CFP: IACLALS Annual Conference on Food and Food Cultures in the Global South: Aesthetics, Intersections and Mediations 12–14 February (Offline) 2026, co-hosted by Bangalore University

Food and Food Cultures in the Global South: Aesthetics, Intersections and Mediations

12–14 February 2026

co-hosted by

The Department of English, Bangalore University, Jnanabharathi Campus, Bengaluru-560056

Food and food cultures serve as crucial sites for performance, story-telling, memorialization, identitarian politics, ritualistic practice and assertions of power and cultural capital. They also facilitate a fertile field of critical inquiry in terms of intergenerational trauma, ecological ethics, colonial and postcolonial structures and resistance, migration and connectivity. The multiple ways of thinking, preparing and consuming food enable one to understand it as a site mediating complex social relationships and self-representation in diverse cultural and literary texts and contexts.

Food and foodways symbolize types of cultural capital which in turn influences larger concerns of identity and identity formation. Food is part of rituals and ceremonies that span almost all occasions of human existence – whether as offering or for consumption. Processes of resistance and resilience also find reflection in multiple food representations. Within an expanding food literacy, both public and domestic spaces highlight the historical politics of food and eating. The realpolitik of food production narrates tales of exploitation, appropriation and marginalization.

Understanding gastro semantics, culinary cosmopolitanism and gastro-tourism enables both informed understanding and a rethinking of one’s relationship with food at local and global levels. Theorizing food requires an interdisciplinary approach involving ethnographic, historical, geographical, political, literary, aesthetic, gender, ethnic, agricultural, economic, nutrition and cultural studies. Food activism focuses on seed sovereignty, farmers’ markets, and eating disorders. An epistemology of embodiment and hierarchy can be constructed in the politics of who cooks, who serves and who eats.

Sub-ThemesDigital gastronomy and food aesthetics

Food practices: rituals, ceremonies and offerings

Food, faith and taboo: religious laws and transgressions

Gastronomic and taste philosophies

Gastro-feminism and masculinities: gender, food and culture

Disability and Food practices

Food and food culture in cinema, literature and art

Culinary colonialism and the decolonial palate

Food as semiotic system

Kitchen as archive

Kitchen as domestic, commercial, trans or queer performative space

Carnivalesque food and food practices

Food sovereignty: hunger, memory, famine, starvation

Indigenous foodways

Food writing: culinary histories, recipes, menus

Food and human rights

Food distribution and public health

Food activism and advocacy

Urban food practices, diet and nutrition

Food porn and food exotica

Submission GuidelinesAbstracts of 250–300 words with a bio-note of no more than 50 words may be submitted using the submission link by 18th September 2025.

Acceptances will be conveyed by 18th October 2025.

Abstract submission link: https://forms.gle/nJ3eNEMGZyCdnK8i7

CDN Prize 2026

If you wish to participate in the “C.D. Narasimhaiah Prize” for the Best Paper Presented at an Annual Conference, kindly type “Submission for CDN Prize” in the subject line of the email when you send the full paper to iaclalsbuconference2026@gmail.com.

Last date for submission of complete papers: 24th November 2025

For details: https://iaclals.in/cdn-prize/

MMM Prize 2026

IACLALS also announces the next edition of the “Meenakshi Mukherjee Memorial Prize” for the Best Academic Paper published by a member during the previous two years (2024 & 2025).

Submission link: https://forms.gle/bHbF7ZWyM1yWnHoV8

Last date for submission: 18th September 2025

For guidelines: https://iaclals.in/mmm-prize/

Membership

The conference is open only to members of IACLALS. Participants are encouraged to become members before sending abstracts.3-Year Membership: Rs. 1500

Life Membership: Rs. 5000

Annual Membership for Students/Research Scholars: Rs. 1000 (Postgraduate level and above)

For details, contact the Treasurer at: treasurer.iaclals@gmail.com

Registration FeeFaculty: Rs. 3500/-

Research Scholars: Rs. 2500/-

Includes: Lunch, refreshments on conference days, and conference kit.

Mode of payment: To be announced.

Registration dates: 15th November – 15th December 2025

Contact

For all conference-related queries: iaclalsbuconference2026@gmail.com

Accommodation

Participants will make their own arrangements. A list of nearby hotels, guest houses, and homestays will be provided later.

About the Department of English, Bangalore University

Established in 1964, Bangalore University is one of the most prestigious public state universities in Karnataka, with NAAC accreditation of grade A++ (2023) and NIRF ranking of #81 under the ‘University’ category. The Department of English, with an illustrious history, continues to strive for academic excellence, interdisciplinarity, and social responsibility.

Important DatesSubmission of Abstracts: 18th September 2025

Confirmation of Acceptance: 18th October 2025

MMM Prize Submission: 18th September 2025

CDN Prize Submission: 24th November 2025

Receipt of Complete Papers: 31st December 2025

#CFP: Mapping #Body #Space Continuum in #Urbanscapes

 

Mapping Body Space Continuum in Urbanscapes

deadline for submissions: 

March 15, 2025

full name / name of organization: 

Language, Literature, and Interdisciplinary Studies

contact email: editors@ellids.com

Space is not defined objectively, but in relation to bodies, as it is a manifestation of their needs, intentions, and desires. It is not a container in which objects exist but is intertwined with the body’s orientation in the world and its movements within the space. Human body, therefore, is at the centre of all spaces, which are more than a geometrical concept in abstraction. Individual bodies apprehend and appropriate space differently and give meaning to embedded systems and institutions through established and evolving associations. Any assumption of personalised space, whether private or public, is embedded with historical, cultural, and social meanings which help curate embodied experiences. This is dependent on the dynamics of cultural inclusion and exclusion. The impulse of action within this dynamic is the basis of spatiality, that is, the human aspect of space, as it is constructed and occupied according to the social identity and purposiveness of particular bodies. 

The inscribed role of the human body in consciously forming the spaces within a city shapes their social and political order, which assimilates the individual within larger establishments while giving one the freedom to express one’s individuality. The emotional attachment of individual bodies to personalised urban spaces and collective embodied memory consigns values and functions to a space. The actions of human body, thus, are pertinent for deliberating upon individuated identities interacting with larger constructs—the dialectics between I and the Other, or the influence of space itself on interpersonal relations and interactions. In this manner, spaces can also be said to act upon human bodies through variegated provisions for association, performance, and engagement. These living spaces, on some occasions bring people closer through communal life, but on other occasions also subject them to isolation and social categorisation. In these instances, these places transform into sites of anonymity and loneliness, where ties of social relations are often broken. 

Keeping in mind the reciprocity between space and body, Volume 7 Issue 1 of LLIDS invites papers on the understanding of space as to how it creates a flux of embodied experiences between anonymity, immersion, relatability, and belonging, as well as investigating how experience, in turn, maps and moulds spaces based on how bodies inhabit and traverse them. The CFP anticipates research enquiries which extend the discourse on spatiality and the role of the body and its agency in the imagination and formulation of spaces. LLIDS seeks scholarly contributions which address the above theme and/or go beyond them. Some suggestive thematics are listed below:

• Urban leisure infrastructure
• Heterotopic Spaces
• Immersive experiences in Space
• Art in the city
• Aesthetics of space
• Suburbanization
• Home and the city: Interpersonal and the Impersonal
• Spatial influence on meaning and behaviour
• Memories of city: Psychological ownership
• Apathy of the urban dweller
• Transforming meaning of spatiality
• Dynamics of intercorporeal spaces

Submission Process:

• Please submit your work via the Submission form: https://forms.gle/KiAYjV1wT5h4sFzi7.
• Each of the authors needs to sign and email a separate Author Undertaking (https://ellids.com/archives/Author-Undertaking.pdf) from their respective email IDs to complete the submission process.

Submission Criteria Checklist:

• Only complete papers along with a 150 words abstract, list of keywords, and Works Cited will be considered for publication.
• Word limit for submissions (excluding Title, Abstract, Keywords, Footnotes, and Works Cited list): 3,500–10,000 words
• The papers need to be formatted according to the guidelines of the MLA 8th edition.
• Please read the complete submission guidelines before making the submission – http://ellids.com/author-guidelines/submission-guidelines/.
• LLIDS has a Zero plagiarism policy. The Similarity Index of the submissions (Quote percentage) needs to be under 20%, unless absolutely required by the research. The similarity index is a calculation of the percentage of quotes from the word count (excluding title, abstract, keywords, footnote, works cited list).

Submission deadline: 15th March, 2025

Facebook: www.facebook.com/journal.llids/

LinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/company/language-literature-and-interdisciplinary-studies.

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CFP: In-Comparative (Indian) Literatures National Conference 13-14 February 2025 Centre for Comparative Literature School of Humanities, University of Hyderabad

It has been 65 years since the Czech-American Rene Wellek brewed a crisis in the

disciplinary discourses of Comparative Literature. Ever since, almost all Comparatists are forced to take a stand for or against this elephant in the classrooms. Various ACLA Reports (Levin 1965, Green 1975, Bernheimer 1993, Saussy 2014 and Heise 2024) have all been, in one way or another, an apology for the in-disciplinarity, or even anti-disciplinarity, of

this so-called discipline.

Comparative Literature(s) in India have been no different, as the scholars find themselves

caught between the disciplinary battles among Cultural Studies, Dalit Studies, Gender Studies, Minority Studies, Translation Studies and Visual Studies, to name a few, and, of course, the Social Sciences. Still, no one seems to have stopped to ask, whose crisis are we carrying? Is this a Euro-American crisis forced upon us, or have we encountered our own crisis? If yes, then what are they? Is ‘crisis’ necessarily negative? Isn’t lack of crisis that stagnates the discipline, making it redundant? If disciplines are anyway historical formations, then, what does the never-ending debate on the disciplinarity of the discipline based on some ‘origin’ entail? Shouldn’t we rather be exploring the many ‘beginnings’ of the praxis? That is to conceive Comparative Literature as not something that originated in

Euro-America and then came to India, but to reconceive it as a practice that has parallel

beginnings across the world. That is nothing but to decolonize Comparative Literature(s) of India.

‘In-comparative’ is a framework we propose to make sense of the very many incomparable

spatial and temporal experiences, languages, literatures, cultures, communities and

civilizations of ‘India.’ Emily Apter has already drawn attention to ‘un-understandability,’

‘untranslatability’ and ‘incomparativity’ as theoretical constructs, along with Eric

Auerbach’s notion of ‘unGoethean’: “to critique the form of non-cosmopolitan World Literature or standardized literary monoculture” that nationalized itself. No wonder then

James Porter hailed Eric Auerbach as the father of incomparative literature! But that is also to assert that literatures of India are always already in comparative as well asincomparative.

Here, ‘in,’ like in Alain Badiou’s ‘inaesthetics,’ or Jacques Derrida’s ‘im-possibility,’ is not a negation, but an irreducible divisibility that affects the very essence of comparison, its lack of coevality and concomitant equivocality. In-comparative is to critically deconstruct the binary pitfalls that comparison has fallen into. In-comparative is also to resurrect comparison as insurrection, as critique, and not just finding the commonality that binds

together. It is to reach (for) the being-in-common rather than continue to search for a

common being. It is to deterritorialize, even absolutely, without reterritorializing despite territorial boundedness.

These are not some abstract crises that are imposed on Comparative Literature from

outside. They have emerged from the research happening in Comparative Literature and

allied disciplines in India. When the existing disciplinary discourses are insufficient to

address the questions and frameworks that animate and worry the actual works, it is

probably time to pause and unthink ‘in-disciplinarity.’

Please submit Abstracts of about 500 words by 29 December 2024.

- MT Ansari

ansarimt@gmail.com

CFP: Digital Humanities and AI – Intersections, Innovations, and Implications-IIT Dhanbad-31 January -1 February 2025

 

The recent development in Digital Humanities marks a transformative era in academia, where the humanities are increasingly integrating with digital technologies, computational methods, and AI, enhancing research, teaching, and creative outputs. This conference explores how DH sees such development and the evolving relationship between humanities and digital technologies. It focuses on topics that reshape humanities scholarship, from data analysis and pedagogy to creative production. This fosters interdisciplinary dialogues and examines innovations and implications in fields traditionally centered around humanistic inquiry. AI technologies like machine learning, natural language processing, and generative models have expanded the digital humanists' toolkit. Their ability to process and analyze vast datasets opens up new research possibilities in archives, literature, history, philosophy, language, cultural studies and other areas, However, these opportunities come with challenges such as ethical concerns, reinforcing biases, and other implications. 

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This conference invites submissions from academics, researchers, students, industry professionals, early career scholars, and practitioners related to the theme, including but not limited to the following topics.

Digital Humanities and Large Language Models

LLMs-representation of small/ marginalised/indigenous languages

Digital Humanities Pedagogy and AI

Digital Art and Generative AI

Machine Learning and  NLP

Prompting engineering and Humanities

GLAM sectors (Digital Gallery, Digital Archives, Digital Libraries and Digital Museum)

Digital Cultural Heritage, Digital History, Digital Life Writing 

Humanities-Driven Approaches  to AI Development and Deployment

Digital humanities, Public Policy and Decision-making

Responsible AI and Humanities

Gender, Caste, Class and Technology

Digital Multilinguality

Ethics and Questions of AI in the Humanities

Digital Ethics  (Deepfake, Jailbreaking, 

Electronic Literature

Digital Society, Digital Identities

Digital Economies, Digital Labour

Gaming and DH

Digital Healthcare

Digital Mapping

Computational Linguistics

Digital Connectivity and Community

Critical Code and Software Studies

Digital Environmental Humanities 

Decolonizing Digital Humanities: Non-Western Approaches.

Accessibility in Digital Humanities: Bridging Digital Divides

Cognitive Science and AI

AI, Posthumanism, and the Humanities (AI and Posthumanism: Rethinking the Human in Humanities)

AI’s Impact on Intellectual Property and Creative Ownership

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Kindly note that this is an in-person conference which will take place at Indian Institute of Technology (ISM) Dhanbad, Jharkhand.

There are a few JPN Travel Bursaries available for students and scholars. 

The best paper award will be given to the selected participant.

Selected papers will be published with a reputed publisher.

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Important Dates 

Abstract (max. 500 words)Submission: Due 5 January 2025

Abstract Acceptance Notification: Within two days of submission

Conference Date: 31 January -1 February 2025

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The abstract should be sent to iitismdh@gmail.com

For more information, please visit our webpage at https://sites.google.com/view/dh-hss-iit-dhanbad/home.

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Registration Fee Details

INR. 750: Indian Master students and precariously employed

INR. 1500: Indian research scholars

INR. 2500: Indian faculty members and industry personnel

USD 100: International participants

CFP: Inter-University Students’ and Researchers’ Conference on Off the Stage: Performance Practices in Postcolonial India-November 19—20, 2024-Ramakrishna Mission Residential College (Autonomous), Narendrapur

DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH

Ramakrishna Mission Residential College (Autonomous), Narendrapur

10th Inter-University Students’ and Researchers’ Conference 2024

November 19—20, 2024

 Off the Stage: Performance Practices in Postcolonial India

The post-Independence Indian theatre has been largely influenced by the realist theatre tradition of the West with some persistent exceptions in different regions across India, that are committed to revive, explore and establish the Indianness of Indian theatre, however complex the notion of ‘Indian’ may be. As the nationalist movement in colonial India had gained momentum in the first half of the twentieth century, theatre practitioners attempted to decolonise Indian theatre by imbibing indigenous cultural forms and expressions beyond the Proscenium. In fact, the postcolonial intersection in Indian theatre was ushered in by rejecting ‘the modernity associated with western modes of representation’ and by asserting an ‘alternative postcolonial modernity based on premodern indigenous traditions of performance’ (Dharwadker 2019, 22). The concerns raised in the First Drama Seminar in New Delhi in 1956 on the need to create a ‘new’ theatre for the ‘new’ nation, that was self-conscious and self-reflexive, found expressions through movements such as People’s Theatre (already practised by IPTA), the Theatre of Roots and Third Theatre. Various forms of folk, traditional and regional performances were also revived to strengthen the drive towards Indianness in performance making—in terms of the use of performance elements, performers’ training, selection of performance space and content for dramatization. These performances have been mostly addressed to the commons of the society, where the issues and concerns of the grassroots are primarily explored.

One of the most significant engagements in the postcolonial Indian theatre has been with place as performance space, where place and person intersect to allow place to be a potential actant in the playmaking process as well as its meaning production. When a performance embodies social or historical situatedness beyond the Proscenium stage, it attains a wider provision to intersect with performance of protest, narrative of resistance, sociopolitical activism and unorthodox conditions. The environment of an open-air unorthodox performance space surrounds, sustains and contains the performance and contributes to its meaning production—creating an embodied experience for the spectators.  

Postcolonial Indian theatre has also witnessed the rise of applied performance practices where a play is developed through participatory workshop with non-actors belonging to a particular community in focus. Such productions are mostly research-oriented, workshop-based, community-centred and purpose-driven, where the entire playmaking process is shared by the participants, collaborators, facilitators or performers. Sometimes the barrier between the performers and the spectators becomes fluid and an intersection of body, space and environment is observed. Although the community performances in unorthodox performance spaces in local communities broadly diverge from the commerciality of the Proscenium convention, the lack of consistent financial support and enthusiastic collaborators poses a constant threat to their survival in India.

In this background, the conference seeks deliberations on the non-Proscenium forms and practices of theatre performances in postcolonial India, which shape a distinct Indian identity in terms of performance making. The performance forms and practices may be examined through diverse cultural, theoretical and theatrical discourses in the postcolonial Indian context. The seemingly overlapping performance practices and ideas listed below are only indicative and not restrictive in nature.  

People’s theatre: Nationalism, Cultural activism and the Mass

Indigenous performance: Folk, Traditional and Ritual

The Theatre of Roots: Rooted, Uprooted or De-rooted?

Street theatre: Politics, Propaganda and Social activism

Performance of protest: Art, Dissent and Performativity

Applied performance: Therapy, Education and Engagement

Participatory performance: Research, Workshop and Collaboration

Intimate performance: Body, Space and Proximity

Ecological performance: Ecology, Climate change and Green dramaturgy

Organic theatre: Nature, Embeddedness and Organicity

Site-specific performance: Art, Aesthetics and Environment

We invite abstracts of not more than 300 words from college/University students, research scholars and early career researchers to be emailed to the conference convenor at english.rkm@gmail.com. The names, contact numbers, email ids and affiliations should be clearly mentioned in the abstracts. Please write “SRC2024 Abstract” in the subject heading of your email.

Important Dates

Last Date of submission of Abstract: Friday, 20th September 2024

Notification of acceptance of Abstract: Wednesday, 25th September 2024

For queries: english.rkm@gmail.com

Convenor: Pranab Kumar Mandal, Assistant Professor, Department of English, Ramakrishna Mission Residential College (Autonomous), Narendrapur

CFP: Two-Day International Seminar on Mirroring Change: Literature and Social Transformation 3rd & 4th October 2024 ~ Pondicherry University

The Department of English at Pondicherry University has been an important educational destination for research scholars and students, ever since it commenced functioning in 1986. Over the years, the department has produced innumerable PhD and M. Phil scholars, in addition to a large number of postgraduate students. The faculty of the department with their different specializations and academic interests are at the forefront of innovative teaching and advanced research varying from contemporary literary, cultural and language studies to theoretical explorations. The department also runs a Post Graduate Diploma in Professional Communication in English, an add-on program, in much demand among students and employees.

Furthermore, the department has also sought to enhance the language and communication skills of students from across the University through Functional

English and other communication-oriented courses. Another hallmark of the department is the Research and Cultural Forum (RCF) which acts as an avenue for scholars and students to showcase their research work and creative abilities. The department has also been at the forefront of organizing seminars, workshops and faculty development programs.

 

 

 

 

About Research and Cultural Forum (RCF):

Conceived thirty-five years ago as Research and Journal Alert Forum (RJAF) at the Department of English, Pondicherry University, RCF is a platform for research scholars and students of the department to discuss their research findings in various areas related to literature and culture and also present their creative talents. Run exclusively by the research scholars of the department, under the guidance of the faculty members and the support of MA students the forum hosts invited talks, workshops and interactive sessions by experts of national and international repute in the emerging areas of English Studies. The forum was recently renamed Research and Cultural Forum to integrate the department's research and cultural outputs. Now, it proudly undertakes the mission of bringing together and highlighting the role of literature in social transformation through this two-day International Seminar.

 

About the Seminar:

 A Two-Day International Seminar has been planned by the Department of English on the 3rd & 4th of October 2024, with the focus area “Mirroring Change: Literature and Social Transformation”.

 Theme:

 Literature has been able to predict, analyze, and critique social, economic and political change for a long time. This, in turn, has contributed to understanding social and political transformation through a medium that has been conventionally seen to be largely imaginative and fictional. While Orwell’s cautionary tale, 1984 predicted the effects of totalitarian regimes and surveillance, Harriet Beecher’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin “helped lay the groundwork for the American Civil War” (Kaufman, 2006: 18). If Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath brought into full view the travails of America during the Great Depression, Munshi Premchand’s Godaan brutally exposed poverty and the evils of the zamindari system in India. Literature has thus been constantly in sync with the changing silhouettes of society.

 The conference aims to explore how literature has closely interacted with and mirrored the intricate matrix of the social and political milieu. This interaction has resulted in innumerable texts that have reflected these significant changes and helped us understand an ever-changing world. The wide gamut of social, political, economic, cultural, sociological and anthropological change has prompted the writer to ask questions, show up the mirror and sometimes even offer prescriptions for ills, thus making literature a vehicle for social transformation.  The conference aims to investigate and explore the significant role that literature has played in reflecting these changes, therefore acting as truth-seeker, sentinel, chronicler, and critic, all rolled into one.   

 The conference aims to explore the interchange between literature and social transformation across varied arenas and can include, but is not restricted, to the following areas:

•           Political upheaval and social movements

•           Caste, class and hierarchy

•           Reigns, regimes and democracy

•           Marxism and literature

•           Changing dimensions of gender

•           Queer narratives

•           Geographies, borders and migration

•           Indigenous literatures

•           Anthropocene, Ecocriticism and Ecofeminism 

•           Dalit literature and social justice

•           Technology and literature

•           Popular culture and subcultures

•           Medical imperialism and illness narratives

  Registration Fee:

 Faculty Members:      Rs. 2000

Research Scholars:     Rs. 1000

PG Students:               Rs. 500

Co-authors are required to pay individually.

 UG students (participation only): Rs 200

 Abstracts:

 Abstracts can be uploaded through the Google form link

below on or before 30th August 2024.

 Registration Link: https://forms.gle/CA78DHY86yfQtzhW9

 Your queries may be addressed to rcfseminar2024@gmail.com

 Important Dates:

 Last date for sending abstracts: 30th August 2024

Confirmation of acceptance will be communicated by: 2nd September 2024

Complete papers are to be sent by: 27th September 2024 

 Address for Communication:

 Drishya K.

Steward  C.        

Research Scholars                                                     

Department of English                                              

Pondicherry University                                             

Puducherry-605014                                                   

8589825788, 8270410154                                  

CFP: 14th Asian Cinema Studies Society Conference 2025 (May 22-24, 2025) -The University of Hong Kong

Call for Papers: What is Asian Cinema?

We invite paper and panel proposals to present at the 14th Asian Cinema Studies Society conference to be held at the University of Hong Kong (HKU) during May 22-24, 2025. As a non-profit scholarly organization, the Asian Cinema Studies Society (ACSS) actively fosters international research in Asian film and media and publishes the flagship peer-reviewed journal Asian Cinema (Intellect). With the support of the Center for the Study of Globalization and Cultures (CSGC), the Master of Arts in Literary and Cultural Studies Programme (MALCS), and the Department of Comparative Literature of HKU, ACSS brings its first face-to-face meeting since the global pandemic back to Hong Kong, a major Asian metropolis, transport hub, filmmaking capital, and connective node of regional, inter-Asian, and transpacific cultural globalization.

ACSS 2025 invites participants to present papers on any aspect of Asian film and media, though we encourage proposals that address the question: “What is Asian cinema?” Although often understood as cinematic practices, institutions, cultural formations, and critical discourses in or from Asia, the term “Asian cinema” belies its contradictions and complexities as an idea. Historically, scholars challenged such simplistic and binaristic understandings by investigating: how “Asia,” “Asian,” and “cinema” were defined under colonialism and postcolonialism; the way transnational productions trespass national and regional boundaries; the complex relations between home/ancestry/ethnicity/linguistic sharedness and diaspora; as well as how cinema itself often redefines and rewrites the meanings of “Asia” and “Asian.” Recently, theorists posit that the term “Asian cinema” implicitly constructs “cinema” and “media” as universal concepts modified by a particular concept: “Asian,” a construction that perpetuates the orientalist knowledge formation of Asia as an exception to the norm.

In light of these provocations, we ask: Does studying cinema in, from, about, or by Asia/Asians always suggest a power relation between an observer and an observed or an irreconcilable difference between Asia and somewhere else? Do strategically essential concerns justify the particularity of Asian film and media studies? How do evolving meanings and technologies of “cinema,” “film,” and “media” in our era of digital globalization reshape ideas of “Asia” or “Asian?” And, what was Asian cinema?

We welcome discussions and interventions addressing these questions both directly and indirectly, and from different disciplinary perspectives, methods, and approaches. Possible topics in relation to Asian film and media may include, but are not limited to:

● Colonialism, postcolonialism, decolonization, nationalism, empire, globalization

● Digital and online media, cultures, communities, and fandoms, streaming and platforms, video games, new media, seriality, intermediality, transmediality, post-cinema, big data, AI, CGI, deepfakes, surveillance

● Environmentalism, ecocriticism, animal studies and/or plant studies, anthropocene

● Film and media theory, philosophy, and discourse

● Historiography, memory, media archaeology and ecology, industry, exhibition, distribution, censorship/regulation, museology and curation, film festivals, stars

● LGBTQIA+, disability, race, ethnicity, class, feminism, and gender

● Pedagogy, production, performance, criticism, sound, music, effects, choreography

● Poetics, narrative, aesthetics, genre, documentary, experimental, animation, authorship, studios, independent, reception, audience, waves, movements

● Regional, national, transnational, indigenous, diaspora, language communities, refugee, exilic, inter-Asian, transpacific, Asian/American, Asian Australian, Asian Canadian

● Urban, rural, archipelagic, oceanic, and other spatial and environmental imaginaries

Please send proposals or enquiries to acssconference2025@gmail.com. For individual paper proposals, send a 200-300 word abstract and include the title, author name(s), institutional affiliation, mailing address, and email contacts, as well as a brief (50-100 word) biography of the contributor. For pre-constituted panel proposals (of 3-4 papers), provide a brief description (100 words) of the overall panel along with the individual abstracts and contributor information. Sessions will be 90 minutes in duration, and time limits will be strictly enforced. The deadline for submission of proposals is 10 November 2024. Notifications of acceptance will be sent by the end of January 2025.

There will be no conference registration fee per se, but all presenters must be members of the Asian Cinema Studies Society, which requires an annual fee of $550 HKD / $70 USD. Full-time students (with ID) and underemployed scholars may pay a discounted fee of $450 HKD / $57 USD. The fee covers one year membership, one volume (two issues) of Asian Cinema, and gives access to the society’s executive meeting at the conference.