Moving the Gods: New Perspectives on Religion and Hong Kong E/immigrants in Canada
When and Where
Speakers
Description
The Jackman Humanities Institute's Hong Kong-Canada Connections Working Group is excited to host a talk titled “Moving the Gods: New Perspectives on Religion and Hong Kong E/immigrants in Canada” by Dr. Ting GUO, Assistant Professor at The Chinese University of Hong Kong.
Conventional research on religion and immigration tends to focus on institutional religions and their role in integrating new immigrants into mainstream society. However, what if immigrants seek more than assimilation and “religion” transcends institutional realms?
In this talk, Dr. Ting GUO explores various frameworks that can be instrumental in addressing these questions regarding religion and e/immigration, including theories of diffused religion and affective economies, to highlight the ways in which the popular and vernacular religious practices and symbols are embedded in, or represented by, various festivals and the consumption and circulation of and creative artworks among Hong Kong immigrants in Canada. Despite the colonial legacy that often excludes folk deities and popular religions from the category of “religion”, they remain an integral part of the lifeworlds of and emotional connections between those who remain in Hong Kong and those who become immigrants and diasporas. As these folk religious symbols are reimagined on social media, they provide emotional and enchanted values—such as healing, joy, consolation, and ultimately, hope—in transnational circulations, helping diasporas navigate systems of power and political traumas when the explicit articulation of these matters can be criminalized in today’s context.
About the Speaker:
Dr. Ting GUO is currently Assistant Professor at the Department of Cultural and Religious Studies, Chinese University of Hong Kong. She focuses on religion, gender, and politics in the transnational Sinophone world and has most recently co-edited a special issue on religion and social movements in Hong Kong in the Journal of Asian Studies. She is writing her first book Politics of Love: Religion, Secularism, and Love as a Political Discourse in Modern China. She co-hosts a podcast called "in-betweenness" (@shichapodcast).
Don't miss this opportunity to gain new perspectives on religion and immigration! Please RSVP by emailing chk.library@utoronto.ca.
