Conference Announcements

announcements about conferences, workshops, and colloquia in modern Chinese cultural studies

CHIME 2026–cfp

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CFP: Ecological Dimensions of Chinese Music (29th CHIME), Sydney, Dec 2026
Sydney Conservatorium of Music, University of Sydney, Australia
1-4 December 2026

Submission deadline: 28 February 2026

Submit your title and abstract here: https://tinyurl.com/3r5y6p2c

CHIME, founded in Europe in 1990, is a worldwide platform for scholars and students of Chinese music. This conference is sponsored by the China Studies Centre and hosted by the Sydney Conservatorium of Music at the University of Sydney, Australia.

Call for papers:

Chinese music has had a long-standing and highly significant role in environmental awareness within Chinese cultural worlds, especially as a crucial means for recording and transmitting cultural knowledge in ways that integrate physical experience and philosophical conceptualisations. These dimensions of Chinese music are particularly worthy of attention in this time of climate crisis, as our understandings of the role that cultural practices play in safeguarding biodiversity, enhancing environmental awareness, and promoting activities that reduce our ecological footprint are growing. Moreover, China’s important role as an emerging world leader in renewable energy has seen incredible investment in clean energy, and coupled with work towards overcoming other environmental challenges (such as establishing the 2022 Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework) indicates that Chinese attention to ecology and environment now extends well beyond the cultural sphere.

This conference theme therefore offers a timely platform for exploring the diverse forms and dimensions of the connections between Chinese music, environment and ecology in both contemporary and historical eras, as well as acknowledging the vital importance of understanding and appreciating our natural world in an era of global environmental crisis.

We welcome proposals for papers on this theme, considering (but not limited to) one or more of the following issues: Continue reading CHIME 2026–cfp →

Young Scholars Forum (EACL–13)–cfp

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CFP: Young Scholars Forum at the EACL-13 Conference

We would like to invite master’s students, doctoral candidates, and post-doctoral researchers (within 3 years of their PhD defense) to submit a paper to the Young Scholar’s Forum (YSF) at the 13th International Conference of the European Association for Chinese Linguistics (EACL-13) in Paris-Aubervilliers, Campus Condorcet (2-4 September 2026).

The YSF provides an inclusive platform for eligible participants to present ongoing research, discuss methodological challenges, connect with peers who share similar research interests, and enhance their international academic visibility. The forum aims to provide junior linguists with opportunities to present their work in a formal academic conference setting.

Each YSF session is assigned a senior researcher who serves as a mentor and high-quality papers will be invited to submit to a special issue/section, potentially alongside commentaries from the session researchers.

For more information, please visit https://eacl-13.sciencesconf.org/resource/page/id/20 or contact us at .

We are looking forward for your submissions on or before 28 February 2026!

The Organizing Board, YSF, EACL-13

Posted by: John Oliver Monghit john.oliver.monghit@student.hu-berlin.de

World Association for Chinese Studies 2026–cfp

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Call for Papers: 10th World Conference of Chinese Studies Anniversary Edition
The University of Hong Kong, School of Chinese
August 12–14, 2026
Registration deadline Jan 31, 2026

The World Association for Chinese Studies (WACS) invites proposals for panels, roundtables, and individual papers for its 10th annual conference, celebrating a decade of bridging scholarly traditions across the globe. This milestone event, hosted by the School of Chinese at The University of Hong Kong, will convene under the theme “China Studies Between Worlds — Ten Years of Bridges, New Challenges.” We welcome submissions that engage this theme across the full spectrum of Chinese Studies, including history, literature, philosophy, political science, sociology, economics, art history, religious studies, and related disciplines. For ten years, WACS has worked to foster dialogue between traditional Sinology and contemporary China Studies, encouraging exchange between Guoxue approaches and Western methodologies. Rather than imposing predetermined thematic constraints, the conference provides scholars with the opportunity to present their ongoing research and engage in open intellectual exchange. Hong Kong, with its unique position at the crossroads of East and West, offers an ideal setting for this anniversary gathering.

To ensure a balanced exchange of perspectives, participation as a speaker is limited to 100 scholars from mainland China and 100 scholars from outside mainland China. The conference language is English, though discussions may be conducted in English or Chinese. Participation as an audience member without presenting is also welcome. The program committee welcomes proposals for panels (typically comprising a chair, three to four paper presenters, and a discussant) as well as roundtable discussions and Branch Association panels. Panel proposals should be submitted as a single coordinated application. We also encourage individual paper proposals. To maintain fairness and ensure broad participation, each individual may submit only one proposal—either an individual paper or a panel contribution. Continue reading World Association for Chinese Studies 2026–cfp →

American Association for Chinese Studies 2026–cfp

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Call for Papers
68th Annual Conference of the American Association for Chinese Studies
University of St. Thomas
Houston, TX
October 23-25, 2026

The American Association for Chinese Studies (AACS) annual conference program committee invites proposals for panels, roundtables, and individual papers on issues concerning China,Taiwan, Hong Kong, Macao, other Chinese communities, and the Chinese diaspora for the 68th Annual Conference, hosted by the University of St. Thomas in Houston, Texas, October 23–25, 2026. The theme of the conference is “Governing Uncertainty: Institutions, Society, and Chinese Communities in a Changing World Order,” and we welcome submissions that engage this theme across multiple aspects of culture, diplomacy, economy, education, health, history, literature, politics, and society.

We welcome panels and papers from across a wide range of disciplines, including (but not limited to) economics, history, literature, political science, and sociology. The 2026 conference will feature roundtable discussions by specialists on the impact of the 2026 midterm elections in both the United States and Taiwan and their implications for international relations in the region, as well as a keynote address on the emerging world order. The organizers of the AACS meeting seek to offer a forum for interdisciplinary exchanges and policy dialogues and intend to construct a balanced program with panels on diverse issues of significance for scholarship across disciplines and for social and political policy.

The AACS is an interdisciplinary association devoted to the study of subjects related to China and Taiwan broadly construed (www.americanassociationforchinesestudies.org). Membership in AACS is required for participation in the annual conference, but non-members are welcome to submit proposals, join the Association, and participate in the annual meeting. We encourage submissions from junior and senior scholars and Ph.D. students from the United States and overseas. Please note that this conference is in-person only. Continue reading American Association for Chinese Studies 2026–cfp →

3D CGI Animation special issue–cfp

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Call for Papers: 3D CGI Animation, Special Issue of the Journal of Chinese Cinemas
Guest Editor: Daisy Yan Du

Timeline:

May 1, 2026: Abstract (250 words) and author bio (250 words) due
December 1, 2026: Full article draft due
August 1, 2027: Article revisions due
Fall 2027/Spring 2028: Special issue published

We invite essays that examine 3D CGI animation in the Chinese context. Long regarded as a Western technology pioneered by films like Pixar’s Toy Story (1995), 3D CGI animation has a distinct and evolving history in China. While Chinese animators began experimenting with the technology decades ago, it was the global release of Nezha 2 (2025)—the highest-grossing animated feature film worldwide—that marked the spectacular debut for Chinese 3D CGI animation on the global stage. This special issue investigates Chinese 3D CGI animation as a technology, an industry, and an artform. We welcome contributions that explore, but are not limited to, the following topics:

  • 3D CGI as special effects in live-action cinema, especially in big-budget blockbuster films.
  • Aspects of 3D CGI animated feature films, such as the histories, aesthetics, formal style, themes, content, storytelling, technology, sound, dubbing, screening, audience reception, and fan culture, among others.
  • 3D CGI and video games.
  • 3D CGI and computer graphics.
  • 3D CGI and online platforms.
  • The histories and prehistories of the 3D CGI animation technology, industry, and artform in China.
  • Film and media theories pertinent to 3D CGI animation.

For inquires and submissions, please email Daisy Yan Du (daisyyandu@ust.hk)

Realism in Chinese Literature–cfp

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Dear Colleagues,

We invite submissions for a special issue of the journal Humanities that delves into the evolution of realism in Chinese literature, tracing its journey from classical foundations to contemporary manifestations. This issue seeks to explore the multifaceted nature of realism across various genres, including fiction, drama, and film, highlighting its enduring significance and adaptability in Chinese literary history.

Themes of interest include, but are not limited to, the following:

  • Classical Foundations: Investigations into early realist tendencies in classical Chinese literature, examining how historical texts and traditional narratives established the groundwork for subsequent realist expressions.
  • 20th-Century Transformations: Analyses of the early 20th-century engagement with Western literary movements, such as naturalism and socialist realism, and how Chinese writers integrated these influences amidst sociopolitical changes.
  • Post-Mao Developments: Studies on post-Mao literature, focusing on contemporary authors’ navigation of modern societal complexities, incorporating elements like magical realism and neo-realism to depict China’s rapid transformation.
  • Sinophone Perspectives: Explorations of how Chinese-language writers in the diaspora reinterpret realism within transnational contexts, contributing to a broader understanding of its global resonance.

Submission Guidelines:

  • Abstract deadline: 15 May 2026
  • Full article deadline: 15 November 2026

We welcome original research articles that offer fresh insights into the dynamic and evolving nature of realism in Chinese literature. Submissions should adhere to the journal’s formatting guidelines and be submitted through the designated portal.

Please visit https://www.mdpi.com/journal/humanities/special_issues/7MHK2Z7KJW for more information on the special issue.

For inquiries and submissions, please contact the two Guest Editors or email directly at Humanities@mdpi.com.

Dr. Xueqing Xu
Dr. Yan Lu <ylu669@uwo.ca>
Guest Editors

Backreading HK symposium 2026–cfp

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Call for Papers – Backreading Hong Kong Symposium 2026: Everyday Life Reimagined
The theme of the 2026 edition of the Backreading Hong Kong: An Annual Symposium is “Everyday Life Reimagined.”

Proposal Deadline: January 16, 2026
Symposium Date: March 10 – 12, 2026
Venue: University of British Columbia

We are calling for proposals from scholars across disciplines (literature, cinema, media, translation, history, cultural studies) that engage critically with the theme “Everyday Life Reimagined” for the 2026 symposium.

The 2026 symposium aims to explore the power of imagination and the possibility of creativity in cultural texts and practices in reflecting on paradigms, boundaries, and subject-object positionings and (re-)thinking with non-human actors, precarious subjects, and historically marginalized communities.

Topics may include, but are not limited to:

  • Human and nonhuman agency and relation
  • Dealing with precarity
  • Dis-/Re-enchantment and the practice of everyday life
  • Intersections of race, gender, class, and language
  • Adaptation across media
  • Collaborative practices and productive imagination in the arts

Continue reading Backreading HK symposium 2026–cfp →

MLA Chinese and EA Lit panels

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Dear Colleagues, please find a compilation of panels related to the study of Chinese and East Asian Literatures at the MLA (Toronto, Jan. 8-11). We hope to see you there!

Warmly,

MLA Committees on Ming and Qing China & Pre-14th Century China

Thursday, 8 January 2026

16 – Natural Time and Human Narratives: Competing Temporal Orders in the Premodern World [LLC Pre-14th-Century Chinese]
Thursday, 8 January, 12:00 PM – 1:15 PM – MTCC – 601A
Presider: Natasha Heller (U of Virginia)
Presentations:
● Blowing Charis: Prophecy and Reproduction in Aeschylus’s Agamemnon, Kate Gilhuly (Wellesley C)
● Astral Immediacy in Early Empires, Heng Du (Wellesley C)
● Arboreal Temporalities in Buddhist Monasteries, Natasha Heller (U of Virginia)
● Periodizing Premodernity: Early Modern European Scholarship on the Ancient/Medieval Divide, Frederic Clark (U of Southern California)

42 – Conflicts and Kinship in Contemporary Sinophone Films
[LLC Pre-14th-Century Chinese]
Thursday, 8 January, 1:45 PM – 3:00 PM – MTCC – 713A
Presider: Jack Hang-tat Long (York U)
Respondent: Carlos Rojas (Duke U)
Presentations:
● Negotiating Linguistic and Cultural Conflicts in The Greatest Wedding on Earth, Jessica Tsui-Yan Li (York U)
● Women in the Middle: Family Ties in Ho Chao-ti’s Sock ’n Roll, Hsiu-Chuang Deppman (Oberlin C)
● Queering Kinship and Polylocality in Sinophone Cinema, Alvin K. Wong (U of Hong Kong) Continue reading MLA Chinese and EA Lit panels →

Archival Hong Kong: Places, Practices and Public Culture

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Archival Hong Kong: Places, Practices and Public Culture
An online symposium on 11th and 12th Dec 2025

Details here: https://www.facebook.com/events/821833860853744
Program: https://chajournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/archivalhk2025.pdf

Organised by Hong Kong Studies, this two-day symposium presents papers from across the humanities and social sciences that examine the idea and function of the archive—understood in the broadest terms—in relation to Hong Kong’s cultural, historical, and spatial imaginaries. From official state repositories and institutional holdings to ephemeral, vernacular, or community-based practices of collecting and remembering, the archive has long figured as a site where power, identity, and cultural memory are negotiated.

While Hong Kong has often been described through the lenses of displacement and erasure, it also remains a city of remarkable reinvention and creative resilience. In light of recent transformations—spatial, political, and epistemological—the archive emerges as a record of what has been lost and a generative site for imagining what may yet come. We ask: what roles do archives play in preserving or reframing Hong Kong’s pasts and futures? How do artists, writers, educators, curators, activists, and others engage with the archive as form, method, or provocation? And how might we understand “archiving” not solely as an institutional practice but also as an everyday, affective, and often hopeful negotiation with the present?

Posted by: Eddie Tay <eddietay@cuhk.edu.hk>

Intl Symposium onf Chinese Language and Discourse–cfp

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Dear colleagues,

The International Symposium on Chinese Language and Discourse (ISCLD) is a biennial international symposium that advances the exchange of scholarship and emphasizes an empirical orientation in functional discourse studies of the Chinese language, with participation from local and international scholars, not only from linguistics, but also related fields of communication, sociology, anthropology, education etc. with regards to the use of Chinese languages. The 8th ISCLD comes to Spain with the theme “Topic-Comment in Chinese Language and Discourse Research: Insights and Applications”.

Organizer: Centre for East Asian Studies (CEAO), Autonomous University of Madrid (UAM)
Date: June 15-16, 2026
Location: Autonomous University of Madrid, Spain

Call for Papers (open until January 2th, 2026).

https://eventos.uam.es/135780/detail/the-8th-international-symposium-on-chinese-language-and-discourse-8th-iscld.html

Abstracts or panel proposals may be accepted. Abstracts in English should be 300-500 words, including positions, affiliations, email addresses and mailing addresses for all authors. Panel proposals reflecting the conference theme may be submitted. All panel proposals should provide a 300-500 word rationale and a 200–250-word abstract of each panellist’s paper; include affiliation and email addresses for each panel list.

The conference continues to focus on Chinese language and discourse but would also like to encourage researchers working on other areas previously not discussed in the past conferences, including minority languages related to Chinese, AI application, bi/multi-lingual and multicultural settings. Continue reading Intl Symposium onf Chinese Language and Discourse–cfp →

Humans and Nonhuman Animals in China — cfp

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CFP: Special Issue of Études Chinoises – “Humans and Nonhuman Animals in China” (Ancient to Contemporary Times)
Guest Editors : Joachim Boittout (Université Paris Cité) and Christopher K. Tong (University of Maryland, Baltimore County)

While nonhuman animals have gained an increasingly noticeable place in the histories of the Western hemisphere and Asian countries over the past thirty years, China, in comparison, seems still underrepresented. This dynamic academic trend, following the already much-discussed “animal turn,” focuses on the multifarious realities of animal life in human narratives. Acknowledging the importance of groundbreaking works that explore, for instance, the religious significance and evolving meanings of some animals in cosmological and political representations, this special issue seeks to encompass the diversity of the approaches and the disciplines involved in historical investigations of past animal lives, their interactions with humans, and how they effected changes in human societies.

This special issue of Études Chinoises welcomes contributions engaging with human–animal relations in the diversity of their historical dimensions, and encourages works that tackle the issues raised by the cohabitation of humans and non-humans in the Anthropocene. Both empirical approaches that focus on stand-alone cases, particular species, organizations, or individuals, and theoretical perspectives engaging with primary Chinese-language sources, empirical data, or ethnographic fieldwork are welcome.

We encourage submissions that address—but are by no means limited to—the following themes within the broad field of human–animal relations:

  • State-building, ideology, and propaganda
  • Animal ethics
  • Animals and social practices
  • Human–animal relations in a globalized world: health issues, animal factories, food production systems, breeding practices, and consumption
  • Transformations of ecosystems
  • Animals and the production of knowledge
  • Animals as cultural artifacts and representations in the arts

Abstracts should be no longer than 400 words and must be submitted by January 15, 2026 to the following email address: animalhistoryinchina@gmail.com. Accepted papers will be due September 1, 2026.

Posted by: Christopher Tong animalhistoryinchina@gmail.com

(In)visibility: seeing, making visible, keeping hidden — cfp

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Interdisciplinary Doctoral Symposium: ‘(In)visibility: seeing, making visible, keeping hidden’
Venice, 14-15-16 April 2026
Organized by PhD students of the 40th doctoral programme in Asian and African Studies, Ca’ Foscari University of Venice.

Accessing and producing knowledge is never neutral. From the erasure of certain voices in historical narratives to the strategic visibility of bodies, choices are constantly made about what can be seen and believed — and, consequently, what must remain hidden and invisible. Two main forces reflecting underlying hierarchies of power are at play: on the one hand, the partial and ideologically inflected nature of the sources; on the other hand, the situated position of the scholar. Crucially, they can result in the exclusion, marginalisation, misunderstanding or invisibilisation of voices endowed with less power, socially and/or historically.

This symposium questions how presence and absence are constructed, how certain topics or agents are rendered peripheral, and how historiographical, disciplinary, ethical, methodological, but also institutional choices reinforce (or challenge) patterns of invisibilisation. How do our ways of seeing and not seeing shape the contours of knowledge?

Harnessing (in)visibility as a lens on knowledge, this symposium explores three interrelated dynamics: seeing, making visible, keeping hidden. Continue reading (In)visibility: seeing, making visible, keeping hidden — cfp →

Asian crime films — cfp

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Call for Papers: Special Issue of Asian Cinema, “Moving Violations: Asian Crime Films”
Special Issue Editors: Victor Fan, Kristof Van den Troost, and Earl Jackson

Crime films are about as old as the cinema itself. Eliciting strong emotions and affective intensities through the depiction of violence and the posing of often deadly ethical dilemmas, they also offer spectators opportunities to negotiate their conflicting sociopolitical values and address their blissful and traumatic memories. This special issue aims to explore the ‘moving violations’ of Asian crime films.

The term ‘moving violations’ can be interpreted broadly as a reference to crime films’ relationship with cinematic movement, action, and affection; the way many of these films address questions of social and personal mobility, migration, and border-crossing; gender and sexual queerness; as well as the relationship between political power and criminality (including questions of censorship and governmentality). Crime films produced in Asia often address the inter-cultural, inter-racial, and inter-regional flows, whose unruliness can challenge and violate the Euro-American-centric notion of generic conventions and understanding of social and ethical normativity.

Crime seen from the perspectives of both law enforcement and the perpetrators cover not only advances in critical analysis but also contradictions in the social order as well as variations in resistance and desperation from the side of the criminal. One can study how a genre functions within a single culture, or how it changes according to the cultures that adapt it. By using the frame of the crime film, we aim to be as inclusive as possible for all its variations and subcategories.

Essays on Hong Kong and Japanese crime films are welcome, but we are also interested in analyses of less familiar and more recent crime film phenomena, whether it is Taiwanese ‘black films’ (hei dianying), recent South Korean successes, mainland China’s ‘Dongbei’ noir, or the brutal poetics of Indian directors Ram Gopal Varma and Anurag Kashyap’s crime films. We welcome single-region foci as well as Inter-Asian studies. We look forward to approaches from across the disciplines as well as experiments in interdisciplinary inquiry, including, but not limited to, approaches rooted in cinematic genre studies, cultural criminology, and law-and-film studies. In addition, we are open to methodologies including theoretical and philosophical investigation, close reading, history/historiography and media archaeology.

Submission: https://submission.pubkit.co/publisher/29/journal/290/login
Choose ‘Moving Violations: Asian Crime Films’ from the special issue menu.
Deadline: 31 December 2026

Inquiries: Professor Victor Fan (ho_lok_victor.fan@kcl.ac.uk)

Posted by: Kristof Van den Troost k.vandentroost@cuhk.edu.hk

Experimental Translations in/with East Asian Languages–cfp

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Dear colleagues,

The Yanai Initiative is pleased to invite proposals for a symposium entitled “Experimental Translations in/with East Asian Languages,” to be hosted at UCLA on April 10-11, 2026.

Over recent decades, scholars of East Asia have increasingly unsettled Eurocentric translation paradigms by foregrounding the rich history of the region’s linguistic and textual practices, creating new frameworks for understanding translingual encounters that move beyond the nation, notions of equivalence, and phonocentric conceptions of language. At the same time, the practice of translation has often served as a laboratory: a site of linguistic experimentation, serendipitous discoveries, and unexpected collisions. This symposium seeks to highlight the connections between these seemingly disparate strands of engagement by bringing together translators, artists, and scholars working at the intersection of East Asian languages and experimental translation.

We welcome proposals from practitioners and scholars who approach translation as a generative space—one that simultaneously opens onto creative experimentation and critical inquiry, serving as a medium for working through the tensions between theory and practice and pushing against their very boundaries. We are interested in work that foregrounds translation’s affective, material, and performative dimensions; that opens our eyes to new ways of seeing, engaging with, or experiencing translation; that explores innovative, unexpected ways of using translation in the classroom. By attending closely to the affordances of East Asian languages and scripts, this symposium seeks not only to deepen our understanding of translation, but also to showcase alternative translational practices that cut across linguistic, medial, and epistemic borders.

We invite proposals on topics or practices including, but not limited to: Continue reading Experimental Translations in/with East Asian Languages–cfp →

2026 Berkeley-Stanford grad conference–cfp

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The annual Berkeley-Stanford Graduate Student Conference in Modern Chinese Humanities brings together current graduate students from across the U.S. and around the world to present innovative research on any aspect of modern Chinese cultural production in the humanistic disciplines. The conference provides a window into current research in Chinese studies, and serves as a platform for fostering interaction among budding scholars of geographically disparate institutions, facilitating their exchange of ideas and interests. The conference hopes to encourage interdisciplinary scholarship within and between literary and cultural studies, cultural history, art history, film and media studies, musicology and sound studies, as well as the interpretative social sciences.

Currently enrolled graduate students are invited to submit paper proposals for the Berkeley-Stanford Graduate Student Conference in Modern Chinese Humanities, to be held April 10-11, 2026 at UC Berkeley. Conference registration is free. Presenters will be provided with shared lodging, Friday dinner, and Saturday lunch. There is limited partial funding assistance for those who cannot find their own funding.

Proposals/bios due: Friday, November 8, 2025 (11:59 p.m. Pacific Standard Time)

Application Instructions:
To apply, please submit your abstract (up to 250 words) and a short bio (up to 100 words, including current institutional affiliation), and include the following information in the application: Author Name, Author Bio, Paper Title, Subtitle (optional), Keywords, and Abstract. Please follow the link to apply: https://app.smartsheet.com/b/form/a315258c58bb4c6f8511dc3a25350de3

The 2026 keynote speaker is Ying Qian, East Languages and Cultures, Columbia University, and the conference alumni speaker is Julia Keblinska, Film & Screen Studies, University of Cambridge. Continue reading 2026 Berkeley-Stanford grad conference–cfp →