OCAD College will host a symposium on Chinese language Caribbean connections
By Neil Armstrong
A world symposium bringing collectively students, artists, artistic writers, and curators working on the intersection of China and the Caribbean can be held at OCAD College in Toronto on October 16 and 17.
“Surfacing: Chinese language Caribbean Mental Thought and Inventive Follow” includes a keynote lecture by Trinidadian historian Walton Look Lai in dialog with historian Kathleen López. The title of his presentation is “Chinese language Caribbean Research: The Trajectory of a Area.”
Dr. Look Lai’s 1993 guide, Indentured Labour, Caribbean Sugar: Chinese language and Indian Migrants to the British West Indies, 1838-1918 is a foundational textual content for Chinese language Caribbean Research. His different books embrace The Chinese language within the West Indies, 1806-1995: A Documentary Historical past (2000) and West Meets East: The Lifetime of Eugene Chen, 1875-1944 (2021).
“Working inside a genealogical framework, the symposium honours the work of Dr. Look Lai, who’s retired and lives in Trinidad and Tobago. Surfacing 2025 will make his information and insights accessible to extra junior students, artistic practitioners, and publics, and we eagerly await his most up-to-date concepts and reflections,” word the organizers.
“Within the keynote deal with, Dr. Look Lai will replicate on the evolution of his work and profession in creating the examine of Chinese language within the Caribbean. His scholarship spans the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, takes a comparative and connective method to Indian and Chinese language labor migrations, and explores settlement and assimilation in addition to homeland ties and politics. He’ll share insights into enduring debates, corresponding to the strain between native and diasporic orientation.”
The 2-day convention additionally options inter-generational panels addressing Chinese language Caribbean historical past, literature, visible tradition and futures. Presenters are primarily based within the Larger Caribbean (from Central America to Suriname), China and their diasporas.
This occasion is organized by the Chinese language Caribbean Research Community, a gaggle of students and creatives primarily based in Canada, US, UK and the Caribbean whose work engages with the Chinese language presence within the Caribbean, the Caribbean presence in China, and the a number of diasporas between them. It’s hosted by OCAD College in collaboration with Toronto Metropolitan College, with assist from Emory College, Bentley College, College of Toronto, College of Virginia and the York Centre for Asian Analysis.
Among the many presenters is Dr. Nikoli Attai, Assistant Professor, Division of Race, Gender, and Ethnic Research, Colorado State College, who will replicate on his grandfather’s journeys between Trinidad and Tobago and China. He has sifted by way of household archives to think about the life his grandfather led earlier than his loss of life in 1985.
His presentation is titled “Reminiscence Archives of a Not-So-Distant Previous – Cufun Landolio Attai 1917 – 1985.
“The experiences of Caribbean immigrants of Asian descent are impacted by indentureship, contract labour, and migration. These histories facilitated Indo-Caribbean, Chinese language-Caribbean, and different teams’ motion to nations together with Guyana, Suriname, and Trinidad and Tobago. Whereas Indo-Caribbean histories are nicely studied, much less analysis explores Chinese language-Caribbean experiences. My household’s indentureship journey merges Indo- and Chinese language-Trinidadian histories in rural Toco,” notes a synopsis of it.
Different presenters embrace documentary filmmaker, Jeanette Kong, whose work explores tradition and identification of the Hakka Chinese language in Jamaica and its diaspora. Dr. Matthew Chin, Assistant Professor, Girls, Gender and Sexuality Research, Emory College, will discover “how the songs of whales migrating throughout the Pacific and the songs of the whalers that pursued, materialize Chinese language Mexican geographies within the nineteenth century.”
The free occasion, which requires registration, is already at capability and there’s a ready checklist.
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