Past Events at the Dr. David Chu Program in Asia-Pacific Studies
March 2019
-
Saturday, March 16th A Body in Fukushima: Reflections on the Nuclear in Everyday Life
Date Time Location Saturday, March 16, 2019 1:00PM - 5:00PM External Event, Innis Town Hall, University of Toronto, 2 Sussex Avenue + Register for this Event Print this Event Bookmark this Event
Description
NOTE: This event consisted of three components: (1) Photo Exhibitions – March 4 to April 14; (2) A Body in a Library Performance by Eiko Otake – March 15; (3) Video Screening and Symposium – March 16. All three were free of charge. Registration was required ONLY for the the third part – Video Screening and Symposium.
This was a multi-sited, multi-media, and multi-disciplinary event that demonstrated how art can contribute to critical reflection on the nuclearization of everyday life in our contemporary world. Since 2014 Eiko Otake and William Johnston have photographed the performer among the ruins and abandoned places that have been left in the aftermath of the nuclear catastrophe of March 2011. Following a magnitude 9 earthquake off the coast of Northeastern Japan, a massive tsunami inundated reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi Plant, resulting in meltdowns in three reactors. The Fukushima disaster is regarded as the second largest nuclear accident in history, and yet its full consequences remain temporally and spatially boundless and ultimately unknowable — a reality that Otake’s haunting bodily performances and Johnston’s striking photography make so compelling. Otake’s and Johnston’s collaborative work on Fukushima has been exhibited in major venues across the Americas and appears in Canada for the first time.
Otake is a world-renowned, movement-based artist who performed as Eiko and Koma for more than forty years before beginning her solo performances for the project, A Body in Places. Her awards include a Guggenheim, MacArthur, Samuel H. Scripps American Dance Festival Award, and Dance Magazine Award for lifetime achievement. William Johnston is a photographer and historian whose critically acclaimed written work and photography have focused on issues of the body, sexuality, disease, the environment, and public health. The symposium accompanying the exhibitions and performancel featured presentations by leading scholars and artists working across disciplines.
PHOTO EXHIBITIONS DATES: March 4 – April 14, 2019 (depending on the library hours) LOCATIONS: Robarts Library, 130 St. George Street, Toronto, ON 1st floor exhibition area,and 8th floor, Cheng Yu Tung East Asian Library Toronto Reference Library, 789 Yonge St., Toronto, ON 3rd and 5th floors CURATORS: Takashi Fujitani, Director, Dr. David Chu Program in Asia Pacific Studies Henry Heng Lu, Independent Curator and Founder, Call Again
A BODY IN A LIBRARY PERFORMANCE BY EIKO OTAKE DATE: Friday, March 15, 5:15 – 7:00 PM LOCATION: Toronto Reference Library, 789 Yonge Street, Toronto, ON VIDEO SCREENING AND SYMPOSIUM * Registration was required * DATE: Saturday, March 16, 1:00 – 5:00 PM, followed by reception LOCATION: Innis Town Hall, Innis College, 2 Sussex Ave., Toronto, ON SYMPOSIUM PARTICIPANTS: Eiko Otake, Independent movement-based performance artist William Johnston, Department of History, Wesleyan University CHAIR Takashi Fujitani, Department of History and Dr. David Chu Program in Asia-Pacific Studies, University of Toronto PANELISTS Marilyn Ivy, Department of Anthropology, Columbia University Photography and 3.11, with a meditation on William Johnston’s photographs of Eiko Otake in Fukushima Katy McCormick, School of Image Arts, Ryerson University Searching for A Body, Finding Trees Lisa Yoneyama, Women and Gender Studies Institute and Department of East Asian Studies, University of Toronto Post-Fukushima Epistemology Tong Lam, Department of History, University of Toronto Fallout, promise! Some reflections on pink landscapes.
If you are attending a Munk School event and require accommodation(s), please email the event contact listed above to make appropriate arrangements.
Disclaimer: Please note that events posted on this website are considered to be public events – unless otherwise stated – and you are choosing to enter a space where your image and/or voice may be captured as part of event proceedings that may be made public as part of a broadcast, webcast, or publication (online and in print). We make every effort to ensure your personal information is kept and used in compliance with the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act (FIPPA). If you have any questions please get in touch with our office at munkschool@utoronto.ca or 416-946-8900.
-
Thursday, March 21st Identification Technologies and Biometric Power: A Transition from Occupied China to Post-World War II Japan
Date Time Location Thursday, March 21, 2019 4:00PM - 6:00PM Seminar Room 208N, 1 Devonshire Place + Register for this Event Print this Event Bookmark this Event
Description
The invention of identification technologies is deeply connected with the surveillance of colonial populations. Fingerprinting, the forerunner of biometrics, was created by the British police in colonial India in 1897, and was also employed in Manchuria and Northeast China under Japanese occupation from the 1920’s to 1945. Why did fingerprint identification attract the Japanese imperialist power, and how effectively was it practiced? We examine narratives surrounding the Japanese identification systems in Manchuria, especially regarding Chinese workers who were placed under severe surveillance, and discuss how a similar scheme survived the lost war and was actually legitimated in post-World War Ⅱ Japan. The expansion and transformation of biometric power can be seen in the Japanese government’s repeated attempts to establish “perfect” identification systems. Surveillance has spread from ex-colonial populations to foreign workers and to citizens, culminating in recent legislative changes concerning enhanced technologies.
ASAKO TAKANO is an Associate Professor at Meiji Pharmaceutical University in Tokyo, Japan. She received her Ph.D. in Social Sciences from Hitotsubashi University, and published her book in Japan in 2016, Fingerprints and Modernity.
MIDORI OGASAWARA is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at Queen’s University, and a Banting Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Ottawa. She conducted field research in China to investigate the Chinese experiences of Japanese colonial identification systems and obtained her Ph.D. in Sociology from Queen’s in 2018.
If you are attending a Munk School event and require accommodation(s), please email the event contact listed above to make appropriate arrangements.
Disclaimer: Please note that events posted on this website are considered to be public events – unless otherwise stated – and you are choosing to enter a space where your image and/or voice may be captured as part of event proceedings that may be made public as part of a broadcast, webcast, or publication (online and in print). We make every effort to ensure your personal information is kept and used in compliance with the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act (FIPPA). If you have any questions please get in touch with our office at munkschool@utoronto.ca or 416-946-8900.
-
Friday, March 22nd – Saturday, March 23rd Beauty, Brutality, and the Neocolonial City
Date Time Location Friday, March 22, 2019 9:30AM - 3:00PM Seminar Room 108N, University of Toronto Saturday, March 23, 2019 4:00PM - 6:00PM External Event, University of Toronto + Register for this Event Print this Event Bookmark this Event
Description
Please use the registration button above to sign up for the lecture on March 22. To sign up for a reading on March 23, please click here to register on Eventbrite.
This two-day event brings together international scholars and critics to explore the complexity, dynamism, and significance of Manila within and beyond Asia. As a city that has experienced the multiple vestiges of empire, the disciplinary machinations of dictatorial rule, the effects an infamous “war on drugs”, and the continued realities of uneven resource distribution, Manila serves as a productive physical and ideological space to explore the dialogic nature of beauty and brutality—as these concepts intertwine in the urban repertoires of the global south. On March 22, speakers will reflect on how Manila influences their work as diasporic critics scholars. On March 23, renowned Filipino American author Jessica Hagedorn will have her Toronto debut and read from her most famous works. She will also converse with Lucy San Pablo Burns (UCLA), discussing her thoughts on the city, and Manila, as an imaginative space for her artistry and craft. Books can be purchased at the venue, in collaboration with Another Story Bookshop.
FRIDAY, MARCH 22
108N – NORTH HOUSE, MUNK SCHOOL OF GLOBAL AFFAIRS AND PUBLIC POLICY,
1 DEVONSHIRE PLACE
Program:
9:30 AM – 10:00 AM – Welcoming Remarks
10:00 AM – 12:00 PM – Dialogue 1: Sensing the City
SPEAKERS: Ferdinand Lopez (Toronto); Gary Devilles (Ateneo De Manila); Paul Nadal (Princeton); Genevieve Clutario (Harvard)
12:00 PM – 1:00 PM – Lunch
1:00 PM – 3:00 PM – Dialogue 2: Intimacies and the City
SPEAKERS: Robert Diaz (Toronto); Denise Cruz (Columbia); Martin Manalansan (Minnesota); Christine Balance (Cornell); Allan Isaac (Rutgers)***********************
SATURDAY, MARCH 23
NEXUS LOUNGE, 12TH FLOOR, OISE (Ontario Institute for Studies in Education), 252 BLOOR ST. W.
A Reading with Noted Author Jessica Hagedorn, in Conversation with Lucy Mae San Pablo Burns (UCLA)
Program:
4:00 PM – 4:10 PM – Welcoming Remarks
4:10 PM – 4:30 PM – Performance by Patrick Salvani
4:30 PM – 6:00 PM – Reading with Jessica Hagedorn, and Conversation with Lucy Burns (UCLA)
If you are attending a Munk School event and require accommodation(s), please email the event contact listed above to make appropriate arrangements.
Disclaimer: Please note that events posted on this website are considered to be public events – unless otherwise stated – and you are choosing to enter a space where your image and/or voice may be captured as part of event proceedings that may be made public as part of a broadcast, webcast, or publication (online and in print). We make every effort to ensure your personal information is kept and used in compliance with the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act (FIPPA). If you have any questions please get in touch with our office at munkschool@utoronto.ca or 416-946-8900.
-
Monday, March 25th Sex and Power in Occupied Japan
Date Time Location Monday, March 25, 2019 4:00PM - 6:00PM Seminar Room 208N, 1 Devonshire Place + Register for this Event Print this Event Bookmark this Event
Description
Abstract:
Based on Robert Kramm’s book Sanitized Sex, the talk will discuss the various attempts to sanitize sexuality through the regulation of prostitution, venereal disease and intimacy in occupied Japan after World War II. It features sexuality as key element in issues of security, health and morale during the occupation period. In doing so it underscores how the sanitization of sex was a male-dominated struggle for control and authority in the clash of two competing patriarchal, imperial powers: Japan and the United States. That said, the talk is more than a study of the postwar sexual encounters. An analysis of sex, its regulation and negotiation between occupiers and occupied sheds new light on the everyday experiences and asymmetries of power in occupied Japan, the legacies of the Japanese Empire, and the particularities of postwar U.S. imperialism in the postcolonial formation of the Asia-Pacific region.
Robert Kramm is a post-doctoral fellow in the Society of Fellows in the Humanities and is affiliated with the Department of History at the University of Hong Kong. He holds a doctoral degree in history from ETH Zurich and received his B.A. and M.A., also in history, from the University of Erfurt.
If you are attending a Munk School event and require accommodation(s), please email the event contact listed above to make appropriate arrangements.
Disclaimer: Please note that events posted on this website are considered to be public events – unless otherwise stated – and you are choosing to enter a space where your image and/or voice may be captured as part of event proceedings that may be made public as part of a broadcast, webcast, or publication (online and in print). We make every effort to ensure your personal information is kept and used in compliance with the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act (FIPPA). If you have any questions please get in touch with our office at munkschool@utoronto.ca or 416-946-8900.