Brought to you by:
Center for Canadian-American Studies, Fairhaven College of Interdisciplinary Studies, The Ray Wolpow Institute, The Foundation for WWU & Alumni
Description
2024 Speaker Series: Populations Rendered ‘Surplus’ in Canada
This talk responds to the theme of the speaker series, namely how populations rendered ‘surplus’ in Canada have addressed the challenges of being displaced, marginalized, erased, and disadvantaged from within a settler colonial state.
Rachel Wong explores some of the conversations currently taking place within Asian Canadian literary and artistic circles as they relate to coalitional spaces and community building. Specifically, she looks at the Asian Canadian Writers Workshop - a group of writers, scholars, and activists - as well as a coop radio program from Vancouver titled Pender Guy. To do this, Wong first excavates a social history of the Asian Canadian community collective of artists, before addressing the present moment of Asian Canadian literature and situating it within the present CanLit moment and addressing the space it currently occupies.
Featuring:
Rachel Wong, Speaker
Rachel Wong (she/her) is an Adjunct Professor at Seneca Polytechnic in Toronto, Canada. Her teaching dossier includes courses in Canadian Studies, Literary Studies, Creative Writing, and Composition and Rhetoric Studies. Additionally, she is a doctoral candidate in the English Department at York University in Toronto, Canada. Her thesis, “Literary Asiancy: Agency and Activism in Asian Canadian Literature” investigates the intersections of activism and literature. Her research also investigates issues of kinship, community, and the diasporic experience in Asian North American literature. She holds an MA in Comparative Literature from Western University.
Accommodations and Other Details
Contact The Foundation for WWU & Alumni by calling (360) 650-3353 or emailing Alumni@wwu.edu. There will be auto-captions available for this event.
The views expressed by our speakers do not necessarily reflect those of Western Washington University.