Past Events

Description

"Poetic Refuge: Migration and the Films of Phuttiphong Aroonpheng" was the fourth seminar for the Mediating Race, Reimagining Geopolitics, JHI-UTM Seminar 2020-2021, co-hosted by the Department of Visual Studies, the Southeast Asia Seminar Series at the Asian Institute, Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy, the UTM Collaborative Digital Research Space, University of Toronto, the Toronto Film and Media Seminar and Objectifs.   

* Screenings details for Manta Ray will be provided on Oct 31st to the first 100 registrants based in Canada.   

* The film "Ferris Wheel" can be screened for free until November 4th here: https://objectifsfilmlibrary.uscreen.io/programs/ferris_wheel_  

Both films will be available from Oct 31st to Nov 4th.

Description

Join us for a virtual information session on the MIA/MGA Dual Degree Program with the Hertie School of Governance. Representatives from both Munk School and Hertie will be on hand to answer questions about the program.

Please register to receive the Zoom link before the event.

Description

Definitively addressing the problem with debates about “good” and “bad” Black representation, The Content of Our Caricature: African American Comic Art and Political Belonging (New York University Press, 2020) explains what happens when Black cartoonists revisit and reanimate the archive of the racial grotesque. Black comics and cartoons that appeared in Black newspapers at the beginning of the twentieth century, underground comics independently produced and distributed in the 1970s, and today’s big-budget film adaptations of superhero comics share complex imaginings of the political potential and limitations of caricature. Wanzo’s book reads the work of a rarely acknowledged lineage of Black cartoonists alongside comic and cartoon figures of American citizenship—images of the romantic revolutionary, the soldier and the child. Black comics recall the ways Blackness is rendered incommensurable with American citizenship when it shares the frame with these idealized tropes and, instead of abandoning this history of representation, they leverage its elasticity. As a result, using horror and humor, Black cartoonists visualize critiques of American visual culture that are not bound by time, space, or medium.   

Author Dr. Rebecca Wanzo, Chair and Professor of Women, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and Affiliate Professor of American Culture Studies at Washington University in St. Louis and Dr. Lauren McLeod Cramer, Assistant Professor in the Cinema Studies Institute at the University of Toronto came together to discuss The Content of Our Caricature.

Description

Morning Session | 9:00 – 10:30 am EST  

9:00-9:10am Welcome remark by Hyun-Ok Park (York)  

9:10-9:20am Introduction to the Symposium: Hae Yeon Choo (U of Toronto)

9:20-10:30am Keynote Speech   

Chair: Yewon Lee (George Washington University)  

Discussant: Laam Hae (York University)   

Hyun Bang Shin (LSE) “Whither Progressive Urban Futures? Critical Reflections on the Politics of Temporality in Asia”

Evening Session | 6:00 – 8:45 pm EST   

6:00-7:15pm Panel 1: The Making of the Speculative City: Past and Present  

Chair: Yoonkyung Lee (U of Toronto)

Discussant: Hyun Bang Shin (LSE)   

Hyun-Chul Kim (U of Toronto) “Juxtaposing Biopolitics with Speculative Urbanisms: The Development of Private Welfare/Health Institutions in South Korea”   

Seung-Cheol Lee (Seoul National University) “Seeing Like a Community Entrepreneur: The Capitalization of ‘Community’ in Seoul’s Community Building Project (maul mandulgi)”   

7:15-7:30pm Break   

7:30-8:45pm Panel 2: The Unmaking of the Speculative City  

Chair: Hyun-Chul Kim (U of Toronto)  

Discussant: Jesook Song (U of Toronto)   

Laam Hae (York) “Toward a Dialectical Vision of Planetary Urbanization: Ecological Pro-Greenbelt Movements against the Construction State in Korea”   

Yewon Lee (George Washington University) “Precarious Workers in the Speculative City: Making Worker’s Power of Self-Employed Tenant Shopkeepers in Seoul through the Production of Space”   

Participants’ Bios:   

Hae Yeon Choo is an Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Toronto. She is an author of Decentering Citizenship: Gender, Labor, and Migrant Rights in South Korea (Stanford University Press, 2016), a comparative study of three groups of Filipina women in South Korea: factory workers, wives of South Korean men, and hostesses at American military camptown clubs. Her current research examines the politics of land ownership in contemporary South Korea, delving into macro-level political contestations over land rights, together with the narratives of people who pursue class mobility through real estate speculation. She has also translated Audre Lorde’s Sister Outsider and Patricia Hill Collins’s Black Feminist Thought into Korean.  

Laam Hae is an Associate Professor in the department of Politics at York University. Her research areas are urban political economy, neoliberal urbanism and urban social movements. She is the author of The Gentrification of Nightlife and the Right to the City: Regulating Spaces of Social Dancing in New York (2012, Routledge), and co-edited On the Margins of Urban South Korea: Core Location as Method and Praxis (2019, University of Toronto Press). She is currently developing a research project that examines the spatiality of social reproduction and gender inequality in South Korea.   

Hyun-Chul Kim is a PhD Candidate at the Department of Geography & Planning, University of Toronto. Her research interests include the varied degree of confined, segregated spaces in East Asian regions, from nursing homes to prisons, considering urban constructions, intimacy, and disability. She is writing her dissertation tentatively titled “Between Communal ‘Village’ and an Atomized ‘Home’: Blurring the boundaries of community organization movement and segregated-confined welfare spaces of South Korea in 1950s-1960s”.  

Seung Cheol Lee received his PhD from Columbia University in 2018 and is now an assistant professor of anthropology at Seoul National University. His research interests are focused on the question of how neoliberal financialization has reshaped people’s social, affective, ethical, and political lives. He is currently working on a book manuscript that examines how the ethicality and sociality of gift-giving are grafted onto neoliberal market rationality in the social economy sector in South Korea.  

Yewon Andrea Lee is a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Institute for Korean Studies at George Washington University. As a political and labor sociologist and urban ethnographer, Yewon is broadly interested in how speculative real estate interests increasingly dictate the shape and character of urban landscapes and how, in response, ordinary people organize everyday space and practice politics of dissent. Her dissertation, Precarious Workers in the Speculative City: The Untold Gentrification Story of Tenant Shopkeepers’ Displacement and Resistance in Seoul, examines how tenant shopkeepers, who are often labeled as either micro-entrepreneurs or petit bourgeoisie and overlooked as workers, are emerging as agents of social change. She sheds light on the fascinating case of tenant shopkeepers in Seoul organizing to expose the precarity of their livelihoods and, along the way, finding their collective voice as workers.  

Yoonkyung Lee is an associate professor in the Department of Sociology and the director of the Center for the Study of Korea at the University of Toronto. She is a political sociologist specializing in labor politics, social movements, political representation, and the political economy of neoliberalism with a regional focus on East Asia. She is the author of Militants or Partisans: Labor Unions and Democratic Politics in Korea and Taiwan (Stanford University Press 2011) and numerous journal articles that appeared in Globalizations, Studies in Comparative International Development, Asian Survey, Journal of Contemporary Asia, and Critical Asian Studies.  

Hyun Ok Park teaches sociology and the director of the Korean Office for Research and Education (KORE) at York University. With archival and ethnographic research, her research investigates global capitalism in colonial, industrial, and financial forms, democracy, socialism, and post-socialist transition. She is the author of Two Dreams in One Bed: Empire, Social Life, and the Origins of the North Korean Revolution in Manchuria (Duke University Press, 2005). Her latest book is The Capitalist Unconscious: From Korean Unification to Transnational Korea (Columbia University Press, 2015). She is completing a book manuscript, “A Sublime Disaster: The Sewŏl Ferry Incident and the Politics of the Living Dead.”    

Hyun Bang Shin is Professor of Geography and Urban Studies and Director of the Saw Swee Hock Southeast Asia Centre at LSE. His research centres on the critical analysis of the political economic dynamics of urbanisation with particular attention to cities in Asian countries such as China, South Korea, Malaysia, Vietnam, and Singapore. His research themes include speculative urbanisation; the politics of redevelopment; displacement; gentrification; housing; the right to the city; mega-events as urban spectacles; mega-projects. He has published widely in major international journals and contributed to numerous books on the above themes. His books include Global Gentrifications: Uneven Development and Displacement (Policy Press, 2015); Planetary Gentrification (Polity Press, 2016); Anti Gentrification: What is to be Done (Dongnyok, 2017); Neoliberal Urbanism, Contested Cities and Housing in Asia (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019).  

Jesook Song is Professor in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Toronto. Her research focuses on contemporary urban transformation and welfare issues, including homelessness, youth unemployment, single women’s housing, mental health in South Korea. She is author of South Koreans in the Debt Crisis: The Creation of a Neoliberal Welfare Society (Duke University Press, 2009) and Living on Your Own: Single Women, Rental Housing, and Post-Revolutionary Affect in Contemporary South Korea (SUNY Press, 2014), On the Margins of Urban South Korea: Core Location as Method and Praxis (University of Toronto Press 2019, co-edited with Laam Hae).  

This event is organized by Hae Yeon Choo (University of Toronto).  This event is presented by the Korean Office for Research and Education (KORE) at York University which is funded by the Academy of Korean Studies. It is co-presented by the Centre for the Study of Korea (University of Toronto). It is co-sponsored by School of Cities (University of Toronto).

Description

The place of religion in Greece’s public education system has been the focal point for intense debate in the last decade. The debate has seen contributions from a broad range of actors, including parents of students in the Greek public-school system, Greek political parties across the spectrum, the Orthodox Church of Greece, two especially vocal unions of theologians, the Greek Supreme Administrative Court, and the European Court of Human Rights. This lecture addresses the various relevant claims, concerns and actions of each of these actors and teases out ways in which the debate over religious education in Greece reveals perennial problems in the relationship between religion and national identity in the Greek context, and between church and state.

Effie Fokas is a Senior Research Fellow at the Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Policy (ELIAMEP) and a Research Associate of the London School of Economics Hellenic Observatory. She was Principal Investigator of the European Research Council-funded project on grassroots impact of European Court of Human Rights religious freedoms case law (Grassrootsmobilise), based at ELIAMEP. Her publications include Islam in Europe: Diversity, Identity and Influence, co-edited with Aziz Al-Azmeh; Religious America, Secular Europe?, coauthored with Peter Berger and Grace Davie; The European Court of Human Rights and Minority Religions, co-edited with James T. Richardson; and over 50 articles and book chapters exploring religion at the intersection with politics, law, human rights, nationalism, and European identity.

Description

Japan | 2019 | 179 min | Japanese with English subtitles | Closed Captions, Drama, Fantasy   

In the port town of Onomichi, Japan, the only movie theatre is bidding goodbye to its local audiences. The owners organize a nightlong screening devoted to historical Japanese war films. Noriko, a teenager who regularly helps in the theatre, walks toward the stage and astonishes the audience as suddenly, she mystically projects herself into an old musical. Film buff Mario, film-history nerd Hosuke, and aspiring yakuza Shigeru are also warped into the cinema screen in sequences that represent the second Sino-Japanese War, Boshin War and Hiroshima bombing. The four embark on an immersive, surreal and vicious cycle of damnation and salvation in the face of war’s savagery.  Nobuhiko Obayashi’s swan song Labyrinth of Cinema dives into the senselessness of wars, wrapped in cinematic oddities. His abstracted reconstruction of Japan’s darkest events points out that movies, though a fabrication of reality, epitomize suffering as universal truth.  – Rolando Basmayor

CAST: Rei Yoshida Yoshihiko Hosoda Hirona Yamazaki Riko Narumi  

Recognitions: OFFICIAL SELECTION Tokyo International Film Festival, 2019 International Film Festival Rotterdam, 2020 Fantasia International Film Festival, 2020  

Director Bio: Nobuhiko Obayashi 大林 宣彦  Nobuhiko Obayashi (9 January 1938 – 10 April 2020) was a Japanese director, screenwriter, and editor of films and television advertisements. He began his filmmaking career as a pioneer of Japanese experimental films before transitioning to directing more mainstream media, and his resulting filmography as a director spanned almost 60 years

RELATED EVENT: Live Online Discussion With Special Guests

DATE: November 18, 6:30 PM  

Unpack the layers of this film with our special guests Rob Buscher of Philly Asian American Film Festival and Daisuke Miyao of University of California San Diego. ASL interpretation will be made available thanks to Toronto Sign Language Interpreter Services. Ticket holders can watch on the CineSend Reel Asian portal.  

GUEST SPEAKERS:  

ROB BUSCHER Board Chair of the Philadelphia Asian American Film Festival  Rob Buscher is a film and media specialist, educator, arts administrator, and published author who has worked in non profit arts organizations for over a decade. Buscherʼs expertise is Japanese and Asian American & Pacific Islander Cinema although he has worked as a  professional film programmer, critic, and lecturer across a variety of fields.  He currently lectures at University of  Pennsylvania, and is a contributing writer at Pacific Citizen and Broad Street Review. Buscher also serves as President of the Philadelphia Chapter of civil rights group  Japanese American Citizens League and chairs the editorial board of Pacific Citizen, the organization’s national newspaper.  

DAISUKE MIYAO  Professor in Department of Literature, University of California at San Diego  Considering cinema to be a transnational cultural form from the beginning of its history and simultaneously to be a national entity, formed by specific discourses on nationalism and modernization, Daisuke Miyao has been conducting research on film history. His interdisciplinary training in cinema studies, East Asian studies, and American studies, combined with his bicultural background, living and studying both in Japanese and North American academia, made it possible for him to recognize that the study of film could benefit from cross-cultural and interdisciplinary perspectives.

Description

* Screening Dates: November 12 – 19, 2020  

* Register above for FREE screening  

* Related Event: A.K.A Don Bonus Masterclass – November 17, 6:30 – 8:30 PM (Scroll down for details; by registering for the screening, you are also getting access to the masterclass and vice versa)    

USA | 1995 | 65 min | English | Archive Presentation | Documentary   

Cambodian-born Sokly “Don Bonus” Ny takes a Hi8 camcorder into his final year of high school in the San Francisco Bay Area, documenting intersecting events happening at school, at home, and amongst friends and family. Filmed and released in 1995, the film can be seen as a forerunner of the now-popular diary or vlog documentary format, featuring raw footage and voiceover from Don Bonus.  Although made in the 1990s, the beats of the film are familiar and still relevant, moving through issues of low-income housing, gang violence, academic struggle, and family fractures, while also featuring communal celebration, youthful camaraderie and intimate family life. These scenes are simultaneously casual and intentional, recontextualized and given resonance through Don Bonus’ frank, teenage monologic reflections.  A.K.A Don Bonus highlights how the stories that came before us, although constructed from their time and space, can continue to speak powerfully into our present.  – Jasmine Gui

CAST: Sokly Ny  

Recognitions OFFICIAL SELECTION Berlin International Film Festival, 1996 San Francisco Film Festival, 1995   AWARDS National Emmy Award, 1996 Golden Gate Award, San Francisco Film Festival, 1995  

DIRECTOR BIO

Spencer Nakasako has over three decades of experience as an independent filmmaker and is the founder of the groundbreaking Media Lab at the Vietnamese Youth Development Center in San Francisco’s Tenderloin District. Nakasako is a member of the Writers Guild of America, and the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

RELATED EVENT: A.K.A. Don Bonus Masterclass

DATE: November 17, 6:30 – 8:30 PM   

Deep dive into this critical archival film with director Spencer Nakasako, Reel Asian, and the Asian Institute! This masterclass will explore the narrative construction of A.K.A Don Bonus, methods of production, the vlog-style documentary format, and contextualize the film in its era but also situate it in ongoing contemporary conversations.  

SPEAKERS:

Spencer Nakasako • Director

Spencer Nakasako has over three decades of experience as an independent filmmaker. He won a National Emmy Award for a.k.a. Don Bonus, the video diary of a Cambodian refugee teenager that aired on the PBS series P.O.V. and screened at the Berlin International Film Festival. Kelly Loves Tony, a video diary about a Iu Mien refugee teenage couple growing up too fast in Oakland, California, also aired on P.O.V. His third film in his trilogy about Southeast Asian youth, Refugee, aired on the PBS series Independent Lens, and garnered major awards at the Hawaii International Film Festival and Hamptons Film Festival. Nakasako is the founder of the ground-breaking Media Lab at the Vietnamese Youth Development Center in San Francisco’s Tenderloin District where he collaborated with youth from the neighborhood on filmmaking for 17 years.  

Miko Revereza • Filmmaker  

Miko Revereza is a filmmaker raised in California and currently residing between several countries. His upbringing as an undocumented immigrant in the United States informs his relationship with moving images. DROGA! (2014), DISINTEGRATION 93-96 (2017), No data plan (2018) and Distancing (2019) have widely screened at festivals such as Locarno Film Festival, International Film Festival Rotterdam, NYFF Projections and Film Society of Lincoln Center’s Art of the Real. Aside from these films, Revereza produces expanded cinema, direct animation, performance, criticism and publishing including works such as Biometrics (2018), Live Cinema (2019-2020) and Towards a Stateless Cinema (2019). Revereza is listed as Filmmaker Magazine’s 2018 25 New Faces of Independent Cinema, a 2019 Flaherty Seminar featured filmmaker and MFA graduate at Bard College Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts. He is a 2021 recipient of the Vilcek Foundation Prize for Creative Promise in Filmmaking.  

MODERATOR: Aram Siu Wai Collier • Head of Programming, Reel Asian  

Aram Siu Wai Collier is a filmmaker, educator, and film festival programmer. He has a background in documentary, editing the award-winning feature documentary Refugee and directing/editing the short doc Who I Became. His subsequent dramatic and experimental film work has played festivals in the United States, Canada, Japan, and China. From 2011-2014, his omnibus live music and film project Suite Suite Chinatown toured Canada, Asia, and the United States. In 2017, he wrote, directed, edited, and produced the feature film Stand Up Man, which had its World premiere at the Atlantic Film Festival and its International Premiere at the Hawaii International Film Festival. Most recently Aram directed and edited the award-winning short documentary A Sweet & Sour Christmas for CBC. He is currently the Head of Programming at the Toronto Reel Asian International Film Festival and teaches Media Production at Humber College.  

Registration for Masterclass: https://www.reelasian.com/festival-events/aka-donbonus-masterclass/ ***Ticket Registration for the A.K.A Don Bonus Masterclass includes access to the A.K.A Don Bonus film.

Description

Join Prof. Tom Nichols of the US Naval War College, and Prof. Robert Bothwell of the University of Toronto, for a discussion of the US election results and their implications.

Description

This talk will drew on material in the speaker’s recent book, Vigil:Hong Kong on the Brink, while also dealing with events that have happened since he finished making the last corrections to the proofs of it almost exactly a year before the day this presentation has been made. The quintet of key moments in Hong Kong history addressed (the five "acts" in the title) was the period around the time of the following events: the 1997 Handover, the 2014 Umbrella Movement, series of lesser known but important events in late 2015 and 2016, the 2019 protest surge, and the 2020 actions associated with imposing of the new National Security Law.  

Jeffrey Wasserstrom is the Chancellor’s Professor of History at UC Irvine, where he also holds courtesy appointments in Law and Literary Journalism. His most recent books are Vigil: Hong Kong on the Brink (Columbia Global Reports, 2020) and, as co-author with Maura Elizabeth Cunningham, China in the 21st Century: What Everyone Needs to Know (Oxford, third edition, 2018). He often contributes to newspapers (the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, etc.), literary reviews (such as the TLS, Mekong Review, and LARB), and magazines (e.g., The Nation and Dissent). He served as Editor of the Journal of Asian Studies from 2008 until 2019; he was an adviser to the Hong Kong International Literary Festival; he has consulted on documentary films about the Tiananmen protests and the Umbrella Movement; and he has edited or co-edited books on topics ranging from gender in China’s past and present to human rights and revolutions.

Sebastian Veg is a Professor of intellectual history of modern and contemporary China at EHESS (School of Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences), Paris and an Honorary Professor at the University of Hong Kong. His most recent books are Minjian: The Rise of China’s Grassroots Intellectuals (Columbia UP, 2019) and Sunflowers and Umbrellas: Social Movements, Expressive Practices and Political Culture in Taiwan and Hong Kong (co-edited with Thomas Gold, 2020).

Description

In November 2020, the Centre for the Study of the United States hosted the F. Ross Johnson Virtual Colloquium on Precarity. "Lives on the Edge" was about the different forms precarity takes – a social, political and economic balancing act disproportionately experienced by members of already marginalized and disadvantaged groups. We welcomed five guest speakers who gave talks on the following topics:  “Home Care Fault Lines: Tensions and Alliances across Flexibility and Security” Cynthia Cranford, Associate Professor of Sociology, University of Toronto  Precarious employment scholarship shows how flexible labour markets generate growing insecurity for workers and rising profits for employers, since legislation, and many unions, take the Fordist factory and its ‘standard’ (full-time, permanent) employment relationship as the norm. We know much less about the flexibility-security trade off when claims for flexibility come not from profit motives but from social service needs of citizens. This presentation uncovered flexibility-security tensions within personal support services – which provides help with intimate daily activities like bathing, eating and housework – based on the book Home Care Fault Lines: Understanding Tensions and Creating Alliances. Home Care Fault Lines analyzes the multiple dynamics that exacerbate or mitigate tension between workers’ claims for security in work and employment and elderly and disabled people’s need for flexibility in service delivery and excavates the potential for flexible care and secure work. Based on interviews with over 300 people, it includes the vantage points of workers, service users, labour and disability activists, employers and state officials to compare four state-funded programs in California and Ontario, together covering assistance to adults with physical disabilities and elderly people, to people across and within class, racial and gender lines and inside and outside of families. This presentation compared a California case with two Ontario cases to illustrate the importance of analyzing flexibility and security at both the labour market and more intimate labour process levels, of conceptualizing tensions between home care users and workers based on their claims for flexibility and security at both levels, and of placing tensions within the social organization of work. This analysis confirms the labour market flexibility-security trade off highlighted in precarious employment scholarship and extends it to consider flexibility-security tensions in intimate labour processes. It underscores the need for collective representation and organizations that recognize tensions and support compromises in the labour process, as well as labour market intermediaries and adequate state funding, in order to support both flexible care and secure work.

Bio: Cynthia Cranford is an Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Toronto. Her research analyzes the nexus of gender, labor and migration through in-depth case studies and broader analyses of precarious work in the U.S. and Canada. Her book Home Care Fault Lines: Understanding Tensions and Creating Alliances was published with Cornell University’s ILR Press June 2020. Cranford is also the co-author of Self-employed Workers Organize: Law, Policy and Unions (McGill-Queens University Press) and her work appears in academic journals such as Work, Employment and Society, Social Problems, Relations Industrielles, Labor Studies Journal, Just Labour, Gender & Society, Critical Sociology, the American Sociological Review and in several edited volumes.   

Administrative Burden, Precarity, and Public Policy: Pamela Herd, Professor of Public Policy, Georgetown University.  This talk focused on how conservatives are employing administrative burdens as a mechanism to weaken social welfare policies. In short, conservatives are using the administrative state to undermine policies they’d like to dismantle, but have been able to do so via legislative change. Administrative burdens are the learning, compliance, and psychological costs that people encounter when to trying to access, and stay on, critical social welfare supports. In short, they are the administrative barriers that preclude access to programs for which people should otherwise be eligible.  I detailed  how these newly constructed burdens, in programs ranging from Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance to the Social Security Disability programs and Medicare, will increase health and economic precarity among poor Americans, with disproportionate impacts on women and black Americans.   

Bio: Pamela Herd’s research focuses on inequality and how it intersects with health, aging, and policy. She is also an expert in survey research and biodemographic methods. She is currently the Chair of the Board of Overseers for the General Social Survey, a board member for the Population Association of American, and a standing member of a National Institutes for Health review panel for the Social and Population Sciences. She has received grant awards for her work from the National Institutes for Health, National Institutes on Aging, the Russell Sage Foundation, the Ford Foundation, and AARP.  Her work has appeared in journals such as the American Sociological Review, Social Forces, the Journal of Health and Social Behavior, Gender & Society, and the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.  Her recent book Administrative Burden: Policymaking by other Means was reviewed in the New York Review of Books.  

The Great Balancing Act: Households, Debt, and Economic Insecurity: Michelle Maroto, Associate Professor of Sociology, University of Alberta.  Many households in the United States regularly engage in balancing acts. Each month, they try to figure out how to cover their bills on often limited incomes, while worrying what might happen if an unexpected expense comes up. This situation is not uncommon. Due in part to the rise of nonstandard employment and declining social safety nets, balancing finances is much more precarious for households these days. What happens when households are no longer able to keep up this balancing act? How do households respond to economic insecurity? In answering such questions, this talk drew on data from the U.S. Survey of Consumer Finances to examine varying experiences of economic insecurity and households’ strategies for managing economic insecurity with a special emphasis on the influence of household debt levels.   

Bio: Michelle Maroto is an Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Alberta. Her recent projects address the many dimensions of wealth inequality, the role of household structure in determining economic security, and labor market outcomes for people with different types of disabilities. She is currently embarking on a large-scale mixed methods project that will bring together secondary data, multiple online surveys, and in-depth interviews to provide a better understanding of the complicated dynamics behind social class in Canada.   

 Feeding the Crisis: Welfare Precarity in the 21st Century United States: Maggie Dickinson, Assistant Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies, Guttman Community College – CUNY. Since the turn of the 21st century, the food safety net in the United States has expanded dramatically, contradicting the conventional wisdom that welfare programs have been continually cut back since the 1980’s. Food assistance, including federal programs like SNAP (formerly food stamps) and emergency food programs like soup kitchens and food pantries, have become the leading edge of the response to poverty and growing economic insecurity. Food assistance, as it is currently structured, offers a modicum of care to low wage workers, excludes people on the margins of the formal labor force, and entrenches long standing beliefs about the role of charity and the state in addressing human needs. By creating distinctions between a so-called ‘deserving’ working poor and a stigmatized and excluded reserve army of labor, the food safety net is feeding the broader economic crisis experienced by working class people today. And yet, paying close attention to the political insights of hungry people points to the ways the current welfare state in the U.S. could be transformed to end hunger and precarity.  

Bio: Maggie Dickinson is an assistant professor of Interdisciplinary Studies at Guttman Community College – CUNY. Her first book, Feeding the Crisis: Care and Abandonment in America’s Food Safety Net, is published by the University of California Press. As a cultural anthropologist, her research is broadly concerned with food systems, the welfare state, inequality and the politics of redistribution.   

 Race, Inequality, and Mobility: The Role of Violence:  Trevon D. Logan, Professor of Economics and Associate Dean, College of Arts and Sciences, The Ohio State University.  Violence plays a large role in historical inequality. This talk highlighted the role that violence has played in resource theft from Black Americans and from the persistence of inequality politically and economically in the US today.  

Bio: Dr. Trevon D. Logan graduated with a Bachelor of Science in Economics from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He went on to receive two master’s degrees demography and economics and his doctoral degree in Economics from the University of California, Berkeley. Dr. Logan is an internationally recognized scholar in economic demography, economic history and applied microeconomics. His current research focuses on historical health patterns, racial discrimination, political economy, mortality, morbidity, and racial disparities in health. His award-winning research has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, the Economist, NBC, Bloomberg, CNN, and other major media outlets.   Co-organized by: Shari Eli, Associate Professor of Economics, University of Toronto David Pettinicchio, Associate Professor of Sociology, University of Toronto Edward Sammons, Assistant Professor of Centre for Diaspora and Transnational Studies, University of Toronto

Description

Re: Locations Symposium 2020  

COVID-19 is a public health crisis occurring on a global scale. It has caused widespread suffering and disruption, and in the process, it has exacerbated existing inequalities; strengthened networks of solidarity; birthed new crises; devastated economies, altered politics at local, national, and international levels; and, more. In these ways, the virus is a disaster that has given rise to complex and uncertain transformations, but it has also led to a great display of resiliency, with different states, communities, and individuals adapting to and resisting this disaster. The global spread has laid bare the need for critical engagement with cross-disciplinary, cross-national, and cross-cultural dialogues.  

SYMPOSIUM SCHEDULE  

November 19: Migration, Care Work, and Solidarity  

2:50 PM- 3:00 PM Co-Chairs Introduction  

3:00 PM | Keynote Address: Dr. Tungohan – COVID-19, Immigration, & Care Work: Thinking Through the Implications of COVID-19 on the Lives of Asian Migrants  

3:45 – 5:45 PM | Panel 1  

John Paul Catungal | Mediating Contagion: Asian International Students in Canada during COVID  

Md. Zarif Rahman, Saifuddin Ahmed & Mahabuba Islam Meem | Fatalistic Views and Its Impact on Combating COVID-19: Bangladesh Context  

Joy Saade | The Beirut Explosion and Covid-19: Crisis relief and community reactions during Lebanon’s collapse  

Yuriko Cowper-Smith, Dr. Yvonne Smith & Tyler Valiquette | Displaced and in the dark: Protecting LGBTQI+ asylum-seekers during a pandemic  

5:45 – 6:15 Q&A SESSION AND CLOSING REMARKS

November 23 | Media, Security, and Communications

2:50 PM- 3:00 PM Co-Chairs Introduction  

3:00 PM | Keynote Address: Dr. Ong  

3:45 – 5:25 PM | Panel 2  

Gabrielle Lim, Irene Poetranto & Justin Law | Securitizing COVID-19 in the Philippines: Outcomes and Risks  

Anmol Dutta | Coro(Na)tional Solidarity Amidst the Covid-19 Pandemic in India  

Richard Atimniraye Nyelade | The Racial and Olfactory Origin of Social Distancing  

Isurika Sevwandi | COVID-19 Disaster Prevention Mechanism undertaken by Sri Lanka: SWOT Analysis  5:25 – 6:00 Q&A SESSION AND CLOSING REMARKS

November 26: Public Health and the Global South  

9:50 AM- 10:00 AM Co-Chairs Introduction  

10:00 AM | Keynote Address: Dr. Lasco – Medical Populism in the Global South  

11:14AM – 12:15PM | Panel 3  

Ritapriya Nandy | India during Pandemic: The Curious Case of Witch-hunting  

Faizan Malik | Covid-19, Necropolitics, and Marginalized Experiences During a Global Pandemic  

Mufassir Rashid | ‘Corona Effect’ on South Asian Politics: Diminishing Geopolitics and the inception of Geo-economics  

Adrian Khan | Migration and Social Isolation during the Global Pandemic: Uncertainty, advocacy, and resilience  

12:15 – 12:45 Q&A SESSION AND CLOSING REMARKS

Description

COVID-19 has challenged the City of Toronto and municipal governments across the country like never before. The City has adapted to respond to the increased and profound needs of Toronto’s residents, businesses, and neighbourhoods, especially those most impacted by the pandemic – racialized, Indigenous, and equity-seeking communities. To protect lives and livelihoods it has worked closely and effectively across governments including with other cities in the region, institutions, and community partners.

To successfully recover and renew our city, the City cannot do it all and it cannot do it alone. Responding to COVID-19 has demonstrated how effective governments can be when they prioritize collaboration and the well-being of all Canadians. A “whole of governments” approach will continue to be critical as we lay the foundation for a shared recovery amidst the ongoing uncertainty and challenges the pandemic presents. Collaboration is critical to achieve shared success of governments, communities, agencies, academic institutions and the private sector.

What does Toronto and the region need to recover from COVID-19 and build back stronger? How can we build on recent successes and continue to address and overcome the constraints and barriers that have historically limited effective intergovernmental and intersectoral collaboration? What will partnership look like across the GTHA?

Toronto’s City Manager Chris Murray will share his thoughts on the learnings of the last several months and what he sees as the way forward.

Speaker
Chris Murray is City Manager of the City of Toronto.
Moderator
Jan De Silva is President and CEO of the Toronto Region Board of Trade.

Description

The Centre for the Study of Global Japan welcomed Professor Saori N. Katada from the University of Southern California, to introduce her book,  ‘Japan’s New Regional Reality – Geoeconomic Strategy in the Asia-Pacific.’   

 Book Description:  Since the mid-1990s, Japan’s regional economic strategy has transformed. Once characterized by bilateralism, informality, and neomercantilism, Japanese policy has shifted to a new liberal strategy emphasizing regional institution building and rule setting. As two major global powers, China and the United States, wrestle over economic advantages, Japan currently occupies a pivotal position capable of tipping the geoeconomic balance in the region.   

Japan’s New Regional Reality offers a comprehensive analysis of Japan’s geoeconomic strategy that reveals the country’s role in shaping regional economic order in the Asia-Pacific. Saori N. Katada explains Japanese foreign economic policy in light of both international and domestic dynamics. She points out the hurdles to implementing a state-led liberal strategy, detailing how domestic political and institutional changes have been much slower and stickier than the changing regional economics. Katada highlights state-market relations and shows how big businesses have responded to the country’s interventionist policies. The book covers a wide range of economic issues including trade, investment, finance, currency, and foreign aid. Japan’s New Regional Reality is a meticulously researched study of the dynamics that have contributed to economic and political realities in the Asia-Pacific today, with significant implications for future regional trends. (Columbia University Press)

Bio: Saori N. Katada is Professor of Political Science and International Relations Department at University of Southern California. Her book Japan’s New Regional Reality: Geoeconomic Strategy in the Asia-Pacific was published by Columbia University Press in July 2020. She is also a co-author of two recent books: The BRICS and Collective Financial Statecraft (Oxford University Press, 2017), and Taming Japan’s Deflation: The Debate over Unconventional Monetary Policy (Cornell University Press, 2018).  She has her Ph.D. is from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (Political Science), and her B.A. from Hitotsubashi University (Tokyo).  Before joining USC, she served as a researcher at the World Bank in Washington D.C., and as International Program officer at the UNDP in Mexico City.

Description

Supporters of South Korean authoritarian successor party have organized a movement called the Taegeukgi Rally. This movement started in late 2016 to oppose the impeachment of then President, Park Geun-hye. Then, the movement transformed into anti-government protest after the formation of the new administration by President Moon Jae-in. This movement is puzzling in many ways and the literature on mass mobilization does not provide a good explanation about the movement’s timing, demographic composition, and protest agendas. This study suggested an alternative explanation to understand the mobilization. By conducting in-depth interviews with 25 rally participants, this study found that the collective identity of participants that was shaped in the authoritarian period motivates certain individuals to participate in the rally.  

Myunghee Lee is a visiting fellow at the University of Missouri and a non-resident research fellow at the Center for International Trade and Security at the University of Georgia. She earned her Ph.D in Political Science at the University of Missouri. She is the recipient of the 2020 David M. Wood Excellence in Political Science Research Award. Her research focuses on protest, democratization, and state violence. Her research appears in International Security and Politics & Gender.  

Zoom Details  

Join Zoom Meeting  https://utoronto.zoom.us/j/81616949449     

Meeting ID: 816 1694 9449  

Passcode: 030791  

Description

Taking readers on a journey to China’s projects in Asia, Europe, and Africa, Jonathan E. Hillman reveals in a new book how the Belt and Road Initiative, Xi Jinping’s signature foreign policy vision, is unfolding on the ground.

Description

In his recently published book, Solved: How the World’s Great Cities Are Fixing the Climate Crisis, David Miller argues that cities are taking action on climate change because they can – and because they must. Taking cues from progressive cities around the world, including Los Angeles, New York, Toronto, Oslo, Shenzhen, and Sydney, this book is a summons to every city to make small but significant changes that can drastically reduce our carbon footprint. As much a “how to” guide for policymakers as a work for concerned citizens, Solved aims to inspire hope through its clear and factual analysis of what can be done – now, today – to mitigate our harmful emissions and pave the way to a 1.5-degree world.

Join the School of Cities and the Environmental Governance Lab for a conversation with David Miller about leading global cities and creating a more sustainable planet.

Description

Learn more about the Master of Global Affairs program.

Please register to be sent the Zoom link for the event.

Description

The Indian economy, one of the largest in the world, is set to contract significantly this year. Our panel of experts discussed policy measures adopted by the Indian government to tackle the economic downturn as a result of the devastating effects of COVID 19 pandemic in the country. The panel also discussed short and medium run scenarios for the Indian economy highlighting the interdependence between democratic institutions, economic growth and welfare. Finally, the panelists also discussed India’s regional and international economic relations in the context of the present crisis in globalization and the country’s border impasse with China.

Description

Which histories of Asia are remembered and which are forgotten? The process of remembering is selective, such that certain histories are granted the status of truth and highlighted in public dialogue, while others are forgotten or deliberately swept under the rug. This event sought to unearth some examples of the latter to underscore the histories of marginalized groups and their lived experiences. In order to do so we were delighted to be joined by two experts. Dr. Takashi Fujitani discussed the issue of comfort women and how it tied into the transnational cover-up of Japanese war and colonial crimes. Dr. Jessica Soedirgo focused her discussion on the little known Ahmadiyah minority in Indonesia and why its members are being discriminated against today.  

TAKASHI FUJITANI is the Dr. David Chu Professor and Director in Asia Pacific Studies. His research focuses especially on modern and contemporary Japanese history, East Asian history, Asian American history, and transnational history (primarily U.S./Japan and Asia Pacific). Much of his past and current research has centered on the intersections of nationalism, colonialism, war, memory, racism, ethnicity, and gender, as well as the disciplinary and area studies boundaries that have figured our ways of studying these issues. He is the author of Splendid Monarchy (UC Press, 1996; Japanese version, NHK Books, 1994; Korean translation, Yeesan Press, 2003) and Race for Empire: Koreans as Japanese and Japanese as Koreans in WWII (UC Press, 2011; Japanese version forthcoming from Iwanami Shoten); co-editor of Perilous Memories: The Asia Pacific War(s) (Duke U. Press, 2001); and editor of the series Asia Pacific Modern (UC Press).  

JESSICA SOEDIRGO is a postdoctoral fellow in the Asian Studies Program at the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Studies, Georgetown University. She will be starting as an Assistant Professor at the University of Amsterdam in April 2021. She holds a Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of Toronto. Her research is motivated by an interest in ethnic and religious conflict, with a regional focus on Southeast Asia. She primarily uses qualitative methods, grounded in extensive fieldwork. Her book project, The Threat of Small Things: Patterns of Repression and Mobilization Against Micro-Sized Groups in Indonesia, asks why very small groups become targets of state repression and mobilization despite their economic and political insignificance. Her work has been published in Citizenship Studies, Southeast Asia Research, Qualitative and Multi-Method Research, and PS: Political Science and Politics.

Description

Information Sessions on Applying to the MPP program at Munk. These sessions are a great opportunity for prospective students to learn about the application process, financial aid opportunities, and timetable for applying to MPP-Munk.

Description

Japanese foreign policymaking faces mounting challenges as Prime Minister Suga Yoshihide takes over leadership of the country. The outgoing Trump administration leaves a legacy of diminished US leadership, unsettled trade wars, a more authoritarian and assertive China, and an emboldened North Korea capable of striking North America with nuclear weapons. During the Trump administration, Japan partnered with Canada to defend the liberal international order, most notably pushing forward with the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) despite US withdrawal. Japan also articulated the Free and Open Indo-Pacific (FOIP) vision, which has been adopted by many likeminded states.

Now that the Trump administration is coming to an end, what comes next for Japanese foreign policy? US President-elect Joseph Biden promises to restore US leadership and reimagine its partnerships with allies like Japan and Canada. How can Japan build on its proactive diplomacy over the past decade in confronting regional and global challenges?

As a part of the JAPAN NOW Lecture Series, this online event will honour Okamoto Yukio’s legacy, examining Japan’s current place in the region and liberal international order. Okamoto was a leading thinker and practitioner of foreign policymaking in Japan who tragically passed away in April 2020 due to complications arising from COVID-19. He was a dear friend, and we have asked the speakers to reflect on Okamoto’s legacy in their presentations.

Remembering Okamoto Yukio: https://archive.munkschool.utoronto.ca/csgj/feature/remembering-okamoto-yukio-1946-2020/

About Okamoto Yukio:
Okamoto Yukio, a former Special Advisor to two Prime Ministers of Japan, was the President of Okamoto Associates and a Robert E. Wilhelm Fellow at MIT. From 1968 to 1991, Mr. Okamoto was a career diplomat in Japan’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs. His overseas postings were in Paris, Cairo and Washington. He retired from the Ministry in 1991. Post-retirement, Mr. Okamoto served in a number of critical advisory positions. From 1996 to 1998, he was a Special Advisor to Prime Minister Hashimoto Ryutaro. From 2001 to 2004, he was again a Special Advisor to Prime Minister Koizumi Junichiro, also serving as the Chairman of the Prime Minister’s Task Force on Foreign Relations. Mr. Okamoto was also a visiting professor of international relations at Ritsumeikan University and sat on the Board of several Japanese multinational companies. He was the Director of the Signal of Hope Fund, an initiative he established to assist the Tohoku fisheries industry recover from the March 2011 earthquake and tsunami.

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Speaker Bios:
Deanna Horton
Senior Fellow, Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy, University of Toronto

As part of her Canadian foreign service career, Deanna Horton spent a total of twelve years in Japan, including as Deputy Head of Mission, and also served as Ambassador to the Socialist Republic of Vietnam. She was a NAFTA negotiator and then spent seven years in Washington, most recently as Minister (Congressional, Public and Intergovernmental Affairs). As a Munk School Senior Fellow she has led a digital mapping project on Canada’s footprint in Asia https://archive.munkschool.utoronto.ca/canasiafootprint/ and related research on technology multinationals. Ms. Horton is also a Distinguished Fellow at the Asia Pacific Foundation of Canada and a Canadian Global Affairs Institute Fellow and she writes on economic and trade policy issues with a focus on Asia. She received a Diploma in International Studies from the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies Bologna Center, a M.A. (International Affairs) from Carleton University’s Norman Paterson School of International Affairs and a B.A. (Hons) from McGill University. She also spent two years studying Japanese at the U.S. State Department Foreign Service Institute in Yokohama, Japan.

Michael J. Green
Senior Vice President for Asia and Japan Chair, Center for Strategic and International Studies; Director of Asian Studies, Chair in Modern and Contemporary Japanese Politics and Foreign Policy, School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University

Michael Jonathan Green is senior vice president for Asia and Japan Chair at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) and director of Asian Studies at the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University. He served on the staff of the National Security Council (NSC) from 2001 through 2005, first as director for Asian affairs with responsibility for Japan, Korea, Australia, and New Zealand, and then as special assistant to the president for national security affairs and senior director for Asia, with responsibility for East Asia and South Asia. Before joining the NSC staff, he was a senior fellow for East Asian security at the Council on Foreign Relations, director of the Edwin O. Reischauer Center and the Foreign Policy Institute and assistant professor at the School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) at Johns Hopkins University, research staff member at the Institute for Defense Analyses, and senior adviser on Asia in the Office of the Secretary of Defense. He also worked in Japan on the staff of a member of the National Diet.

Richard Samuels
Ford International Professor of Political Science and Director, Center for International Studies, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Richard J. Samuels is Ford International Professor of Political Science and Director of the Center for International Studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 2005 he was elected a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and in 2011 he received the Order of the Rising Sun, Gold and Silver Star, an Imperial decoration awarded by the Emperor of Japan and the Japanese Prime Minister. In 2015 he was named an Albert Einstein Visiting Fellow at the Free University of Berlin. His books have won awards from the Association for Asian Studies, the American Political Science Association, the Society for Italian Historical Studies, and other organizations. He has published articles in International Security, International Organization, The Journal of Japanese Studies, and Foreign Affairs, among other journals, and his most recent book, Special Duty: A History of the Japanese Intelligence Community, was named one of the “Best of Books 2019” by the Council on Foreign Relations’ journal, Foreign Affairs. Nikkei Books will soon publish its Japanese translation.

Tadokoro Masayuki
Professor of International relations, Faculty of Law, Keio University

Dr. Masayuki Tadokoro is Professor of International Relations at Keio University, Tokyo, Japan. His primary field is international political economy, but he works also on Japanese foreign and security policy. Currently he is working on international politics of population movement across borders.
Born in Osaka, he attended Kyoto University and the London School of Economics. Previously he was a professor at the National Defense Academy. In 1991 he taught for a semester as Fulbright Scholar in Residence at the University of Pittsburgh and then in 1993-94, he was a scholar in residence at Ralph Bunch Institute on the UN in New York City. He also works the editor of Japanese intellectual journal, AΣTEION.
His publications include International Political Economy (Nagoya University Press, 2008, , Sakuradakai Award of Political Science); The Dollar goes beyond “America” (Chuokoron Shinsha, 2001, Suntory Prize for Social Sciences and Humanities); and The Realities of the UN: A Budgetary Analysis (Yuhikaku, 1996). He is also a contributing author of Postwar Japanese Diplomatic History, which was awarded Yoshida Shigeru Prize (ed. By I. Iokibe, Yuhikaku, 2000). His recent publications in English include, “After the Dollar?”, International Relations of the Asia Pacific 10:3 (2010); and “Why did Japan fail to become the ‘Britain’ of Asia”, in David Wolff et al., eds., The Russo-Japanese War in Global Perspective (Brill, 2007). He also edited with David Welch and Yoshihide Soeya, Japan as a ‘Normal Country’?: A Nation in Search of Its Place in the World, (Toronto U.P. 2011). “Changed Discourses on Demography in Japan”, in Silvio Beretta et al, eds, Italy and Japan: How Similar Are They? , (Springer, 2014).

Description

How do ideas of forestry, rural life, nature, and environment contribute to the rise of fascism and authoritarian rule? In this timely conversation, a group of historians and visual scholars drew on specific cases from early twentieth-century Japan to contemporary China and India to examine the relationship between aesthetics, politics, and temporality.

Description

Though he and his governments have consistently ranked high in expert opinion polls, Louis St-Laurent’s contributions to governance, politics and policy have not been assessed in a long time. This seminar brings together contributors to a new book, The Unexpected Louis St-Laurent: Politics and Policies for a Modern Canada, published by the University of British Columbia Press. New perspectives will be presented, particularly on how St-Laurent imagined Canada and what he did to recast it. Patrice Dutil (Ryerson University), the editor of the volume, will present St-Laurent as an “Idealist-Realist”, Robert Bothwell (the University of Toronto) will analyze St-Laurent’s management of cabinet and the public service, Christopher McCreery (Office of the Lieutenant Governor of Nova Scotia) will show how St-Laurent transformation of Canadian symbols reshaped the idea of Canada. Finally, Ms. Jean Riley, Louis St-Laurent’s granddaughter, will reflect on how his life experiences shaped his idea of belonging in Canada. Followed by Q&A.

Description

Tibetan emic terminologies used as functional equivalents for “religion” and “politics” in Bhutanese textual sources shed light on institutionalized and conceptualized boundaries between societal spheres in pre-modern Bhutan―in the spirit of the multiple secularities approach understood as social distinction and differentiation in a non-evaluating sense.  Among the three major Buddhist governments established in the Tibetan cultural area in the 17th century, the Bhutanese government, nowadays as a constitutional monarchy with a Buddhist king, is the only one still in existence. Since Bhutan’s societal order is still profoundly grounded in the cosmological order of Tantric Buddhism, Dr. Schwerk presented an alternative analytical and inclusive framework for determining social distinction and differentiation in Bhutan in a chronological perspective that did include not only actual institutional arrangements but also integrated formative religious-doctrinal conceptualizations. Consequently, discourses about Bhutan’s Gross National Happiness (GNH) can adequately consider the importance of terminology, language, and “secularities.”  

Dagmar Schwerk is the Khyentse Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow in Tibetan Buddhist Studies at the University of British Columbia and recipient of the Khyentse Foundation Award for Excellence in Buddhist Studies 2012. Her forthcoming monograph addresses the longstanding philosophical debate about Mahāmudrā, an essential Buddhist doctrine and meditative system in Tibetan Buddhism, from a Bhutanese perspective. In general, her research focuses on Tibetan and Bhutanese intellectual and political history.

Description

Information is not yet available.

Description

Learn more about the Master of Global Affairs program.

Please register to be sent the Zoom link before the event.

Description

Canadian comic-book artist, illustrator, and designer Valentine De Landro joins faculty and students from the University of Toronto for a conversation about the politics of race and gender in the world of comics. Valentine’s credits include titles from Marvel, DC Comics, IDW, Valiant, and Dark Horse. He’s known for Marvel Knights: 4 and X-Factor. He is also the co-creator with Kelly Sue DeConnick of BITCH PLANET, a women-in-prison sci-fi exploitation riff – think Margaret Atwood meets Inglourious Basterds – that was nominated for an Eisner Award in 2014.

Speaker Bio: Valentine De Landro is a Canadian comic book artist, illustrator, and designer. His credits include titles published from DC Comics, Marvel, IDW, Valiant, and Dark Horse. He is the co-creator of BITCH PLANET with Kelly Sue DeConnick.

Description

Learn more about the Master of Global Affairs Program before applications are due on January 21, 2021.

Register to receive the Zoom link before the session starts.

Description

Information Sessions on Applying to the MPP program at Munk. This session is a great opportunity for prospective students to learn about the application process, financial aid opportunities, and the timetable for applying to MPP-Munk. Applicants are encouraged to bring their questions to the session.

Description

Vladimir Norov has been Secretary General of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation since January 2019. A senior diplomat with decades of service to the Republic of Uzbekistan, Norov has had posts as Foreign Minister and Ambassador to Germany, Switzerland, Poland, and Belgium. He speaks English, German, Russian, and Tajik.

Registrants may send questions for Mr. Norov by 8 January to beltandroad.munkschool@utoronto.ca; we will pose as many questions as time allows.

This event is part of the Belt and Road in Global Perspective Project and is co-sponsored by the CERES Eurasia Initiative and the Asian Institute.

Description

While the Holodomor affected all of Soviet Ukraine, not all regions suffered equally. Drawing on archives in Russia, Ukraine, and Belarus, as well as witness testimonies, my research demonstrates that the Soviet leadership’s relative sensitivity to the welfare of the population along Soviet Ukraine’s western frontier led the authorities to reduce the border districts’ grain procurement quotas and to prioritize them in rendering food aid – benefits that came at the expense of the republic’s rear areas. Combined with the smuggling of foodstuffs from Poland, such privileging led to markedly higher survival rates among the inhabitants of Soviet Ukraine’s “border belt.” These findings shed new light on the role of the Kremlin and the OGPU (political police) in the Holodomor; popular survival strategies and their effect on policy decisions; the impact of foreign threat; and the spatial logic of Stalinism.

Andrey Shlyakhter is a historian of the Soviet Union and its neighbours. His research explores the intersection of economic deviance, borderlands, ideology, and state power. He defended his dissertation, “Smuggler States: Poland, Latvia, Estonia, and Contraband Trade across the Soviet Frontier, 1919–1924” in October 2020 at the Department of History, University of Chicago. The dissertation forms part of his postdoctoral book project, Smuggling across the Soviet Borders: Contraband Trades, Soviet Solutions, and the Shadow Economic Origins of the Interwar Iron Curtain, 1917–1932. Currently Dr. Shlyakhter is a Petro Jacyk Visiting Scholar (Virtual Engagement).

Description

On January 6, 2021, a mob of Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol. They vandalized the capitol building, attacked police officers, planted bombs, and threatened elected officials. So far, five people have died from this assault; at least three congresspeople have contracted Covid-19. Donald Trump and his allies in Congress and the press encouraged anti-democratic insurrection in an effort to overturn the 2020 Presidential Election. How do we make sense of this attempted coup? What are the implications of widespread suspicion and sedition for the future of American democracy? What are the origins of a right-wing authoritarianism in the United States that predates Donald Trump? How might we situate this event within histories of right-wing extremism, neoliberal austerity, mass incarceration, and America’s ‘illiberal tradition’? Julilly Kohler-Hausman (Cornell University), Russell Kazal (UTSC), Alexandra Rahr (UT), and Max Mishler (UT) will offer some initial reflections on the January 6 insurrection and engage in a dialogue before questions and comment from the audience.

Description

In January 2019, the Government of Canada established the Future Skills Council with a mandate to provide advice on emerging skills and workforce trends and to identify and promote pan-Canadian priorities relating to skills development and training. The Future Skills Council report, released in November 2020, recommends equitable and competitive labour market strategies in response to disruptive technological, economic, social and environmental events. It aims to provide a roadmap to a stronger, more resilient future for Canada. In this webinar, panelists will discuss the report’s key action areas and pathways to successful implementation.

Description

The presidency of Donald J. Trump ended as strangely as it began. His scandal-wracked tenure culminated in the shocking siege of the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. A week later, he became the first U.S. president in history to be impeached twice, this time for incitement of insurrection. As unprecedented as it seems, this is hardly the first episode of extremist violence in American history. Concerns about worsening polarization and further far-right violence continue to mount. Once a model for the world, many now question whether America’s democratic experiment will survive intact.

This panel gathers together scholars and practitioners from the University of Toronto to discuss these momentous events. How did the world’s most powerful security forces fail to prevent a domestic insurrection? How should we understand far-right extremism and political violence in the United States? And how will Americans balance competing calls for security, accountability, justice, and reconciliation?

Description

* This conference is for STUDENTS ONLY and is open to all U of T undergraduate and graduate students. *

Organized by the Contemporary Asian Studies Student Union (CASSU) and Asian Institute at the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy, the conference brings together students, faculty, alumni and industry professionals to share personal career journeys and industry trends. This year’s online conference offers speakers the opportunity to reflect on how the pandemic and other large-scale global forces have impacted their field of work.

Upon registering for the Global Careers through Asia Conference you will receive the webinar link for Day 1 and/or Day 2 three days before the conference start date. If you sign up to attend both days of the conference, you will receive both links.

DAY 1 | January 28, 2021 | 10 :00 am – 11 :30 am

The first day of the conference features opening remarks from the Contemporary Asian Studies Student Union and Professor Rachel Silvey (Richard Charles Lee Director of the Asian Institute). The Public Sector and Academia industry panel includes presentations and an interactive Q&A session featuring:

– Hanae Hanzawa – Human Rights Officer, United Nations Human Rights (OHCHR)
– Evan Wiseman – Climate Policy Manager, The Atmospheric Fund (TAF)
– Dr. Yao (Adam) Liu – Assistant Professor at Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore
– Dr. Joseph McQuade – Richard Charles Lee Postdoctoral Fellow, Asian Institute, University of Toronto

DAY 2 | January 29, 2021 | 10:00 am – 11 :45 am

The second day of the conference features opening remarks by Professor Francis Cody (Director, Dr. David Chu Program in Contemporary Asian Studies) and a Business, Arts & Media industry panel with presentations and an interactive Q&A session featuring:

– Anastasia Belashov – International Travel Trade Manager, Niagara Falls Tourism
– Jay Qin – Principal at Sard Verbinnen & Co
– Atif Khan – Program Manager, Coordinator at Reel Asian International Film Festival

* Follow the link below (bottom of the page) to view the full program or copy/paste the following link in your web browser address bar: https://archive.munkschool.utoronto.ca/ai/files/2021/01/Global-Careers-program-2021.pdf

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HANAE HANZAWA is a Human Rights Officer at the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. Hanae graduated with an MA in Women and Gender Studies and Collaborative Program in Asia-Pacific Studies from the University of Toronto and is currently working at the Regional Office for South-East Asia of the Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights in Bangkok, Thailand. Hanae’s previous experiences include working at various NPOs, the Asia-Europe Foundation, and UNICEF in Canada, Singapore, and Cambodia in the areas of human rights mainstreaming, child protection, torture prevention, HIV/AIDS, and mental health and addiction.

EVAN WISEMAN is a Climate Policy Manager of The Atmospheric Fund (TAF). Evan leads TAF’s policy and advocacy work. He has worked for elected officials provincially and federally, and for a government relations firm in Ottawa. Outside of the world of politics, Evan has worked for the Ontario Centres of Excellence supporting its innovation agenda, and as a researcher at the University of Toronto. Evan holds a Master’s degree in History with the Collaborative Program in Asia-Pacific Studies from the Asian Institute, as well as an Honours Bachelor of Arts in History and Political Science from the University of Toronto.

DR. ADAM LIU is an Assistant Professor at Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore. Adam Liu is a political scientist trained at Stanford University, though he doesn’t believe in disciplinary and methodological boundaries. Three broad questions intrigue him at the moment: The political foundations of markets in autocracies; the economic effects of political tensions between nations; and the spatial organization of coercive institutions in autocracies. His dissertation, “Building Markets within Authoritarian Institutions: The Political Economy of Banking Development in China,” won the 2020 BRICS Economic Research Award.

DR. JOSEPH MCQUADE is the Richard Charles Lee Postdoctoral Fellow in the Asian Institute at the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy and a former SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow at the Centre for South Asian Studies. He is also Editor-in-Chief at the NATO Association of Canada and Digital Content Manager for the Munk School’s Belt and Road in Global Perspective research initiative. Dr. McQuade is affiliated with the Queen’s University Global History Initiative and with the Canadian Network for Research on Terrorism, Security and Society, and is a Managing Editor of the Journal of Indian Ocean World Studies.

JAY QIN is a Principal at Sard Verbinnen & Co. Prior to joining Sard Verbinnen & Co, Jay was a transactional lawyer with two leading UK international law firms. In his near-decade of legal experience, Jay has advised a variety of clients, including those in the technology, venture capital, private equity, retail, and manufacturing sectors. Jay graduated with honours from the University of Toronto with a Bachelor’s in Economics, and a Master’s in East Asian Studies with the Collaborative Program Asia-Pacific Studies at the Munk School’s Asian Institute. He also holds a Juris Doctor and Postgraduate Certificate in Laws from the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

ANASTASIA BELASHOV is an International Travel Trade Manager at Niagara Falls Tourism. Anastasia’s academic training includes a bachelor’s degree in Asia Pacific Studies, Tel Aviv University (Israel), a Master’s degree in Asia Pacific Studies; Asian Institute at the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy; two years of Research Study at the Faculty of Letters, Hokkaido University; and a Certificate in Tourism and Environment at Brock University. Anastasia’s work at Niagara Falls Tourism involves promotion and marketing of Niagara’s attractions, hotels, restaurants, venues, and other assets to international inbound markets through travel trade channels.

ATIF KHAN is a Graduate Student at the University of Toronto, an Interdisciplinary Artist and a Program Manager at the Toronto Reel Asian International Film Festival. Atif Khan is a researcher, writer, and artist exploring text, image, and curatorial practice. His research-driven practice intersects key themes of war, surveillance, human death, and visual studies. Broadly, he thinks through how the word “violence” is assembled and given power in the material world by connecting objects, language, words, meaning, and a specific set of archives. Khan’s current research investigates militarized drone system operations across the United States, Somalia, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. He is completing an MA in Human Geography and South Asian Studies at the University of Toronto.

Description

In 1938, the Soviet Georgian administration inaugurated the iconic Institute of Marx, Engels, and Lenin (IMEL) in Tbilisi, Georgia under pretenses of socialist unity and friendship among Soviet nations. Three quarters of a century later, the same building—now privatized, heavily renovated, and re-branded—was re-inaugurated as the seven-star Biltmore Hotel. The hotel’s inauguration included a video projected at enormous scale onto the western façade of the building, telling the story of a new friendship among nations—now between the Republic of Georgia and the United Arab Emirates as the hotel’s financiers.

In this first talk on the political life of architecture, Suzanne Harris-Brandts tracks the shifting symbolism associated with the building’s adaptive reuse. She discusses the social, political, and economic implications that surround the continued use of friendship rhetoric in politics and architecture in Tbilisi, done to normalize foreign initiatives, and discusses the larger implications for urban development. In doing so, she charts the manipulation of architecture to communicate the power of its patrons.

The work draws from fieldwork conducted alongside colleague Dr. David Sichinava of Tbilisi State University, including site observations, media analysis, personal interviews, and focus groups. It break down how the IMEL building/Biltmore Hotel served as a medium for soft power and politics and shows how, rather than an outmoded means of public service announcement, symbolic architecture continues to be a crucial arena for political legitimacy in the city.

Dr. Suzanne Harris-Brandts is an Assistant Professor in the Azrieli School of Architecture and Urbanism, and a faculty associate with the Institute of European, Russian and Eurasian Studies at Carleton University. Her research brings together design and the social sciences to explore issues of power, equity, and collective identity in the built environment. Suzanne’s current book project, entitled Constructing the Capital, draws from her dissertation uncovering the politics of urban development and image making in Eurasian capital cities. It examines city building campaigns in part-democratic/ part-authoritarian hybrid regimes, foregrounding the cases of Tbilisi, Georgia and Skopje, North Macedonia. The work demonstrates how architecture and urban design are manipulated for power retention in such regimes, while also highlighting bottom-up, community-based strategies to resist these actions. Suzanne received her PhD in Urban Studies from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She is a licenced architect in Ontario and co-founder of Collective Domain, a design-research practice for spatial analysis, urban activism, architecture, and media in the public interest.