Research Seminars @ Illinois

Dr. Sidney Lu (Associate Professor of Transnational Asian Studies, Rice University) will deliver the keynote based on his recently published book, Collaborative Settler Colonialism: Japanese Migration to Brazil in the Age of Empires. The talk examines the history of Japanese migration and community formation in Brazil through the lens of settler colonialism, arguing that migration produced an unintentional collaboration between two migration-centered expansionisms: Japan’s emigration-driven expansion and Brazil’s immigration-driven internal colonization. It further explores how Japanese immigrants became active collaborators in the Brazilian state’s colonization of Indigenous territories. By tracing the confluence of settler colonial processes across East Asia and Latin America, the keynote revises and broadens existing West-centered frameworks in settler colonial studies.