Harney Lecture Series: Understanding Race Beyond the Transatlantic Paradigm

November 16, 2023 | 4:00PM - 6:00PM
 | 
In-person
Harney Program, Asian Institute, Centre for the Study of Global Japan

This event is over

This event took place in-person at Room 208N, North House, 1 Devonshire Place, Toronto, ON, M5S 3K7
Is “Race” a modern Western construction? This talk aimed to introduce a new understanding of race beyond the transatlantic paradigm. While transatlantic racialization often entailed encounters of peoples with pronouncedly different physical features, in parts of Continental Europe and Asia racialization initially took place mostly between groups who had no or nearly no identifiable phenotypical distinctions. Yasuko Takezawa presented what she calls the three dimensions of “race”—“race”, “Race”, and “race as a Resistance”— to provide a more encompassing, global understanding of race. She presented examples of each dimension of race and discuss how the three interconnect, coalescing to produce and reinforce an overarching idea of “Race.”
 
About the Speaker
 
Yasuko Takezawa is Professor at the Intercultural Research Institute, Kansai Gaidai University, and Professor Emeritus at the Institute for Research in the Humanities, Kyoto University. She is currently the Paul I. Terasaki Endowed Chair of the International Institute of University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). Her fields of interest are Anthropology, Sociology, and American Studies.
 
Professor Takezawa has been leading a series of large international collaborative research projects over the past two decades. As visiting professor, she has taught at various universities outside of Japan as well, including MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, U of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB), Heidelberg University, and University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). She is a member of Science Council of Japan (SCJ), the representative organization of Japanese scientist community. She has published two monographs, a dozen of edited or co-edited volumes in Japanese as well as several journal special issues.
 
Her publications in English include:
  • Breaking the Silence: Redress and Japanese American Ethnicity. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1995.
  • Race and Migration in the Transpacific (co-edited with Akio Tanabe). London: Routledge, 2023.
  • Transpacific Japanese American Studies: Dialogues on Race and Racializations (co-edited with Gary Okihiro). Honolulu: U of Hawai’i Press, 2016.
  • Racial Representations in Asia (ed. ). Kyoto/ Melbourne: Kyoto University Press/ Trans Pacific Press, 2011.
  • Visibilities and Invisibilities of Race and Racism (co-edited with Faye V. Harrison and Akio Tanabe). London: Routledge, in press.
 
Sponsors: the Harney Program in Ethnic, Immigration, and Pluralism Studies, the Asian Institute, and the Centre for the Study of Global Japan.
 
Harney Program, Asian Institute, Centre for the Study of Global Japan
Mustafa Aryan mustafa.aryan@utoronto.ca

Speakers

Yasuko Takezawa_headshot
Yasuko Takezawa

Intercultural Research Institute, Kansai Gaidai University and Professor Emeritus at the Institute for Research in the Humanities, Kyoto University