplishments in these areas is clear already from his published works, which include the mother of all Korean-to-English dictionaries, his Korean Grammatical Forms, and his translations of Chunhyang chon and Kuunmong. While Gale is not unknown or unappreciated as a scholar and translator of Korean literature, he seems to be remembered (and praised) primarily for his translation of Kuunmong, published in 1922. However, our research at the University of British Columbia has uncovered an astounding wealth of translations, both from the hanmun and from vernacular Korean, and both in prose and poetry. It is the purpose of this panel to situate several of these various translations within the still sparse body of traditional Korean literature in English translation, to analyze the works of literature themselves, and to evaluate Gales translations of them. To these ends Ross King discusses Gales translations of prose works written in classical Chinese, Leif Olsen analyzes two of the dozen or so Choson vernacular fictional narratives translated by Gale, and Si Nae Park treats Gales translation of part of an important nineteenth-century yadam collection.

Presenters:

James Scarth Gales Translations from Korean Hanmun Sources
Ross King, Professor of Korean, University of British Columbia

Canadian James Scarth Gales Translations of Choson-Period Fiction
Leif Olsen, Ph.D. Student, University of British Columbia

Gale’s Translations from the 19th c. yadam collection, _Kimun ch’onghwa_
Si Nae Park, Ph.D. Student in Premodern Korean Literature University of British Columbia

Discussant
Bruce Fulton,Associate Professor
Young-Bin Min Chair in Korean Literature and Literary Translation University of British Columbia

Description

North Korea is perennially in the news. Recent preparations for what appears to be another long range missile test have much of North East Asia on alert. The Six Party Talks effort to negotiate away North Korea’s nuclear program appears to be stalled and levels of rhetoric and threats out of Pyongyang towards South Korea have reached levels seldom heard since the end of the Cold War. Yet behind the scene there is an equally important but less understood humanitarian crisis going on in North Korea. Located in the middle of what has been one of the most economically vibrant regions in the world, North Korea has suffered decades of food shortages, a serious famine in the late 1990s that may have claimed over a million lives, and a remarkable contraction of its economy. All this has taken place in one of the most closed and oppressive societies on earth. As information regarding the human rights situation in North Korea has trickled out, a growing body of private, governmental, and international organizations has begun to focus on North Korea’s humanitarian crisis amid all the clamor over security issues. As part of the North Korea Human Rights Act of 2004 the U.S. Congress mandated the creation of a “Special Envoy for Human Rights in North Korea,” a position filled without distinction during the Bush Administration and which has yet to be filled by the Obama Administration. L. Gordon Flake, Executive Director the Maureen and Mike Mansfield Foundation will discuss the issues and challenges facing the new U.S. Administration, Canada, and the rest of the World in addressing the situation in North Korea today.

L. Gordon Flake joined the Mansfield Foundation in February 1999. He was previously a Senior Fellow and Associate Director of the Program on Conflict Resolution at The Atlantic Council of the United States and prior to that Director for Research and Academic Affairs at the Korea Economic Institute of America.

Description

One of the most serious types of conflict across Indonesia since the downfall of the Suharto’s authoritarian regime in 1998 arises from a tension among communities based on ethno-religious affiliation. The dominant discourse about the violence among scholars, international donor agencies, civil society organizations, mass media, government, and the like tends to highlight a certain kind of “clash of civilization,” in which, for example, Islam is pitted against Christianity. I argue that such an explanation is too limited. In my talk, which focuses on the province of Central Sulawesi, I will situate the current violence in the context of globalization. The global dimension of the violence has a historical trajectory that began in the colonial period and continues up to the present, neo-liberal era. Among the elements I will discuss are the legacy of colonial religious ‘pillarization’ and its political consequences, the formation of the post-colonial state, the extension of market based economy in natural resources with uneven patterns of dispossession, and the more specific global factors at play in the outbreak of the violence in 1998 and its continuation through to the present.

Arianto Sangadji is Director and co-founder of Yayasan Tanah Merdeka, (Free Land Foundation). YTM was founded in 1992 in response to the increasing threats facing adat communities from large scale developments. Some areas of YTM’s work include the protection of indigenous land rights, and working with populations affected by the expansion of transnational mining operations in Sulawesi. In 2005, Sangadji founded The Presidium to campaign against human rights abuse and corruption connected to the violence in Poso. It conducts fact-finding, mobilization and information dissemination. Its work starts from the conviction that the violence was not simply a matter of Christians versus Muslims, but involved manipulation by military, political and corporate players with diverse agendas that need to be exposed.

Description

The world is in an economic crisis of a magnitude that is said to be seen only once in a century. How much havoc will it wreak? While circumstances will vary from country to country, there is a sense that full recovery will take three years for the most fortunate, with an expectation of five years for most, and a desperate hope that it will not take ten years, reminiscent of Japan’s slump in the 1990s. When considering the current economic crisis, what can we learn from the Great Depression of the 1930s, the oil crisis of the 1970s and the Japanese Bubble Economy of the 1990s? Historically, how have terrorist and fringe political groups exploited economic instability for their own gain? How does the current financial crisis affect East Asia? Dr. Makoto Iokibe will discuss the current economic crisis, and the impact it will have on Japan’s Foreign Policy.

Dr. Makoto Iokibe was born in 1943 and received his Doctor of Law degree from Kyoto University in 1987. He has taught at Hiroshima University, Harvard University, Kobe University, the University of Tokyo and the University of London, U.K. Dr. Iokibe has served on numerous councils and commissions, including the Prime Minister’s Advisory Group on Security and Defense, the Science Council of Japan, and the Council for Reforming the Ministry of Defense. In 2007, he became chair of Prime Minister Fukuda’s Foreign Policy Study Group. He has written and edited publications including Sengo Nihon Gaikoshi (History of Japan’s Diplomacy since the War (1999) and Japanese Diplomacy in the 1950s: From Isolation to Integration (2008). Dr. Iokibe is currently the President of the National Defense Academy of Japan.

Description

9:00 – 9:30 registration and breakfast
Purple Lounge (Rm 14-087)
9:30 – 10:00 introduction and acknowledgements from conference
coordinators
Purple Lounge (Rm 14-087)
welcome address from Prof. Vincent Shen
Purple Lounge (Rm 14-087)
keynote speaker introduction by Prof. Meng Yue
Purple Lounge (Rm 14-087)
10:00 – 11:00 keynote address by Prof. Dorothy Ko
Purple Lounge (Rm 14-087)
11:00 – 11:10 break
11:10 – 12:40 Panel 1: Nationalist Constructions
(Rm 14-081)
Discussant: Prof. Janet Poole
Moderator: Pauline Fu
Employing the Native in Constructing Nationalism
Darryl Sterk, University of Toronto
Life, Literature and Nation under the Meiji
Sean Callaghan, University of Toronto
Interpreting Pre-Modern Korea from a Resident Alien
Perspective
Yonsue Kim, University of Toronto

Panel 2: Chinese Mainland Economics
(Rm 14-353)
Discussant: Prof. Victor Falkenheim
Moderator: Lin Ling
Path Dependence and the Concentration of Ownership
and Control of Companies

Path Dependence and the Concentration of Ownership
and Control of Companies Listed in China
Cai Wei, University of Hong Kong
Reinventing the Danwei: a Journey to the Post-reform
Shougang
Li Yanfei, University of Toronto
To Get Rich is Glorious: On the Politics of Restitution in
Post-Socialist China
Mark McConaghy, University of Toronto
12:40 – 13:40 lunch
Purple Lounge (Rm 14-087)
Film showing: Mosuo Song Journey (Rm 14-081)
Directed by Diedie Wang
13:50 – 15:20 Panel 3: Representations of Social Space
(Rm 14-081)
Discussant: Prof. Graham Sanders
Moderator: Zhang Yue
Inspecting the City
Evan Johnson, University of Southern California
Representations of Animals in Lao She’s Texts
Todd Foley, New York University
Travel Writings of Japanese Artists in Colonial Taiwan,
1895-1945
Tseng Linyi, City University of New York

Panel 4: Formations of Identity
(Rm 14-353)
Discussant: Prof. Thomas Keirstead
Moderator: Wang Jing
Shanghai at the Margins of Modernity – Towards an
Hermeneutics of Intellectual Space
James Poborsa, University of Toronto
Hongkonger in Shenzhen: presentations and
performances of Hong Kong identity in Shenzhen
Christine Ling, Chinese University of Hong Kong

History and Politics in Chinese Historiography of the
Cultural Revolution in Xinjiang
Michael Evans, Indiana University
15:20 – 15:30 break
15:30 – 17:00 Panel 5: Pre-Modern Intellectual Space
(Rm 14-081)
Discussant: Professor Vincent Shen
Moderator: Catherine Xiaowen Xu
Writing History for Xue: An Analysis of Dynastic History
Textbooks in Twelfth to Early Fourteenth Century
China
Luo Yinan, Harvard University
Elevating the “Yue Yu xia” 越語下or Promoting Fan Li
范蠡?
Zhang Yue, University of Toronto
Zhuangyuan’s (状元) Status in Tang Dynasty (A.D. 618-
907) and the Transition Characteristic of New Social
Class Formation
Benny Leung, University of Hong Kong

Panel 6: The Nation-State and Formations of Difference:
Theoretical Sequences in Japan
(Rm 14-353)
Discussant: Prof. Kawashima
Moderator: Jon Roberts
The Zone of Excess: Labor Power and the Regime of
Translation
Gavin Walker, Cornell University
Tradition, Constitution, and the Colony
Jeffrey Dubois, Cornell University
Nostalgic and Utopian Erasures of the Colony
Christopher Ahn, Cornell University
17:00 – 17:10 concluding remarks from conference coordinators
Purple Lounge (Rm 14-087)

Description

The Ontario Japanese Speech Contest was first held in 1983. The 2009 OJSC is the 27th Contest. Students learning Japanese at universities and language schools present their speeches in four categories: Beginners’, Intermediate, Advanced and Open. OJSC has been the most successful Contest in Canada in terms of quality participants and excellent speeches. OJSC attracts more than 50 participants every year and offers the best opportunities for learners of Japanese to demonstrate their knowledge and performance of the Japanese language. The first prize winners are entitled to participate in the National Japanese Speech Contest.

Description

Mike Kim worked with refugees on the Chinese border for four years and recounts their experiences of enduring famine, sex-trafficking, and torture, as well as the inspirational stories of those who overcame tremendous adversity to escape the repressive regime of their homeland and make new lives.

One of the few Americans granted entry into the secretive “Hermit Kingdom,” Kim came to know the isolated country and its people intimately. His North Korean friends entrusted their secrets to him as they revealed the government’s brainwashing tactics and confessed their true thoughts about the repressive regime that so rigidly controls their lives. Civilians and soldiers alike spoke of what North Koreans think of Americans and war with America. Children remembered the suffering they endured through the famine. Women and girls recalled their horrific sex-trafficking experiences. Former political prisoners shared their memories of beatings, torture, and executions in the gulags. With the permission of these courageous individuals, Kim now shares their stories and recounts his dramatic experiences leading North Koreans to asylum through the 6,000-mile modern-day underground railway through Asia. His unflinching narrative exposes the truth about North Korea, stripping away the last veils that still shroud this brutal dictatorship.

Please note: the opinions expressed are those of the speaker and not necessarily those of the North Korea Research Group

Mike Kim is the author of Escaping North Korea: Defiance and Hope in the World’s Most Repressive Country. Kim is a Korean-American who, in 2003, moved to the China-North Korea border and founded Crossing Borders, a nonprofit dedicated to providing humanitarian assistance to North Korean refugees. On New Year’s Day 2003, he decided to give up his financial planning business in Chicago and left for China on a one-way ticket carrying little more than two duffle bags. While living near the North Korean border, he operated undercover as a student of North Korean taekwondo, training under North Korean masters from Pyongyang – eventually receiving a second-degree blackbelt. During his time in China, he learned of the hundreds of thousands of North Koreans fleeing to China through a 6,000-mile modern-day underground railroad in search of food and freedom. He has interviewed hundreds of North Koreans and in his book he recounts their experiences of famine, defection, sex-trafficking, and torture in gulags.

Description

The Situation on the Korean Peninsula: North Korean Nuclear Issue

Joining us: South Korean Consul General Hong Ji-in
Date: Tuesday, March 17th

Time: 5 to 7 pm
Location: Purple Lounge, RL 14th floor

North Korea’s recent nuclear moves have attracted much attention from not only the South Korean media, but also that of around the globe.
Its most recent test struck fear and suspicion across East Asian nations and even the attentions of the United States of America.
Overshadowed by such uncertainties, what implications do these moves have on the relationship between the North and South?

It is difficult to get an impression of the situation in South Korea.
Since the election of Lee Myung-Bak, the government’s actions have changed drastically and it has become even more perplexing when trying to grasp the state of bi-lateral relations in the Korean peninsula.
Hong Ji-in, Consul General of the Republic of Korea in Toronto joins us for an invigorating discussion and dialogue.

The talk with be followed by a Q&A.

Description

Pakistan’s long and circuitous route to democracy has been explained repeatedly as the result of an intrusive military-bureaucratic state; the failure to develop a constitution until 1958, almost nine years after independence; and weak political institutions. However, few attempts have been made to explain the difficulties of democratic transition by studying key political institutions that in the West have been critical to the process of democratization such as the political parties and legislature. This paper attempts to understand the role played by political parties in Pakistan’s political system by examining methods of candidate selection for legislative office of the 5 main parliamentary parties- a process that differs from party to party and is influenced by the electoral system and prevalent political culture. I will reflect on the significance of candidate selection for the process by which a party is reproduced in public office and the implications of this process on the legislative performance and the nature of democracy in Pakistan.

Mariam is a doctoral candidate in political science at Johns Hopkins University and a visiting Scholar at the Centre for South Asian Studies at the University of Toronto. Over the last two years, she has taught courses in comparative politics at Lahore University of Management Sciences and on the American presidency at JHU. She is currently working on her doctoral dissertation which seeks to fill a major gap in the literature on Pakistani politics by examining in detail the “party system” and its relationship with the state elite, that is: the formal and informal norms that guide the ways in which parties operate and interact with each other, and with the state

Description

This talk is on the strategies of civic actors in two central Tokyo neighborhoods to claim a voice in managing changes to their community, creating shared meanings for neighborhood streets and public spaces. In Yanaka and Shimokitazawa active community movements have worked to protect and improve shared community spaces by celebrating them as a historic legacy and a shared community resource, investing new and more complex values and claims on shared spaces, and redefining public streets as civic spaces in their neighborhood. They assert the rights of community participation in managing urban change by creating a neighborhood constitution, organizing art events and parades in the streets, engaging new participants in shared property rights, proposing new criteria for evaluating urban change, and telling stories of a strong and distinct community. Existing institutional structures for public participation were sidestepped as compromised in efforts to block redevelopment plans, and new organizing frameworks created.
 
Andre Sorensen is Associate Professor of Urban Geography in the Department of Geography and Programme in Planning, University of Toronto. He has published widely on Japanese urban sprawl, land development, and planning history. His single-author book The Making of Urban Japan: Cities and Planning from Edo to the 21st Century (Routledge 2002) won the book prize of the International Planning History Association in 2004. His current SSHRC-funded research project Who Will Build the Liveable City?: Planning Culture, Civil Society and Local Environmental Governance in Tokyo and Toronto compares the role of civil society organizations in managing shared spaces in two very different cities. He is the editor with P. J. Marcotullio and J. Grant, of Towards Sustainable Cities: East Asian, North American and European Perspectives. (Ashgate 2004) and with C. Funck Living Cities in Japan: Citizens Movements, Machizukuri and Local Environments (Routeledge 2007). 

Description

This study is partly substantive — it explores the major contours of the history of religions in ancient India — and partly methodological — it argues for a particular way to study this period of Indian history. It argues against the common tendency to essentialize such modern categories as “Hinduism” and for a view of history that is dynamic, exploring the influence of political, economic, and cultural changes on the history of religious beliefs, practices, and institutions. Broadly, the ancient Indian religious culture was formed by the intersection of Brahmanical ideology and self-interest, the emerging new religions such as Buddhism and Jainism, and the political formations, such as the Maurya empire in the 3rd century BCE and repeated foreign incursions beginning with Alexander the Great in late 4th century BCE. As a case study, the paper focuses on the central concept of Dharma, showing how its semantic history is deeply intertwined with both the rise of new ascetic religions and the formulation of an imperial ideology based on Dharma by the Maurya emperor Asoka (269-231 BCE).

Patrick Olivelle is Professor of Sanskrit and Indian Religions, Department of Asian Studies at the University of Texas at Austin, where he was the Chair of the Department 1994-2007. He was previously at the Department of Religious Studies at Indiana University, Bloomington, where he was the Chair 1984-1990. Olivelle did his graduate studies at Oxford University and at the University of Pennsylvania. Among his publications are The Asrama System: History and Hermeneutics of a Religious Institution (Oxford, 1993), Rules and Regulations of Brahmanical Asceticism (State University of New York Press, 1994), Upanishads (Oxford, 1996), Pancatantra (1997), The Early Upanishads: Annotated Text and Translation (Oxford, 1998), The Dharmasutras of Apastamba, Gautama, Baudhyana, and Vasistha (Delhi, 2000), Manu’s Code of Law: A Critical Edition and Translation of the Manava-Dharmasastra (Oxford, 2005), Language, Texts, and Society: Explorations in Ancient Indian Culture and Religion (2006), Ascetics and Brahmins: Studies in Ideologies and Institutions (2007), and Life of the Buddha: Buddhacarita by Asvaghosa (2008).

Description

Intense contestation has been embedded in the historical trajectory for a politics of social change both inside and outside of the academy. Marxist thought asserts that ideas of social change can be conceived most effectively at the site of production and circulation within capitalist economies. How these processes intricately construct, reproduce and affect the subjectivities involved remains under-theorized. Conversely, the post-structural focus on the construction and reproduction of these subjectivities deems the political-economic context a minor aspect in terms of understanding the reproduction of violence and oppression. Such simplified articulations, however, have significant consequences: a failure to address the complexities that exist amid these positions; an inability to recognize a common vision that underlies such articulations; and the reproduction of difference within such a politics of social change, which ensures the continuation of the very violence these articulations seek to eradicate. The question becomes: How can we (as academics and activists) come together at such a site of contestation, with the mutual vision of eradicating violence and oppression, to develop a politics of social change that can work together instead of work to divide? The possibility that this very question is implicated in the reproduction of such violence causes us to further ask what the limitations and possibilities are of imagining a Polemics IN Practice.

10:00-10:20am Introductions to (ir)reconcilabilities: Marxism & Post-Structuralism

10:30-11:15am On Governance: Power & Political Economy

Challenging Neoliberal Governmentality: Political Economy, Difference, and Research Praxis

– Alex Means, University of Toronto

Disciplinary statistics and the commodification of education

– Tannis Atkinson, University of Toronto

The Market, Marketism, and Sites of Veridiction

– Jon Roberts, University of Toronto

11:30-12:15pm Subject/Identity/Difference: On the Material & the Constituted

Swarms of Power and Knowledge in Marx and Foucault

– Michael Horacki, Queen’s University

Has the Black Man entered History? Spivak’s Bhaduri, America’s Obama and the Subaltern Voice between Marxist Immediacy and Poststructuralist Futurity

– Ricky Varghese, University of Toronto

Identity/Subject Position as fluid, relational and complex dynamics

– A story from a feminist organization –

– Yukyung Kim-Cho, University of Toronto

12:15-1:00pm LUNCH

1:00-1:45pm Cultural Production & Political Praxis: Aesthetics & Economic Circulation

Foucault contra Marx: Pleasure and the Asceticism of the Left

– Dylan Gordon, University of Toronto

The Political Pop-Art of Wang Guangyi: Towards a Post-Marxist Aesthetic Praxis

– James Poborsa, University of Toronto

The Problem of Aesthetic Practices

– Sean Callaghan, University of Toronto

2:00-2:45pm The Inevitability of Violence?: Reflections on Reform and/or Revolution

Activism: Between Agency and Subjection

– John Duncan, University of Toronto

The Truth About Revolution

– Yafet Tewelde

Examining Marxist Revolutionary versus Reproductive Praxis

– Manuel Larrabure, Diane Millar and Sarah O’Sullivan, University of Toronto

3:00-5:00pm ROUNDTABLE

Description

How do Confucian patriarchy and socialist imaginary form a complicit partnership in shaping women’s corporeal practices in China (PRC) and North Korea? And how do media in those states create a seamless continuity between the stage and everyday life through bodily practices such as dress codes and dance? This talk explores the ways in which China and North Korea invented revolutionary women by propagating idealized female bodily images through pervasive media practices. Although China and North Korea share a long living tradition of Confucianism and struggle against colonialism, each state took a distinctive path in promoting revolutionary ideals through women’s bodies—militaristic ballet in the case of China and traditional dance in the case of North Korea. This talk will address how performance theory and national history can ultimately account for such discursive development of propaganda practices in two East Asian socialist states.

Suk-Young Kim is Assistant Professor of Theater and Dance at the University of California at Santa Barbara. Her research has been acknowledged by the International Federation for Theatre Research New Scholar’s Prize (2004), the American Society for Theater Research Fellowship (2006), the Library of Congress Kluge Fellowship (2006-7), and the Academy of Korean Studies Encouragement of Research Grant. She is currently completing a book project titled Illusive Utopia: Theater, Film, and Everyday Performance in North Korea (University of Michigan Press, forthcoming), which explores how state produced propaganda performances intersect with everyday life practice in North Korea. Another book project, Long Road Home: Testimony of a North Korean Camp Survivor (coauthored with Kim Yong) is forthcoming from Columbia University Press.

Description

The post-9/11 redistribution of US military forces in the world is usually discussed within the framework of Washington’s global policies and war on terror. In South Korea, this development has further exacerbated the public resentment against the presence of American bases, and has engendered strong reactions within the population, ranging from heated debates on the general wisdom of keeping American troops on Korean soil to organised opposition movements against specific military bases. This research examines the social movement which was generated by the recent plan to relocate the U.S. Yongsan garrison to Pyeongtaek, about seventy kilometers South of Seoul. Using coverage by the Korean mainstream and alternative media of the grassroots opposition to that relocation, the study intends to determine how this struggle has been perceived by the general public, and it analyses the various agendas and strategies utilised by the different interest groups within this social movement.

Luc Walhain (Ph.D., Bowling Green State University) is Assistant Professor of History at St. Thomas University (Canada) where he teaches World and Asian History. His Korean ethnic background and upbringing in Europe, combined with his life and academic experience in the US and East Asia, have led him to develop a sense of global social awareness, and steered his research interests towards social and democratic movements in Korea, and the power and control of public discourse. His recent and future research projects include the socio-economic impact of military bases and militarisation of society.

Description

The Toronto Singapore Film Festival (TSFF) celebrates its fourth year in 2009. To commemorate the occasion, TSFF is organizing a two-day film festival from April 3 to 4, held at Revue Cinema and Innis Town Hall respectively.

TSFF is a non-profit organization that aims to introduce and raise the profile and cultures of Asia and Singapore, and also to offer Canadians an opportunity to enjoy the best of Singaporean films.

Through the annual film festival, TSFF aims to create professional and social networking opportunities between Asians, Canadians and Singaporean living in Canada, thus forging friendships and uniting film interests between Toronto and Singapore, two of the world’s most dynamic multi-cultural cities.

The official 2009 selection will present a total of nine critically acclaimed collections of features, documentary and short films, including six North American premieres, two Canadian premieres, and one Toronto premiere.

Description

Interested in Pursuing a Career in Hong Kong?
Or Want to Work within the HKSAR Government?

Then THIS is for YOU!

Destination Hong Kong!
Hong Kong Economic & Trade Office Meet and Greet

The Hong Kong Economic & Trade Office (HKETO) with support from the Asian Institute is jointly hosting a Meet and Greet with major Chinese student clubs at the University of Toronto, York University and Ryerson University. A Reception will be followed by a presentation by HKETO

The Reception and Presentation will touch on:
1) Latest Economic Situation in Hong Kong
2) Current Employment Market and different Job Opportunities
3) Future Professional Career Development
4) Networking Opportunities

FREE EVENT!

6:00-6:30 Reception with refreshments provided
6:30-8:30 Guest Speaker: Ms Maureen Siu, Director, HKETO
Video Presentations from professionals in Hong Kong

ALL STUDENTS (including Canadian students without an HK-ID) are WELCOME to attend!

Please PRE-REGISTER by clicking above, through your student club; or send a reply to info@hketotoronto.gov.ca; and JOIN our Facebook Event – “Destination Hong Kong” for More Information!

Spaces are limited and will be assigned on first-come-first-serve basis.

Do hurry before they are gone!

Description

The tsunami that struck in 2003 hit hardest in the Indonesian province of Aceh. Johsua Barker, from UT along with Arief Djati, an NGO worker, visited the cities struck. This talk describes the effects of the catastrophe three years after it occurred. It begins by asking what a ‘catastrophe’ is and whether this disaster qualifies as one.

James Siegel taught in the Departments of Anthropology and Asian Studies at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y. for 43 years. His work concerns Indonesia for the most part.

Description

Unexpected resolutions of the “agrarian question” have stoked upper- and middle-caste anxieties about secularism and development. This has led not to the abandonment of development but rather its articulation to a communal “war machine” that has attempted to capture the state for its Hindu nationalist agenda. The outcome is a re-constituted development machine that sanctions anti-minoritarian violence in the name of development. The populist career and bizarre alliances of Hindu ethnonationalism in Gujarat prompts a rethinking of the workings of Gramscian hegemony: as an ecology of ‘affect’ that has the structure of contingent necessity.

Vinay K. Gidwani is Associate Professor in the Department of Geography and the Institute of Global Studies, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis. He received an interdisciplinary PhD in Environmental Science, Policy, and Management from the University of California, His research interests include geographies of work, agro-ecological change, the intersection of class and cultural politics, and critical social theory.

Description

The lecture explores facets of Jain modernism as a distinct type of Jainism. Jain modernism is a broad cultural movement without a sectarian base or an ideological consensus. Modern is the Jain experience of the moving chasm between the old and the new; the belief in the superiority of the present over the past, and attempts to bridge the chasm.

Peter Flügel is Lecturer in the Study of Religions and Chair of the Centre of Jaina Studies at the Department of the Study of Religions in the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. He has published extensively on the history, anthropology and sociology of contemporary Jain schools and sects, Jain stūpas, Jaina-Vaiṣṇava syncretism, and on the social and legal history of the Jain tradition. Recent publications include the edited volumes Studies in Jaina History and Culture: Disputes and Dialogues and (with Gustaaf Houtman) Asceticism and Power in South- and Southeast Asia.

Description

The talk will focus on the Japanese term for science, kagaku, and why it began to be increasingly used as the Chinese term for science after the 1894-95 Sino-Japanese War, when most scholars began to argue that China had never developed any science of its own. Earlier aspects of Chinese interests in natural studies were forgotten, not to be revived until the 1950s by Joseph Needham as part of his “Science & Civilisation in China” project.

Benjamin Elman is Professor of East Asian Studies and History with his primary department in East Asian Studies. Currently he is also Director of the Princeton Program in East Asian Studies. His teaching and research fields include: 1) Chinese intellectual and cultural history, 1000-1900; 2) history of science in China, 1600-1930; 3) history of education in late imperial China; 4) Sino-Japanese cultural history, 1600-1850. His publications include: From Philosophy to Philology (1984, 1990, Chinese edition 1995, revised 2nd edition 2001, Korean edition 2004); Classicism, Politics, and Kinship (1990, Chinese edition 1998); A Cultural History of Civil Examinations in Late Imperial China (2000). He recently completed two projects: A Cultural History of Modern Science in China (2006); and On Their Own Terms: Science in China, 1550-1900 (2005), both published by Harvard University Press.

Description

Professor Leung Ping-Kwan, invited by Richard Charles Lee Canada-Hong Kong Library, will introduce his latest work “Postcolonial Affairs of Food and the Heart”, which is a collection of stories about life in Hong Kong after 1997. Prof. Leung is the chair professor in comparative literature at Lingnan University. He has published a novel, collections of stories, poems as well as criticism on urban culture and literary studies. He was awarded The Hong Kong Urban Council’s Biennial Award for Literature in 1991 and 1997.
He also had his poetry and photograph exhibitions “Food and the City” and “East West Matters” in Hong Kong, Frankfurt and Bern. The talk will be presented in Cantonese.

Admission is free.

也斯，原名梁秉鈞，現為香港嶺南大學比較文學講座教授。其作品甚豐，著有詩歌、小說、散文及評論。其小說集《布拉格的明信片》與詩集《半途》曾分別獲第一屆與第四屆中文文學雙年獎。散文新作《也斯的香港》，曾在香港及德國舉行攝影展覽。也斯將過去十一年中寫成的十二個互相牽連的小説最近集結成《後殖民食物與愛情》一書出版，以飲食滋味、男歡女愛敍述回歸十年的香港故事。
也斯訪加，應利銘澤典宬之邀，將用粵語介紹新作並分享其寫作經歷。

活動免費。