The Cultural Affairs Bureau of the Macao S.A.R. Government will organize an Academic Research Lecture in the Cultural Affairs Bureau Auditorium (Edifício do Instituto Cultural, Tap Seac Square, Macao) at 6:30pm on Tuesday November 25. Kendall A. Johnson, Associate Professor at Swarthmore College in the United States, will give a lecture on “The New American Specie(s): The Speculative Logic of Natural Classification in The Journals of Major Samuel Shaw, the First American Consul at Canton (1847)”.

In 1784, before the United States had yet coined a reputable currency, the Revolutionary War veteran Samuel Shaw embarked on the United States’ first commercial venture to Canton aboard the Empress of China. After the venture’s successful conclusion, he returned to Macao to become the first American consul at Canton during the presidential administration of George Washington.

Published in 1847, Shaw’s Journals first appeared after the first Opium War while the United States was in the middle of a controversial expansionist war against Mexico. Shaw’s Journals convey the changing terms by which people were being categorized after emerging from colonial rule, but the Journals also register his deep concern with how to convey the new nation’s independence from England to potential trading partners across the globe.

Dr. Kendall A. Johnson obtained a Ph.D in English from the University of Pennsylvania in 1999. For the current academic year, Dr. Johnson is a Fulbright visiting professor for the American Studies Programme at the University of Hong Kong. His publications include Henry James and the Visual. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007 and A Critical Companion to Henry James (contributing co-editor).

The lecture will be given in English with Cantonese and Portuguese simultaneous interpretation. Entrance is free. For further details, please contact Ms. Chu of the Macao Historical Archives of the Cultural Affairs Bureau at 85986537.