Conference Announcements

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

SWCAS paper prize submissions

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Southwest Conference on Asian Studies–Paper Prize Submission Announcement

SWCAS – GRADUATE PAPER PRIZES
(Southwest Conference on Asian Studies)
Submission Deadline October 1, 2023

Southwest Conference on Asian Studies, a regional affiliate of the Association for Asian Studies (AAS), will award the annual SWCAS Graduate Paper Prize for outstanding essay by graduate students in November 2023, during its Annual Meeting to be held at University of Houston (November 2-4).

2023 SWCAS Prize for Graduate Student
This prize recognizes extraordinary graduate student scholarship in any area of Asian Studies. It is open to all students pursuing graduate studies in any discipline and in any area of research pertaining to Asian Studies.

Graduate students wishing to apply for the SWCAS Graduate Paper Prize should provide the complete paper by October 1, 2023.  The prize comes with a monetary award.

The winner of the SWCAS Graduate Paper Prize along with runners-up for these awards, will be announced during the Annual Meeting. Continue reading →

SEC-AAS 2024–cfp

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Dear Colleagues,

I am pleased to announce that the fully in-person 63rd annual meeting of the Southeast Conference of the Association for Asian Studies, “Regional and Global Flows,” will be held on January 26–28, 2024, at Wake Forest University, North Carolina. Our local coordinators are arranging some very exciting events. All conference information will be posted online at https://www.sec-aas.com/conf as it becomes available.

The program committee welcomes proposals for individual or panel presentations and round tables. Please submit your proposals to the following sites:

We plan to have a “new book roundtable” for authors who have published their new books in 2023. Pease let us know if you are one of them and share your success together! Please submit your proposals no later than October 30, 2023. All proposals will be collectively reviewed by our 2024 program committee. Please direct questions about conference logistics to Professor Yaohua Shi shiy@wfu.edu. Continue reading →

Babel of Chinese SF: A Reading Group

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Chinese SF in translation-May Session-“Starship: Library” by Jiang Bo and translated by Xuetitng Ni
Babel of Chinese SF: A Reading Group

We are a monthly online meet-up that reads, shares and discusses Chinese language sci-fi and speculative fiction in translation
Website: https://babelofchinesesf.wordpress.com/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/BabelChineseSF
Email: babelofchinesesf@gmail.com
Wechat: 科幻巴别塔
Newsletter: https://gmail.us20.list-manage.com/subscribe?u=72d01cf57bd5a94340f964cde&id=490929f73a

Upcoming: May Session

“Starship: Library” / 《宇宙尽头的书店》
by Jiang Bo 江波
Translated by Xueting Christine Ni 倪雪亭
Included in Sinopticon: A Celebration of Chinese Science Fiction
Video call with the author Jiang Bo and the translator Xueting Christine Ni

Beijing Time: 20:00, May 28th, 2023.
British Summer Time: 13:00, May 28th, 2023. Continue reading →

Chinese Humanities 2033–cfp

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Chinese Humanities 2033: New Visions, New Directions
Call for Projects

This conference invites Ph.D. candidates (ABDs), postdocs, and early-stage scholars working on any period to in-person panel sessions at Harvard University on October 6-7, 2023, to discuss what changes are happening in the field of Chinese humanities and where they are leading us. Though we may not be fully aware of the ways in which epistemic paradigms, theoretical frameworks, disciplinary boundaries, and academic job descriptions limit our imagination of what Chinese studies in the humanities can be, they should not keep us from envisioning what we would like to see or change in this field over the next 10 years. As Alvin Toffler says, “change is the process by which the future invades our lives.” “Chinese Humanities 2033” summons the future of Chinese humanities to invade its present. It is a conference about new visions and directions.

This conference both calls for daring anticipation of important topics, approaches, and directions of research for the next ten years, and seeks to foster a hospitable environment for research and creative projects that might not enjoy academic currency today or are struggling on various margins and frontiers. Questions we hope to address include: What are the yet-discussed phenomena, yet-developed approaches, and yet-discovered fields of studies of Chinese humanities? What are their interventions and how do they change the premises of our research today? How do they connect with conventional thinking and conventional subjects of research in new and exciting ways? Can Chinese humanities attract an even broader diversity of scholars? How to make/keep Chinese humanities legible and welcoming to those outside the field? Where will Chinese studies in the humanities be in ten years? How will we get there? We invite you to contribute your expertise to think through these questions with us. This is a conference about change both within academic disciplines and the Chinese cultural sphere. Continue reading →

Games, Gaming, and Interactive Aesthetics–cfp

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CFP: Games, Gaming, and Interactive Aesthetics in Contemporary Chinese and Sinophone Cinema
A special issue of Journal of Chinese Film Studies (JCFS)
Guest editors: Li Guo, Hongmei Sun, Douglas Eyman

[Link to full CFP]

This special issue invites submissions of research essays on games, gaming, and interactive aesthetics in contemporary Chinese and Sinophone cinema and media. From Hong Kong’s first videogame adaptation in Future Cops (1993) to the recent film based on the mobile game Onmyoji The Yinyang Master (2021), from the videogame-adapted animation Dragon Nest: Warriors’ Dawn (2014) to director Cheng Er’s gamified narration in Hidden Blade (2023), contemporary Chinese and Sinophone cinematic productions provide diversified and remarkable works that call for an in-depth exploration of the subject of games and gameplay in film. Engaging Chinese and Sinophone film studies in dialogue with scholarships in game studies and media theory, this special issue inspects how games and gaming can transform or even reshape cinema through new experiences of interactive aesthetics through AI-generated algorithms, multiverse narratives, psychological mazes, game montages, and gamified gazes and points of view. Building on existent scholarship on game culture, media theory, and interactive cinema, we seek essays that examine the mutual adaptations of games and cinematic productions. Drawing from Lev Manovich’s media theory, we consider the effect of computerized gaming and computer-assisted gaming on traditional filmmaking, filmmakers’ diversified approaches to the introduction of computerized gaming to cinematic production, and the impact of new media and its own conventions on film industry and the process of filmmaking. As Manovich observes, it is difficult to “draw a strict line between interactive movies and many other games that may not use traditional film sequences yet follow many other conventions of film language in their structure” (Manovich 2002, 288). By exploring interactive movies and games structured around film-like sequences and simulating real-person interactions, we ask how cinematic apparatus contributes to the players’ experiences and is reconfigured through interactive video game play. Continue reading →

Worker as Writer–cfp

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CFP: “Worker as Writer in 20th and 21st China” panel
Western Conference of the Association of Asian Studies 2023

Dates: October 5-6, 2023
Location: West Yellowstone, Montana
Hotel/Conference Center: Holiday Inn West Yellowstone (Use Group Code: AAS)

“Worker,” or gongren, in Chinese was specifically connected with manual labor jobs, while “writer,” or zuojia, has been associated with education, professionalism, and intellectuality. However, this dichotomy was challenged with the rise of leftist revolutions in China. As Zhu Ping notes, the “preexisting social hierarchy that placed the mental laborers above the manual laborers” was complicated as early as during the Chinese New Culture Movement. The communist revolutions in the ensuing decades further broke through the hierarchical dichotomy between worker and writer. The hierarchical opposition between the two was further complicated in a commercial society where a writer is increasingly associated with being a “starving artist” or an intellectual who is detached from the real world, while a worker is often associated with technical skills and practical knowledge. This contrast between the two identities is not fixed, and it has evolved over time in response to changing economic and social conditions.

This panel focuses on a specific identity, “worker as writer,” and this dual-identity group of people who lived in different economic conditions and ideological circumstances. It aims to examine the following questions: How have the relationships and our cognitions of the two identities changed in the history of 20th and 21st century China? How can a worker’s identity bring to literary works a different dimension that is not shared by a writer solely? How does a “worker as writer” have different economic, political, and social engagements in a socialist regime and a capitalist society respectively? How are the two identities mutually inclusive and beneficial? How does this identity on the ideological and materialistic levels conform or conflict with each other? We welcome papers that discuss the following topics but not limited to: Continue reading →

Workshop on mental and manual labor

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The Advanced Institute for Global Chinese Studies, Department of Cultural Studies, Center of Cultural Research and Development, Lingnan University and East Asian Studies, Johns Hopkins University are organizing the International Workshop on Socialist Industrialization, Deskilling, and Efforts to Diminish the Gap between Mental and Manual Labor in China on 27-28 May, 2023.

Registration link: https://forms.office.com/r/PTDctG92JG

The workshop is inspired by this fundamental question: Does the scale, organization, and technology of modern industry and industrialized agriculture inherently entail exacerbating the separation of mental and manual labor? Scholars from different disciplines are brought together to discuss the efforts to reduce the differences between mental and manual labor in China. It will also examine changes in the ways in which mental and manual labor have been divided and combined in China since the Mao era and in subsequent decades in order to understand deskilling as a global phenomenon and the particular ways in which it has manifested itself in capitalist and socialist factories and farms, as well as the limits of twentieth-century Marxist programs to combine mental and manual labor, and the failure of Marxist promises to eliminate class differences.

The workshop panels will look at a wide range of issues and how they relate to the division of mental and manual labor:

  • Industrial division of labor
  • Gender and the transformation of productive and reproductive labor
  • Education, science, medicine, and literature

Posted by: Heidi Huang heidihuang@ln.edu.hk

Affective Anthropocene symposium

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International Symposium on “Affective Anthropocene: Contextualizing Feelings and Environments under Climate Change”

Date: 1-2 June 2023
Venue: WLB 105, Wing Lung Bank Building for Business Studies, Hong Kong Baptist University and online (mix-mode)
Organizer: The Anthropocene and Chinese Contemporary Cultures Research Consortium, Department of Humanities, Hong Kong Baptist University
Co-organizer:
Department of Translation, Interpreting and Intercultural Studies, Hong Kong Baptist University
Master of Arts (MA) in Producing for Film, Television and New Media, Hong Kong Baptist University
Cultural Literacy Programme (LIVE), Office of Student Affairs, Hong Kong Baptist University

In popular perception and imagination, narratives about climate future and ecological crisis usually fall into one of these categories: utopia and apocalypse. Meaning-making narrative or storytelling with characters, drama, and connecting threads is significant because it reveals how scientific findings on the Earth’s future is communicated to the public and hence to drive collective action. Mitigation or adaptation to climate crisis requires habitual-cultural, eco-social changes, and communal values in order to overcome public inertia, procrastination and paralysis. But overemphasis on narrative or storytelling, i.e. “tell the climate story well,” may simplify moral values and reinforce binary thinking as found in many popular climate discourses. Climate narratives of either dystopian thrillers or techno-utopias not only may fail to accommodate the contingencies and unpredictability of real life, but they also could be subjected to the appropriations by nation-states for fulfilling political ambitions and nationalist agenda, by big corporations for marketing strategies, and by ideologists or visionaries for other manipulative purposes. Continue reading →

Translation and Power–cfp

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Translation and Power:
The Fourth International Conference on Chinese Translation History
December 16-18, 2023
Organizer: Research Centre for Translation (RCT), The Chinese University of Hong Kong
Co-organizer: Department of Translation, The Chinese University of Hong Kong
Venue: The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong.

The “International Conference on Chinese Translation History” series organized by the Research Centre for Translation, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, explores Chinese translation history within the bigger framework of world civilization and human thought. It aims to lay groundwork for new models, methods, and perspectives in this innovative interdisciplinary branch of learning through detailed case studies. Since 2015, the conference series have been held every two years, with a different central theme for every conference. The fourth conference focuses on the broad spectrum of issues pertaining to the concept of translation and power in Chinese translation history. Continue reading →

Grad Seminar on Modern and Contemporary China–cfp

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[Call for Papers] Young Scholars’ Forum in Chinese Studies 2023
Graduate Seminar on Modern and Contemporary China
January 4 – 5, 2024

The Chinese University of Hong Kong-Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation Asia-Pacific Centre for Chinese Studies, the Institute of Chinese Studies and the Centre for China Studies are pleased to announce this call for papers for the Sixteenth Graduate Seminar on Modern and Contemporary China scheduled for January 4 – 5, 2024.

The Seminar theme is “Land in China, 1900-2024.” We welcome paper proposals on subjects from across the spectrum of environmental, economic, political, legal, social, ideological and cultural approaches to examining changes of the land in China over the last century until today. All disciplines and theoretical frameworks will be considered, provided the papers are based on original, empirical research. We will not accept papers on preliminary work, potential future projects, or of a primarily speculative nature.

We aim to facilitate academic exchange between Chinese and overseas scholars by ensuring a suitable balance of representation from both groups. The working languages of the Seminar are Chinese and English. Participants are welcome to undertake research in our well-known University Library USC Collection and Archives on Post-1949 China prior to and following the Seminar. Continue reading →

WCAAS 2023–cfp

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Call for Papers: WCAAS 2023
October 5-6, 2023
West Yellowstone, MT

We are pleased to announce that the 2023 WCAAS (Western Conference of the Association for Asian Studies) Call for Papers is now open and that the registration page is now live. As a reminder, the conference will be held in person October 5-6 in West Yellowstone, Montana. This year’s theme is Asia Reopened: Reconsidering the Past and Present. The keynote address will be given by Dr. Jean Oi; William Haas Professor of Chinese Politics and Senior Fellow at the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies at Stanford University.

We welcome individual papers as well as panel proposals from faculty, independent researchers, graduate students, and faculty-mentored undergraduate students. For more information, paper proposals, or to register for the conference, please visit: https://wcaas.byu.edu/conference For questions, email WCAAS2023@gmail.com or call 208-496-4315. We hope to see you all in West Yellowstone this October.

Sincerely,

Brian Dowdle (University of Montana)
Michael Paul (BYU-Idaho)

Ming Qing Studies–cfp

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Call for Papers: Ming Qing Studies
edited by Paolo Santangelo (Sapienza University of Rome)

We are pleased to announce that Ming Qing Studies 2022 was published by WriteUp Books at the end of 2022 (see the table of contents below). Proposals are now being accepted for the 2023 and following issues. We invite the submission of original articles, research notes, and book reviews from any field of study related to the history of late imperial China and Modern East Asia (14th–early 20th centuries). Contributions on social history, collective imageries, representations of emotion and gender, borderland management and innovative approaches to art history, cartography, and imperial ethnography are particularly welcome. All the submitted articles must be written in good English and revised according to our editorial rules. Please e-mail an abstract of 300-500 words, together with a preliminary bibliography and a short-bio of yourself in Microsoft Word or pdf attachment to the following address. Make sure to specify your full name, academic title, affiliation and contact details in your e-mail. Submissions of novel research for inclusion in our brand-new spin-off series, Ming Qing Studies – Monographs, are also encouraged.

Deadlines for submission

Abstract and bibliographical notes: May 10th, 2023 (MQS2023); July 31st, 2023 (following issues)
Article: December 31st Continue reading →

Chime conference 2023–cfp

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CFP: 25th International CHIME Conference: Barbarian Pipes and Strings Reconsidered — Negotiating Authenticity in the Musics of China: Transcultural Perspectives

25th International CHIME Conference, Heidelberg Centre for Asian and Transcultural Studies (CATS), October 1-4, 2023

Exactly 25 years after the last International Chime Conference in Heidelberg that focused on “Barbarian Pipes and Strings,” we return to the city by the Neckar and the Centre for Asian and Transcultural Studies (CATS) that now houses the CHIME Collection to reconsider musical practices in China from a transcultural perspective.

From Confucian debates about the “musics from Zheng and Wei” to more contemporary disputes on “lascivious musics” and “spiritual pollution”—Sunny Side Kong Yiji 阳光开朗孔乙己 just being one of the more recent examples—from controversies over ownership and copyright in old and new folksong or regional opera; to complaints about exoticism on the one hand and self-orientalism on the other—the question of how dangerous, strange or (in)authentic sounds and musics are and who “owns” them, has been important to music-making in China—even while melodies, instruments and sounds from afar have, for the longest of times, been considered some of its most “typical” elements. In this conference, we suggest to explore, how in China’s music worlds “authenticity” has been claimed, contested and negotiated

  • through and during transcultural processes and encounters,
  • through, by and with technology and media,
  • in religious or stately rituals,
  • in gendered performances,
  • in moments of cataclysmic change,
  • in the context of institutionalized (and politicized) musicking,
  • through spatial delineations,
  • in philosophical, literary or legal writings,
  • in reference to other sound cultures and environments,
  • in everyday life.

Continue reading →

Arts special issue–cfp

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Call for Papers for Special Issue of Arts
Chinese-Language and Hollywood Cinemas

Dear Colleagues,

This Special Issue features a comparative study of Chinese-language films and Hollywood cinema. Hollywood cinema has represented the idea of an effective formula in making blockbusters since the 1930s, a powerful industrial system that inspires and challenges filmmakers around the world. The popular formula has been practiced, both successfully and not, in Chinese-language film studios in the Republic of China, the People’s Republic of China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and Southeast Asia, or through transnational collaborations. The formula has also been resisted or revised by filmmakers who questioned Hollywood’s global domination and turned to explore alternative styles of visual representation and storytelling. This Special Issue invites scholars to submit papers that explore the relationships between Chinese-language cinema and Hollywood cinema. Suggested topics include but are not limited to the following list:

  • A study of the Hollywood-inspired Chinese-language film industries, such as the popular genres, studio system, stardom, or franchise in transnational Chinese film histories.
  • Chinese-language cinema’s resistance, revisions, or alternatives to the Hollywood formula in a specific period such as the left-wing cinema in the 1930s or the individual film projects of the digital age.
  • A comparative study of Chinese-language cinema and Hollywood cinema in terms of narrative, style, or their sociopolitical implications in global film networks.
  • A study of the mutual influences between Chinese-language and Hollywood cinema. A potential focus may be Chinese-language remakes of Hollywood films or the other way around.
  • A study of transnational collaborations between Hollywood and Chinese-speaking film industries.
  • An examination of the global expansion of Hollywood media conglomerates to Chinese-speaking markets and how such expansion culturally, politically, and/or economically impacts both the local environment and the transnational network.
  • A study of the reception of Hollywood blockbusters in Chinese-speaking societies, or a study of Hollywood-accustomed audiences’ reception of Chinese-language films.

Continue reading →

Writing Hong Kong–cfp

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The open access journal Writing Chinese: A Journal of Contemporary Sinophone Literature is seeking submissions for a special issue focusing on contemporary Hong Kong literature. CfP below. Deadline 31st July 2023.

Special Issue: Writing Chinese / Writing Hong Kong
Guest Editor: Dr Jennifer Wong
Keynote: Prof Gregory Lee

Call for Papers

Hong Kong – with its unique historical past and colonial legacy, its rich languages and dialects, its cosmopolitanism – has seen many changes over the last decade. With the changing pattern of migration for the Chinese population across continents, particularly the emerging Hong Kong culture and literature, there is a need to recalibrate or reconceptualise what we mean by ‘new Chinese writing’ and, within it, contemporary Hong Kong literature, whether Anglophone, Sinophone or translated works. In this widening and emergent field, what role(s) do language and translation play in helping us appreciate the contexts and writing voice behind the range of literature?

In preparing for this special issue, we are calling for research papers (up to 8,000 words) focussing on all aspects of contemporary Hong Kong literature. We are especially interested in research articles that critically explore literary works relating to any or all of the following broad themes:-

  • the complexities / dualities of identities (racial, gender, or other identities);
  • sense of place (conceptualising the city or the diaspora);
  • language(s), translation or multiculturalism;
  • inter-generational narratives;
  • representations of trauma and conflict.

but topics are not limited to the above.

Professor Gregory Lee will be providing the keynote article for this issue.

Please follow the Author Guidelines (https://writingchinesejournal.org/about/submissions) on our website before submission and submit through the. All articles will be subject to the usual (double-blind) peer review process. The deadline for submissions for this Special Issue is 31st July 2023. For preliminary enquiries relating to submissions for this Special Issue, please contact the Guest Editor at jenniferwswong@gmail.com.

Alongside this special issue, we are also accepting research submissions for the Journal on an on-going basis. For enquiries relating to general submissions to the Journal, please contact the writingchinese@leeds.ac.uk.

Posted by: Frances Weightman <f.weightman@leeds.ac.uk>