Edward Said’s Orientalism
(1978) has profoundly affected teaching and research in Asian Studies,
raising fundamental questions about why and how we study Asia. Nearly
fifty years later, we are faced with a need to reflect on what has
changed and remains unchanged since Said’s seminal intervention in Asian
Studies. Specifically, Transnational Asia is calling for
papers that address pedagogical and instructional issues––in particular,
Asian Studies classes in colleges and universities that engage directly
with the themes and critiques raised in Said’s Orientalism and
its reverberating effects. We are particularly interested in papers
illustrating changes in classrooms and on campuses that have happened
and are happening hand in hand with changing socio-economic and
political conditions, not only in Asia but also in the rest of the
world. We especially welcome cross-disciplinary approaches, including
language instruction, art, history, area studies, anthropology,
literature, ethnic studies, and geography. Prospective contributors are
asked to send their abstracts by August 31 to
transnational.asia@rice.edu.
Transnational Asia: an online interdisciplinary journal
is a web-only journal from the Chao Center for Asian Studies, Rice
University. Transnational Asia publishes scholarship that challenges
traditional understandings of Asia, moving beyond the confines of area
studies and a nation-state focus and capturing the emergent forms of
Asia-related, Asia-inspired, and Asia-driven themes and sites of inquiry
in the world today.
What
is the Asian Century? Are we living in it? Do its recent invocations—by
writers and readers, politicians and pundits, journalists and
academics—mark a return to earlier eras of relative Asian centrality on
the world stage or announce a future we have yet to inhabit? Is it a
paranoid, U.S.-centered discourse of Western decline or a triumphant
announcement of Asian economic-semiotic arrival? Is the Asian Century an
aspiration or a threat—and to whom?
The term “Asian Century” has more than one origin story. Narrators
are multiple, located in both Asia and the West. In a 1988 summit,
China’s Deng Xiaoping, alongside Indian Prime Minister Rajiv Gandhi, may
have coined the phrase by calling it into question: “In recent years,
people have been saying that the next century will be the century of
Asia and the Pacific, as if that were sure to be the case. I disagree
with this view.” For Deng, skepticism about the inevitability of Asia’s
rise was going to be crucial to the India-China partnership against the
“developed” world; his skepticism hasn’t aged well. In the wake of the
2008 financial crisis, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton declared a
“pivot to Asia” in “America’s Pacific Century.” Clinton’s emphatic
recapitulation of the “Asian Century” revived Western tropes of Asian
ascendancy that predated Asia’s contemporary economic rise by more than a
hundred years, while betraying American anxieties about the decline of
US hegemony. In fact, both Deng and Clinton were responding to a process
that had been underway since at least the early-1970s: the “long
downturn” or tendential decline in profitability of Western economies
that ran alongside the “economic miracles” of many Asian economies,
including Japan’s Cold War-era boom and India’s and China’s eventual
liberalization. For some, the Asian Century was, or is, a solution. Now,
in an era of mounting deglobalization, its contradictions are just as
sharply felt as its curious staying power.
What distinguishes the current round of Asian Century discourse is
perhaps its mutual construction by “Asians” and “Westerners” alike. When
the Asian Century came into wide currency in the 1990s, replacing a
then-regnant “Pacific Rim” and “Pacific Century” rhetoric, it remediated
a long history of similarly totalizing visions that issued not least
from the “Asians” themselves: from Japan’s monstrous pursuit of the
Greater East Asian Co-prosperity Sphere and Ferdinand Marcos’s
dictatorial imposition of neoliberal programs in the Philippines, to the
advertisement of the “Singapore model” and even China’s “century of
humiliation,” which continues to vouchsafe its nationalist ressentiment.
As Wang Hui’s analysis of the politics of imagining Asia has shown,
visions of the Asian Century betray contradictory regionalist and
nationalist ambitions that are held in focus by the apparatuses of the
state and the culture industries. Thus Asian Century discourse is
typically inflected by a nation or speaker’s position vis-a-vis key
market and state brokers. Given that the meaning of “Asia” looks
different depending on the vantage of Taiwan, Sri Lanka, Vietnam, or for
that matter Saudi Arabia, what is the role of pan-Asian alliances and
inter-Asian competition in constituting the Asian Century? Is Asia
“one”—or only in the eyes of the West?
This special issue invites critical perspectives from scholars
working in and across multiple languages and disciplines. We seek
submissions that explore the Asian Century as idea, method, and media,
and that examine its genealogies and itineraries from a range of
contexts and histories, including of labor, empire, capital, war,
technology, pandemics, dispossession, modernization, culture, and
aesthetics. With “idea, method, and media,” we intend to inspire, but
not circumscribe, the possible range of disciplinary approaches and
primary sources that might be enlisted in responding to this call.
Indeed, the idea of the Asian Century may very well be predicated on
counter-articulations of its impossibility. While the Asian Century may
appear at first as periodizing marker or geopolitical diagnostic, we
propose that it can also be read across media and cultural forms, as an
affective relation to the past, present, and future, as a structure of
feeling, and as a visual and sensorial regime. Finally, in proposing the
Asian Century as method, we seek to revisit and reimagine the
interdisciplinary stakes of the longstanding conversation on “Asia as
method.”
For example, what humanistic and social scientific methods can best
track the concept’s intellectual and institutional emergence,
circulation, and mediation, including well before the 21st century? How
might regional Asian rivalries shape the supply chains and the capital
flows of emerging trade blocs like the Regional Comprehensive Economic
Partnership (RCEP) and the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP)? How have
cultural production and intellectual exchange furnished the cognitive
and affective frameworks for these blocs, and for Asian visions of
global expansion like China’s “Belt and Road” initiative, South Korea’s
cultural exports, and Taiwan’s advanced semiconductor industry? Given
the increasing salience of the Asian Century as a concept for
periodizing the contradictions of neoliberal capitalism, how might we
trace its effects and iterations in and beyond political economy? What
was the Asian Century, understood as visions and projections of Asia’s
rise promoted by those who stood to benefit from such characterizations?
What of the legacy and future of Third World decolonization and
Indigenous struggles when Asian peripheries become, or have threatened
to become, global powers? Rather than take for granted the rise of Asia
as such, we seek to understand how and why Asia’s ostensible ascendance
has seen not a lessening but rather a retrenchment of the conditions of
planetary inequality.
Essay Submissions
Essays (between 6,000–10,000 words) and abstracts (125 words) should be submitted electronically through this submission form by May 1, 2024 and
prepared according to the author-date + bibliography format of the
Chicago Manual of Style. See section 2.38 of the University of Minnesota
Press style guide or chapter 15 of the Chicago Manual of Style Online
for additional formatting information.
Authors’ names should not appear on manuscripts; instead, please
include a separate document with the author’s name, address,
institutional affiliations, and the title of the article with your
electronic submission. Authors should not refer to themselves in the
first person in the submitted text or notes if such references would
identify them; any necessary references to the author’s previous work,
for example, should be in the third person.
The Palgrave Handbook of Monsters and Monstrous Bodies, under contract with Palgrave Publishers, is an interdisciplinary collection of chapters, that provides a snapshot of the evolving field of Monster Studies. This Handbook offers a comprehensive review of globalizing and expanding interdisciplinary explorations of monsters and monstrous bodies. It will become the only Handbook of its kind that focuses on both monsters and the monstrous by world-leading experts, established academics, emerging scholars, and new academics bringing together scholarship across disciplines about the monstrous in
multiple contexts and time periods.
We are seeking scholars of diverse identities, races, and genders, especially those from non-Western institutions or whose work examines monsters and monstrous bodies from global perspectives and nonnormative experiences and narratives to complete the text. Scholars will reflect on the tremendous growth and wide-ranging appeal of these engagements throughout the disciplines. The chapters will emphasize how cultures create ideas of monstrous bodies and utilize monsters as allegories for all manner of identities, issues, and socio-cultural experiences. The Handbook will serve as an interdisciplinary holistic reference to those interested in the links between monsters and socio-cultural attitudes.
CURRENT CONTRACTED CHAPTERS
1. “How To Create a Monster: From Anatomy To Trauma And All Points In Between” Sherry Ginn
2. “Abjection,” Dr. Katherine H. Lee, Indiana State University
3. “Imposing Order on the Monstrous: A Cultural Taxonomy of the Modern Zombie,” Rob Smid, Curry College Massachusetts
4. “Demonstrification: How Monsters Can Be Agents of Social Change,” Colleen Karn, Methodist College
5. “Holy Monsters: Bodies, Impairment and the Sacred in the Middle Ages,” Lisa R. Verner,
University of New Orleans
6. “In Sickness and in Hell: Monstrous Revenants and Infectious Disease,” Leah Richards, Ph.D., LaGuardia Community College, City University of New York
7. “Hell is a Teenage Girl”: Revenge and the Monstrous-Feminine in Jennifer’s Body” Hannah Hansen, Massey University New Zealand
8. “Monstrous Monster Makers: Examining Mad Scientists and their Creations,” Heather M. Porter, M.S. & Michael Starr, University of Northampton, UK.
9. “Black Vampires and Antiblackness: New and Old Histories”, Deanna Koretsky, Spelman College
10. “Jordan Peele’s Horror Noire Oeuvre: Black Studies, White Students, and the Politics of DEI Curricula in this Era of Woke Culture,” Jayson Baker, Curry College,
11. “Let’s Do the Monster Mash” Dance Horror in Vampire Films,” Elizabeth Miller Lewis, The University of New Orleans
The Palgrave Handbook of Monsters and Monstrous Bodies
12. “A Monstrous Hunger: Female Vampires and Appetite,” Robin A. Werner, The University of New Orleans
13. “Monstrous Bodies: The Quadroons Balls of New Orleans,” U. Melissa Anyiwo, The University of Scranton
14. “Dumb show: Mute children in New Zealand literature and cinema,” Jenny Lawn Massey University New Zealand
15. “Obsessed with Fangs, Fur, and Tentacles: Monster Pornography and a Desire for Monstrous Sex,” Amanda Jo Hobson, Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology
16. “The Danger of the White Progressive,” Liza A. Talusan, PhD
17. “The Demamification of Black Women in Educational Leadership: Sirol’s Song,” Loris Adams, National Cathedral School.
TOPICS MAY INCLUDE, BUT ARE NOT LIMITED TO:
✓ Monster Hunters of Eastern Europe
✓ African monsters and monstrous bodies in fiction and folklore
✓ Manga & Anime Monsters: Globalizing Japanese Storytelling
✓ (Re)Envisioning (Dis)Abilities and Monstrous Bodies in Global Media
✓ Monstrosity in Asian contexts
✓ Exploring Monstrosity in International Children’s Media
✓ The Monsters of Nollywood & Bollywood.
✓ Selling Black Bodies in Pain
✓ Monstrous Tourism in Ghana and the US
✓ Making monsters? Historical Narratives of the Other.
✓ Monstrous mythologies of the Diaspora.
✓ Animating Monstrous Bodies in Indie Comics and Graphic Novels
✓ The Impact of Independent and Self-Published Production on Monstrosity in fiction and film
✓ Queering the Monstrous
✓ Monstrous Children and the Horrors of Caretaking
✓ Monstrosity, Comedy, and the Awkward Blurring of Genres
✓ Exploring the Quotidian and the Profane in Contemporary Monsters-Next-Door Fictions
✓ Romancing the Monstrous, Or Why We Want to Date Monsters
✓ Monsters and/or Monstrous Bodies to Redress Cultural Appropriation
✓ Policing Monstrous Flesh
TIMETABLE:
✓ Thursday, February 29th, 2024 – Proposals & Bio due
✓ January 1st, 2025– 1st drafts due
✓ June 15, 2025 – 2nd drafts due
✓ October 30, 2025 – Final Drafts Due
Please email 300-word proposals with a short biographical statement (50 words) and inquiries to Melissa Anyiwo and Amanda Jo Hobson by Thursday, February 29th, 2024. The final chapters will be approximately 7000-9000 words.
Proposals Due by Thursday, February 29th, 2024
Editors:
Amanda Jo Hobson, Associate Director of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, amandajohobson@gmail.com
U. Melissa Anyiwo, Associate Professor History, Director Black Studies, The University of Scranton melissa.anyiwo@scranton.edu
“‘I bear witness’—that means: ‘I affirm (rightly or wrongly, but in
all good faith, sincerely) that that was or is present to me, in space
and time (thus, sense-perceptible), and although you do not have access
to it, not the same access, you, my addressees, you have to believe me,
because I engage myself to tell you the truth, I am already engaged in
it, I tell you that I am telling you the truth. Believe me. You have to
believe me.'” – Jacques Derrida (“Poetics and Politics of Witnessing”
76)
Witnessing is more than seeing, more than recounting testimony. A
witness to an event is its participant, whether central or peripheral.
In its continuity, the act of witnessing carries us past the immediate
crisis of an event, into a post-event life. Processes of witnessing have
manifested as fluid, ongoing testimonies, conveyed through various
mediums such as novels, memoirs, autobiographies, reports, and films,
among others. One could argue that at the core of these testimonies lies
what Nadine Gordimer describes in “Literary Witness in A World of
Terror: The Inward Testimony” (2009) as “the duality of inwardness and
the outside world” (Gordimer 68), the dual exploration of one’s inner
self and the external world, the quest to reconcile oneself with the
uncertainties inherent in evolving events and the imperative to conceive
new meanings of self-identity.
We invite papers that consider how testimony has been represented not
only as a form of documented eyewitness literature, but also as a
process that entails transformations, and encounters that elicit new
forms of becoming. By conjugating witnessing with becoming, we invite
you to move past the eventuality of crisis, to understand language as
irrevocably tied to the process of bearing witness, remaking itself
continuously against the possible threat of erasure, “as if it were
being invented at every step, and if it were burning immediately”
(Jacques Derrida The Post Card 11). Differing subjectivities,
selves, and life stories emerge in different environments. How might the
act of bearing witness to uncodified subjective experiences and
marginalized social realities challenge narratives of dominant power
structures?
To return to the temporal disconnect between the witnessed event and the
performance of testimony, becoming can take a similar form. To become
is to recognize the same temporal disconnect, to look backwards at what
once was, yet no longer remains. Becoming might be a reading of the
past, enacted in tandem with the witness’ attempt to reconstruct it,
which remains eternally out of reach. How do these two forms interact
with one another? How else might they intertwine?
As an interdisciplinary conference, we encourage submissions from a
variety of fields, such as literature, philosophy, history, ethnography,
anthropology, media studies, disability studies, sociology, art
history, religious studies, and gender studies. We welcome papers
related (but not limited) to the following topics:
AD by
>
Testimonial Literature
Ethics of Bearing Witness
Living & Writing
Socio-political events in literature
Performativity
Transnationality & the Diaspora
Queerness & Alterity
Black Studies
Indigeneity & Decolonial thought
Planetary Subjectivity vs. Capitalist Globalism
Language & Translation
Temporality & the Self
Those who wish to participate in the conference should submit an
abstract of no more than 250 words, along with a short bio. Abstracts
must be sent, as attachments, to utorontocomplitconference@gmail.com before December 1, 2023.
Emails should include the author’s name, institutional affiliation, and
contact information. Presentations should not exceed 20 minutes.
Contact Information
Zichuan Gan, co-organizer
PhD student
Centre for Comparative Literature, University of Toronto
Gender and caste have historically wielded immense influence as
prevailing forms of social and cultural hierarchies in the Indian
subcontinent. Consequently, they have taken center stage in discussions
within the realms of social science, policy-making, and the pursuit of
inclusive growth. A productive academic discourse has emerged, delving
into various facets of Gender and Dalit studies in the broader context
of Indian social science. Substantial transformations have transpired in
the examination of marginalized groups and issues associated with
social exclusion.
Over the past few decades, the primary thematic discourse has
revolved around feminism, women's empowerment, and the predicaments of
marginalized communities. Academia has also posed significant inquiries
into how gender discrimination and power dynamics contribute to the
perpetuation of social and cultural hierarchies and the subjugation of
women and Dalits. Recently, novel perspectives and methodological
practices have surfaced within the interdisciplinary social sciences.
Therefore, it is imperative to thoroughly explore the diverse
methodological and perspectival aspects of gender discrimination and
social exclusion concerning women and marginalized groups such as
Dalits.
Themes and Sub Themes
Theme 1: Gender Studies in Kerala
Sub-themes:
Historical Perspective:
Women's Status in Ancient-Medieval& Modern Kerala
Women's Movements in Modern Kerala
Gender and Politics:
Political Participation of Women in Kerala
Women in Leadership Roles: Case Studies
Cultural and Social Dynamics:
Impact of Literature and Arts on Gender Perceptions
Traditional Roles vs. Modern Aspirations
Contemporary Challenges:
Gender Disparities in Education and Employment
Economic Dimensions
Women's Health and Healthcare Access
Theme 2: Dalit Studies in Kerala
Sub-themes:
Historical Evolution:
Origin and Growth of Dalit Movements in Kerala
Dalit Icons and Leaders in Kerala
Dalit Writings and Politics
Economic Empowerment:
Dalit Entrepreneurship and Business Initiatives
Land Reforms and Dalit Communities
Educational Challenges:
Access to Quality Education for Dalit Communities
Role of Education in Dalit Empowerment
Social Issues and Discrimination:
Slavery & Humiliation in Kerala
Caste-based Discrimination: Realities and Challenges
Intersections of Gender and Caste Questions
Theme 3: Intersectionality and Marginalized Identities
Sub-themes:
Marginality- Every Day Experiences and Knowledge Production
Gender and Dalit Intersections:
Double Discrimination: Dalit Women’s Experiences
Dalit LGBTQ+ Experiences in Kerala
Legal Framework and Social Justice:
Legal Safeguards for Dalits and Women in Kerala
Challenges in Implementation: A Critical Analysis
Culture & Aesthetics
Gender and Dalit Issues in Literature -Art-Cinema- Performance and Theatre
Media Representation:
Portrayal of Dalits and Women in Kerala Media
Alternative Narratives and Media Activism
Theme 4: Empowerment Strategies and Interventions
Sub-themes:
Government Policies:
Effectiveness of Government Schemes for Women and Dalits
Policy Recommendations for Improvement
NGO Initiatives:
Role of NGOs in Empowering Dalits and Women
Best Practices and Lessons Learned
Education and Awareness Programs:
Impact of Awareness Campaigns on Gender and Dalit Issues
Integrating Gender and Dalit Studies in Education Curriculum
Social Justice and Affirmative Action
Education and Reservation Policies
NEP and Inclusive Education
Theme 5: Future Prospects and Challenges
Sub-themes:
Emerging Trends:
Digital Empowerment: Opportunities and Challenges
Changing Dynamics in Urban and Rural Spaces
Global Perspectives:
Comparative Analysis: Gender and Dalit Studies in International Context
Global Movements and their Influence on Kerala
Sustainable Development:
Sustainable Livelihoods for Dalit Communities
Gender-sensitive Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)
We are pleased to invite research papers from teachers and research
scholars related to the aforementioned themes and sub-themes. Kindly submit your abstracts by 31 October 2023 and your full papers by 10 November 2023. Please limit your typed paper to 10 pages with adequate referencing in the form of endnotes, using MS Word format (Times New Roman, 12 pt, double-spaced), and send it to hakeem@gasckkd.ac.in.
The 22nd annual Women’s and Gender History Symposium at the
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign seeks graduate student paper
presentations of 15-20 minutes that foreground the social, cultural, and
political implications of space and place in histories of women,
gender, sexuality, and/or queerness. Alternative presentations (e.g.
film, poetry, art) are welcome so long as they fit within the
symposium’s format.
Over the course of history, gender and place have been mutually
constitutive. Spatial, material, and environmental conditions shape and
are shaped by gendered social practices. This symposium invites
interdisciplinary research which interrogates the spatial and social
situatedness of gender, including (but not limited to) topics of:
migration, mobility, and borders
environmental studies
places of war, protest, and activism
domesticity and the myth of the public/private divide
architecture and urban planning
digital spaces
critical geography and GIS
Submissions need not be confined to the discipline of
history or its methods. First-time presenters and MA students are warmly
welcomed.
This year’s keynote speakers are Dr. Jessica Zychowicz (Director,
U.S. Fulbright Program in Ukraine and IIE: Institute of International
Education Kyiv) and Dr. Rosalyn LaPier (History, UIUC). Dr. Zychowicz’s
work on Ukrainian feminist art, protest, and places of freedom brings
timely and critical discussion to the conference. Dr. LaPier researches
Indigenous knowledge, environmental feminism, and sacred landscapes.
A reception will open the symposium on the evening of Thursday,
February 29. Panels will take place the afternoon of Friday, March 1st,
and the morning and afternoon of Saturday, March 2nd, 2024. While the
keynote speakers will present in-person at the University of Illinois at
Urbana-Champaign, the symposium will offer a hybrid format via Zoom for
panelists who wish to participate and attend remotely.
Submissions and Contact: 2024 WGHS Organizing Committee, wghs.uiuc@gmail.com
Submission Deadline: November 30, 2023 at 5pm CST
Please submit proposals (200-300 words in length) together with a CV to wghs.uiuc@gmail.com by November 30, 2023 at 5pm CST.
Contact Information
Tabitha Cochran, on behalf of the 2024 Women's and Gender History Organizing Committee
