Highlights of the 2023-2024 Academic Year for Canadian Studies, Asian Canadian Studies and Black Canadian Studies
Summer is here and July is the perfect in-between month to pause and celebrate the many highlights of this past year for our students and faculty in Canadian Studies, Asian Canadian Studies, and Black Canadian Studies.
One year ago, July 2023, University College welcomed Professor Larissa Lai as the Richard Charles Lee Chair in Chinese Canadian Studies, with a graduate appointment in the Department of English. Professor Lai is a leading scholar of Chinese Canadian and Asian Canadian literary studies and she is an internationally acclaimed author of fiction and poetry.
Professor Lai has enriched our student, program and college experiences in many ways, including taking students in CDN307 Asian Cultures in Canada to Factory Theatre to see a play called The Waltz, written by Marie Beath Badian, with an all-Filipino cast and crew. Additionally, Korean Canadian pop star Hannah Bussiere Kim, aka Luna Li, visited the class to share her experiences on tour and on Saturday Night Live, finishing off with a guitar rendition of her hit “Cherry Pit.” University of Waterloo architecture professor, Linda Zhang, spoke with students about her ongoing speculative design project, Reimagining Chinatown, which explores the possibilities of Toronto’s Chinatowns in 2050 through short stories, virtual reality films, 3D printed modelling, and community consultation, and her activist work on the Chinatown Land Trust. Zool Suleman, the editor of Rungh, a multimedia platform for BIPOC artists, also visited. In the winter, Professor Lai taught CDN406 Asian Canadian Literary Formations which addressed key texts and debates in the field. Shyam Selvadurai visited the class to talk about his award-winning novel Funny Boy and the film that was subsequently made from it.
Professor Lai gave a number of keynote talks throughout the year, including the Richard Charles Lee Chair Lecture in October, on "Echolocating Asian Canada Studies” and a keynote at the UofT Dept. of English symposium, Hope & Uncertainty: How We Talk About Ecological Catastrophe. As an added bonus at this interdisciplinary panel, Professor Lai read from her forthcoming short story, “The Wet Market,” to be included in the anthology, The Informatics of Domination, published in honour of Donna Haraway.
In Fall, 2023, under the leadership of Director, Professor Robert Diaz, Canadian Studies and Asian Canadian Studies Programs co-sponsored two events. The first was a screening of Filipino filmmaker, Jun Robles Lana's award-winning film Big Night! (2021) , with a Q&A after with the director. In the winter term, So Tasty?! Queer and Trans Asian Canadian Performance featured a performance and a panel with four artists, Romi Kim (aka Skim), Kendall Yan, Patrick Salvani, and Janice Jo Lee.
We are delighted that Professor Tope Adefarakan is joining Canadian Studies as Assistant Professor, Teaching Stream, Black Canadian Studies, cross-appointed with the Transitional Year Program. Professor Adefarakan uses a decolonial and equity-centered approach in her teaching, grounded in Black feminist and African Indigenous critical social theory. In the 2024-2025 academic year, she will be teaching CDN335 Black Canadian Studies and launching a 4th year special topics course, CDN470S Afrofuturism: Black Canadian Perspectives.
This course will explore Afrofuturism through Black Canadian perspectives and experiences. As an interdisciplinary course, it draws on Black feminist, critical race and critical sociological theories, as well as Black cultural traditions and expressions in music, literature, social movements and the arts as pivotal spaces of possibility and resistance, where alternative futures are both imagined and realized for Black people in Canada. Topics to be explored include Black freedom and resistance, and the roles that education, technology and African Indigenous spiritual traditions play in Black Canadian approaches to Afrofuturism.
Our wonderful executive, CANSSU, the Canadian Studies Students Union, hosted a number of events through the year. CANSSU and the Toronto Undergraduate Geography Society (TUGS) co-hosted a very successful fall Panel Talk on “Racial Capitalism” and its effects on minority populations, featuring Professor Michelle Daigle and Professor Beverley Mullings. The winter term culminated with an Academic Seminar with Bob Rae, Canada’s Ambassador and Permanent Representative to the United Nations in New York, which was streamed live from the UN. That evening, CANSSU also held the end-of-term Canadian Studies Social. We thank the executive members for their valued and indefatigable representation of Canadian Studies Program students and their contributions to the Canadian Studies Program.
Canadian Studies student, Karl Abian, organized and coordinated the end of year Canadian Studies Undergraduate Conference, showcasing the outstanding research and writing of: Karl Abian, Jithvan Ariyanate, Arshiya Bhatia, Dacian Dawes, Sydney Hoiseth, Jaden Jacobs, Max Lasalle, Tisya Raina, Jonah Rosen, Allison Zomer.
Canadian award-winning photographer and documentary-maker, Louie Palu, joined students in CDN267 Canadian Nationalisms to discuss current challenges in the Arctic, and his documentary work published in the Washington Post and National Geographic. Louie shared his Zoom guest talk and thoughts on militarization, climate change, and potentially unrecognized dangers from a media room in the House of Representatives as the vote for the Speaker of the House was underway, explaining that he might have to cut short and run, depending on what was occurring.
Students in CDN197 Inventing Canada and CDN267 Canadian Nationalisms visited the Native Canadian Centre of Toronto for a first-hand guided tour, learning of the rich Indigenous history of Tkaranto and our surrounding region, and the NCC’s history and activities as a vital community hub for First Nation, Inuit, and Métis residents today.
Students in CDN280 Canadian Jewish History connected directly with Toronto’s Jewish history meeting Cyrel Troster, an historian and associated member of the Ontario Jewish Archives. Cyrel’s tours of the Kensington Market area are renowned for her detailing of the lives and businesses of Toronto’s Jewish community, often with materials from the OJA’s archives. Our congratulations also go out to Sterling Stutz, recipient of the Faculty of Arts & Science Superior Teaching Award. Sterling has been a welcome addition to the Canadian Studies Program teaching two courses in Jewish Canadian Studies, CDN280H Canadian Jewish History and CDN380H Socio-Cultural Perspective of the Canadian Jewish Community
Returning Professor Chevy R.J. Eugene introduced students in CDN335 Black Canadian Studies to the creative and critical works of multidisciplinary visual storyteller and Afrofuturist, Quentin Vercetty and filmmaker and mental-health advocate, Stacy-Ann Buchanan. We also congratulate Professor Eugene on his new appointment as Lecturer in the Department of Political Science at Dalhousie University.
Katharina Logan, the instructor of JCI250H1: Italian Canadian Communities, brought renowned photographer, Vincenzo Pietropaolo to class where he shared his knowledge of Toronto’s immigrant communities documented in his 2023 book, Toronto as Community: 50 Years of Photographs, with students.
We are immeasurably indebted to Kanien'kehá:ka Canadian interdisciplinary performing artist, Ange Loft, the Barker Fairley Distinguished Visitor 2023-2024, for her presence throughout the academic year and for her culminating event, Carrying Patterns, which explored “an interdisciplinary investigation of pottery patterns discovered on archaeological shards across the city.” With guests Monique Mojica, Olivia Shortt and Jay Havens, the performance incorporated “Loft's approach to pattern familiarity building through the application of Haudenosaunee-style sung vocables, clay pattern replication and Kanien'keha language layering.”
Looking ahead, we are excited that internationally acclaimed multimedia artist and writer, Richard Fung, will be the Barker Fairley Distinguished Visitor 2024-2025.
Fung’s videos and installations address “subjects ranging from the role of the Asian male in gay pornography to colonialism, immigration, racism, homophobia, AIDS, justice in Israel/Palestine, and his own family history.” Recent works include Orientations: Lesbian and Gay Asians (1984) and its redux Re:Orientations (2016), and Nang by Nang (2018), He has been the recipient of multiple awards, including the Bell Canada Award for outstanding achievement in video art, the Toronto Arts Award for Media Art, the Kessler Award from CLAGS: Center for LGBTQ Studies at the City University of New York. Fung is Professor Emeritus in the Faculty of Art at OCAD University.
We really appreciate Acting Vice-Principal Professor Robert Gibbs for his untiring guidance and support over the 2023-2024 academic year. Thank you, Bob! We send our very best wishes to Principal Markus Stock as he begins a very well-deserved sabbatical year and we welcome Professor Sali Tagliamonte, Acting Principal University College. And finally, we welcome back Professor Emily Gilbert, University College Vice-Principal and Professor of Canadian Studies, with hopes that her sabbatical year was exceptionally restful and productive, simultaneously!
Stay tuned for the 2023-2024 Issue of ImagiNATIONS: The Canadian Studies Undergraduate Journal!
Siobhan O’Flynn, Interim Director, Canadian Studies Program