Canadian Studies Announcements

In This Issue:

Program News

• Photos From Our 9th Annual Canadian Thanksgiving Dinner

Campus Events

• Echolocating Asian Canadian Studies: A Poethical Method for the Long COVID Moment, feat. Larissa Lai

• “Ask the Pillars of the House”: Land-Based Pedagogy and Relational Research

External Events

• Sleeping With a Restless Elephant: The Long Backstory of the Canada-US Trade War

PROGRAM NEWS

Yesterday, Canadian Studies and our friends at the Digital Moose Lounge welcomed nearly 100 Canadians and friends of Canada from across the Bay Area for our annual Canadian Thanksgiving dinner!

It was a wonderful evening celebrating Canadian community, culture, and connection. Among our many guests were representatives from the Consulate General of Canada, the Royal Canadian Legion, and Air Canada.

Following remarks by Consul Anna Bretzlaff and Canadian Studies Program Director Hidetaka Hirota, guests sat down to a delicious turkey dinner before trying their luck in our much-anticipated raffle. Prizes included gift bags donated by the Canadian Consulate and Digital Moose Lounge, curling lessons, and our grand prize: free tickets to anywhere in Canada, courtesy of Air Canada!

Later in the evening, DML Chair Sarah Price moderated a “Chesterfield chat” featuring Gypsy Snider, a co-founder of the Montreal-based circus company The Seven Fingers. Joining her was David Dower, executive director of the company’s ongoing Bay Area show, Dear San Francisco. The two discussed the show’s deep roots in both Quebec – a major hub of contemporary circus – and San Francisco’s own arts scene.

And, of course, no Canadian Thanksgiving celebration would be complete without dessert. We ended the evening with pumpkin pie and authentic Nanaimo bars brought all the way from British Columbia! Thank you to everyone who joined us and helped make this year’s celebration such a memorable one.

UPCOMING CAMPUS EVENTS

Echolocating Asian Canadian Studies: A Poethical Method for the Long COVID Moment, feat. Larissa Lai

Thursday, Oct. 8 | Noon | 223 Philosophy Hall | RSVP

At the height of the COVID pandemic, the bat emerged from the Wuhan wet market as a racializing figure entangled with tropes of infection and consumption, re-activating late 19th century associations of Asians with disease. This talk reclaims the bat, both as a figure and as an existing animal, to consider how to engage with Asian Canadian Studies in this historical moment. Both racial and state formations are impossible to claim in essentializing or nationalist ways, and yet, “Asian Canadian” remains a productive location from which to do the work of both community building and critique.

This talk considers phenomenological and poethical approaches to cultural embodiment, with a particular focus on the bat’s ability to orient itself in flight by echolocation. Echolocation can be used to consider three possible moments of inception for Asian Canadian Studies – the 1910s, the 1970s, and the 1990s. It can also be used to consider the field’s relationships with Indigenous Studies, Black Canadian Studies, Asian American Studies, and Queer and Gender Studies.

About the Speaker

Larissa Lai is the author of nine books including The Lost Century, The Tiger Flu, Salt Fish Girl, and Slanting I, Imagining We: Asian Canadian Literary Production in the 1980s and 1990s. Recipient of the Jim Duggins Novelist’s Prize, the Lambda Literary Award, the Astraea Award, and the Otherwise Honor Book, she has also been a finalist for the ACQL Gabrielle Roy Prize for Literary Criticism, the Books in Canada First Novel Award, and the Governor General’s Award. She is currently the Richard Charles Lee Chair of Chinese Canadian Studies at the University of Toronto.

Born in California, Professor Lai grew up in Newfoundland. She received her BA from the University of British Columbia, her MA from the University of East Anglia, and her PhD from the University of Calgary.

This lecture will have a remote attendance option via Zoom. Please select “virtual attendance” in the RSVP form to receive the link.

If you require an accommodation to participate fully in any event, please let us know with as much advance notice as possible by emailing canada@berkeley.edu.

Mon., Oct. 12 | 11:30 am | Native Community Center | Learn more

This symposium will bring together Indigenous knowledge, land-based pedagogies and practices, and relational research to explore how Indigenous resurgence informs teaching, learning, and community-based scholarship.

Featuring Tania Aguila-Way (University of Toronto); Robert YELḰÁTŦE Clifford (University of British Columbia); Pablo Gonzalez (UC Berkeley); Meghan Robinson (University of British Columbia); and Kiersten Williams (The Narwhal).

This event is sponsored by the Department of Ethnic Studies and cosponsored by the Canadian Studies Program, the Native Community Center, the Joseph A. Myers Center for Research on Native American Issues, and Native American Student Development.

EXTERNAL EVENTS

Sleeping With a Restless Elephant: The Long Backstory of the Canada-US Trade War

Sat., Oct. 17 | 1:30 pm | Saratoga, CA | Learn more

In 1969, Prime Minister Trudeau likened Canada US relations to “sleeping with an elephant”. In this talk, Canadian Studies affiliate Professor Greg Wigmore will discuss why Canada-US relations are more strained than they’ve been in more than a century, and place the current conflict in the long sweep of Canada-US relations.

Greg Wigmore is a teaching professor at Santa Clara University, specializing in US and North American history and Canada-US relations. He received his PhD from UC Davis and is a former Sproul Fellow with the Canadian Studies Program at Berkeley.

Canadian Studies Program

213 Philosophy Hall #2308

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