Speaker
Lanya Feng
Department of History, University of Toronto
Lanya Feng is a Ph.D. Candidate in History with a Collaborative Specialization in Women and Gender s Studies at the University of Toronto. Funded by the Vanier Canada Scholarship, Lanya’s dissertation explores the conceptualization and formation of blackness in China through everyday social interactions and the transnational circulations of racialized commodity aesthetics since the First Opium War.
Event Details
In 1933, the then Shanghai-based manufacturer Hawley & Hazel launched Darkie, a minty toothpaste that remained popular for the rest of the century in China and Southeast Asia. Translated as Black Man Toothpaste in Chinese, the brand played on the imagery of American blackface performers such as Al Jolson in their logos to portray the effectiveness of their commodity in improving dental health and personal hygiene that were rooted in a Western model of hygienic modernity. The alleged African origin of their ingredients also portrayed Africa as an exotic and resource-rich land, which engaged with Western colonial fantasies of Africa and reflected Chinese heightened racial and national anxieties both domestically and internationally.
Enquires
anthropology@cuhk.edu.hk
