Call
for Papers
3rd
Annual Transnational Asia Graduate Student Conference
February
10-11, 2012
Rice
University Chao Center for Asian Studies
Architectures
of Mobility: Structures, Circuits, Deformations
Keynote:
Dr. Nayan Shah, Department of History, UC San Diego
Deadline: Please send abstracts of 250-300
words to transnationalasia@gmail.com by November 28,
2011
Contemporary figurations of the transnational often invoke a
language of flows and frictions to describe the increasingly ambiguous
role of nation-states and their boundaries in the movement of goods,
persons, and ideas. Without abandoning this view altogether, this
conference invites participants to move beyond it in order to investigate
the dynamics which have led to its promulgation--both as dominant metaphor
in the thought of many scholars studying Asia and as lived analytic for
individuals making sense of their vertiginous contemporaries and their
legacies.
We aim to look at the structures which animate and render
possible or hinder experiences of mobility, from those of subjectivity to
the economy; the circuits that enable those mobilities, from local bus
routes to the trajectories of migrant workers; and the deformations of
these established systems that can generate both psychic violence and
practices of agency alike. In short, this year's Transnational Asia
Graduate Student Conference envisions a cross-disciplinary approach to
exploring the processes and effects of “transnationalism,” as well as the
conditions supporting its conceptual coherence, in both the historical
past and the emerging present. We invite interventions situated at all
levels of analysis, from the micro-social to the geopolitical, utilizing a
range of methodological approaches.
The above description of the themes of this conference ought
to be taken as a heuristic for our discussion about transnationalism in
Asia, rather than as a strict or exclusionary rule for the content of
papers. Potential areas of focus include, but are not limited
to:
-Media and technology
-Health and the body
-Scientific collaboration
-Language and linguistic
practice
-Activism and social movements
-Theoretical approaches to
transnationalism
-The built environment and
transportation
-Environmental practices and the natural
world
-Religion and spiritual
practices
-Affect and emotional life
-Political economy
-Consumption practices
This conference is explicitly interdisciplinary in nature,
and we invite participation from graduate students in ALL disciplines
across the humanities, social sciences, architecture, planning, business,
and natural sciences. Similarly, we strive to include research which
represents the regional and national diversity of Asia. Presentations on
work in progress or research utilizing experimental approaches are
strongly encouraged. In addition to a stimulating theoretical discussion,
this conference is intended to function in part as a workshop space, to
allow graduate students to receive feedback from mentors and peers at any
stage of their projects.
Please circulate freely.
Rice University
Chao Center for Asian Studies
6100 Main Street
Houston, Texas
Please send abstracts by November 28, 2011 to: transnationalasia@gmail.com