Date & Time: January 10th (Tue.), 2023 14:00-15:30
Venue: Tonantei (Room 201), Inamori building, CSEAS, Kyoto University

Title: Against the Odds in Asia, 1901-2021: On Activists, Autocrats, Exiles and Empires in Several Eras
Speaker: Dr. Jeffery Wasserstrom, Chancellor’s Professor of History at University of California, Irvine
Moderator: Dr. Pavin Chachavalpongpun, CSEAS

Abstract:
This presentation, which will move between the early 20th century and the early 21st century and will explore some of the ways that people working for change in different parts of East and Southeast Asia have periodically paid close attention to one another’s causes and found ways to work together. The talk’s goal is to place into historical perspective recent visions of a “Milk Tea Alliance” linking struggles in
Thailand and Myanmar with that in Hong Kong. Figures discussed will include Sun Yat-sen and Liang Qichao, for the early period, and Joshua Wong and Agnes Chow, for the later one, as well as activists in and exiles from Southeast Asian countries, including the Philippines as well as mainland Southeast Asian nations, who inspired them or interacted with these Chinese and Hong Kong figures and their colleagues.

Bio:
Jeffrey Wasserstrom is Chancellor’s Professor of History at the University of California, Irvine, where he also holds courtesy appointments in Law, Literary Journalism, and Political Science. He is the author, co-author, editor, or co-editor of a dozen books, the most recent of which are, as author, Vigil: Hong Kong on the Brink (2020) and, as editor, The Oxford History of Modern China (2022). From 2008 to 2018, he was Editor of the Journal of Asian Studies and he often writes for newspapers, magazines, and literary reviews, ranging from the New York Times to Nikkei Asia and from the Atlantic to Mekong Review.