CFP: Female Islamic Authority in Comparative Perspective: Exemplars, Institutions, Practices

January 8-9, 2015

KITLV, Leiden

Deadline: June 1, 2014

This interdisciplinary workshop looks at forms of, and changes in, female Islamic authority in comparative perspective, with particular focus on modern Asia. Please note that this conference will not deal, or at least not specifically, with the phenomenon of Islamic activism. Paper proposals on female ulama, juristic thinkers and jurists are particularly welcome.  See IIAS website for more details www.iias.nl/event/female-islamic-authority-comparative-perspective-exemplars-institutions-practices.

CFP: Citizens, Civil Society and the Cultural Politics of Heritage-Making in East and Southeast Asia

December 11-13, 2014

Institute of Sociology

Academia Sinica, Taiwan

Deadline:  June 1, 2014

This conference will dwell on the figure of the citizen, broadly understood, exploring how processes of heritage-making, as part of the everyday cultural practices through which cultural citizenship is asserted and discursively constituted, challenges the dominance of the state in defining its citizens. This is the second conference in a series on heritage-making. Organized by Academia Sinica; ISEAS (Singapore); and IIAS (Netherlands). See IIAS website for more details www.iias.nl/event/citizens-civil-society-and-cultural-politics-heritage-making-east-and-southeast-asia.

CFP: Awareness of the Past among Khmer People and Their Neighbors: Linguistic, Historical and Ethnological Approaches

International Symposium on Cambodia

Dec. 15–16 2014

Royal University of Fine Arts, Phnom Penh

Deadline for abstracts: May 1, 2014

Web announcement: cambodge2014.free.fr/pages/whiterings_gb1pag.html  

CFP: Southeast Asian Islam: Legacy and New Interpretation

August 14-16, 2014

Jakarta, Indonesia

Web announcement: ppim.or.id/id/menu/berita/detail.php?r=20140117151532-call-for-papers--international-conference-on-southeast-asian-islam--legacy-and-new-interpretation

The conference will address a variety of critical issues and themes relating to Indonesian and Southeast Asia Islam. The conference will explore the development of research, findings, trends and interpretations in the past and present pertaining to the wide variety of studies on Southeast Asian Islam including, but not limited to, law, politics, anthropology, sociology, education, history, philology, and economy.

Abstracts should be at least 150 words long but not more than 500 words. Click here to submit your abstract. The deadline for abstract submission is April 30, 2014.

For further questions regarding the conference, please contact Dr. Saiful Umam at saiful.umam@uinjkt.ac.id or Dr. Ayang Utriza Yakin at ayang.utriza@gmail.com.  

AAS-in-Asia

Inaugural AAS-in-Asia Conference
ASIA IN MOTION
HERITAGE AND TRANSFORMATION

Date	:	17-19 JULY 2014
Venue	:	NUS UTown, National University of Singapore Town Plaza, CREATE TOWER Level 2, 1 CREATE WAY, Singapore 138602

The Asia Research Institute (ARI) and the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences (FASS) of the National University of Singapore, in conjunction with the Association for Asian Studies (AAS), are pleased to present the inaugural AAS-in-ASIA Conference, “Asia in Motion: Heritage and Transformation,” to be held on 17-19 July 2014 in Singapore. This broad theme has attracted panel and roundtable proposals not only from humanists and social scientists but also from law, policy, civil society, journalism, and other professional fields.

This event inaugurates a series of such meetings to be held regularly at different locations in Asia. In creating a smaller version of its annual North American conference, the AAS seeks panels with a mix of scholars and reflective practitioners from Asia, the USA and other parts of the world.

The Association hopes to spark off new and fruitful areas of collaboration by bringing together Asian specialists based outside of Asia and Asian-based scholars as well as practitioners whose routine expertise is not foregrounded as “Asian”.

As a global hub linking many different parts of the world to Asia, Singapore is ideally placed to launch this enterprise. You will encounter astonishing diversity at every turn in this cosmopolitan city. We welcome you to enjoy it at all levels, from the intellectual to the technological to the culinary.

For more details, please visit our websites:

2014 AAS-in-Asia Conference in Singapore         

AAS-in-Asia Conferences 

 

 

PROGRAM

 

The preliminary program is available for viewing. Please click here to view.

REGISTRATION

REGISTRATION FEES	EARLY BIRD RATE (on/before 1 May 2014)	STANDARD RATE (after 1 May 2014)
Standard Rate	SGD 180 nett	SGD 220 nett
Student Rate	SGD 100 nett	SGD 120 nett

Click here for ONLINE REGISTRATION or download PRINTABLE FORM (via mail /fax).

ACCOMMODATION

Special rates have been negotiated for all AAS-in-Asia Conference 2014 participants.

To enjoy these preferential rates, participants are required to book with the respective hotels directly via the ACCOMMODATION page.

All rates are applicable for reservations made before 15 May 2014 and subjected to room availability.

We look forward to seeing you in Singapore!

CFP: Walailak Journal of Asian Studies

CALL FOR PAPERS 

The Walailak Journal of Asian Studies invites English-language submissions of scholarly papers on any subject of Asian studies in the area extending from the Nile River and the Middle East to Japan, China, and Southeast Asia.

Papers must be in English

Suggested length is 5,000-8,000 words

Send submissions and queries to the editor, Edwin Zehner, at zehner1234@aol.com.

CFP: Mobilities, Immobilities and the Issue of Positionality for Rethinking Area Studies

November 27-28, 2014

Crossroads Asia Conference at Center for Development Research, Bonn, Germany

Web announcement: crossroads-asia.de/news-details/15/crossroads-studies-mobilities-immobilities-and-the-issue-of-positionality-for-rethinking-area-studies.html

Deadline: April 30, 2014

The conference organizers would like to encourage the submission of innovative papers related to the rethinking of Area Studies from any disciplinary or Area Studies perspective as well as of empirical and/or conceptual nature. For submission please send a max. 2 page long abstract and a short CV to Dr. Anna-Katharina Hornidge (Mail: crossroads@uni-bonn.de).  The conference organisers will cover the travel expenses of all invited speakers.

CFP: Southeast Asia in Transition: Re-Thinking Education, Science and Culture for Regional Integration

SEAMEO Congress

Bangkok, Thailand

21-22 October 2014

Web announcement: www.seameocongress.org/

SEAMEO Congress aims to explore new avenues for managing the diverse changes in education, science and culture and enhance regional understanding and cooperation among educators and different stakeholders in Southeast Asia and beyond.

We would like to invite educators, researchers, scholars, university professors, practitioners, teachers to submit the papers that highlight perspectives from relevant local, national, regional, international or comparative research papers.

Deadline: 31 May 2014

CFP: Council on Thai Studies Annual Conference

Oct. 17–19, 2014

University of Wisconsin-Madison

Web announcement: www.cseas.niu.edu/cseas/conferences/COTS_2014_cfp.pdf

Deadline for abstracts and proposals: July 31, 2014.  Email to conference chair Ian Baird at ibaird@wisc.edu.  

CFP: Trajectories of the "Anthropological" in the Philippines

October 23 - 25, 2014

Saint Louis University, Baguio City, Philippines

Web announcement: ugat.org.ph/index.php?page=theme

Please send abstracts to ugat.conference@gmail.com by June 30, 2014.

We invite individual paper, poster, short film/video, and panel proposals explicating how the "anthropological" is reflexively, ethically, and methodologically engaged in various fields of endeavor; why those engagements; and with what consequences.

CFP: Thai-Cambodian Relations: From Conflict to Cooperation

Mahidol University, Thailand

May 27-28, 2014

Deadline: Abstracts (of 200-400 words) can be submitted until 28 April 2014 to christian.oes@mahidol.ac.th.

We invite paper proposals dealing with Thai-Cambodian relations in historical, political, economic, or socio-cultural perspective.  Cross-disciplinary studies are encouraged. No conference fee.  

CFP: Researching State and Personhood: Law and Society in Southeast Asia

National University of Singapore, Faculty of Law

15 & 16 December 2014

Web announcement: law.nus.edu.sg/pdfs/cals/events/rsplssea_call_for_papers.pdf

Email to cals@nus.edu.sg

Deadline: April 15, 2014

CFP: Hmong Around the World

Call for Abstracts – Hmong Around the World
April 10-11, 2015

The Hmong Consortium includes the University of Wisconsin–Madison, the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, and Chiang Mai University, and is in the process of developing increased ties with other higher education institutions in the University of Wisconsin system and the Mid-West more broadly.

The Hmong Consortium is happy to announce our third conference, “Hmong Around the World”, which will be hosted by the Center for Southeast Asian Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, 10-11 April 2015.

The Hmong Consortium’s first conference, organized in March 2011, was titled “Hmong in Comparative Contexts”, and was held at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. The second conference was titled “Hmong Across Borders”, and was hosted by the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities in October 2014.

“Hmong Around the World” will focus on critical Hmong scholarship. Engagement between those conducting research in Asia, transnationally, and the U.S. will be encouraged. We wish to promote the crossing of national, ethnic, conceptual, theoretical, methodological and disciplinary boundaries.
We hope to gather a group of scholars to present original scholarship, including established scholars and those beginning their careers. Graduate students are encouraged to participate. No registration fees are required, but participants will be expected to cover their own travel and accommodation costs. Advance registration is required. Two Hmong special guest speakers from Southeast Asia will present at the conference.

Scholars within the social sciences and humanities are encouraged to submit individual abstracts not exceeding 250 words, or ideas for panels not exceeding 400 words. Submissions should be sent to Dr. Ian Baird at ibaird@wisc.edu, and should be received no later than December 31, 2014.

The Hmong Studies Consortium

The objective of the Hmong Consortium is to promote critical Hmong studies in a range of disciplines in the social sciences and humanities. Initiated with the support of the Henry Luce Foundation in 2009, the emphasis of the Consortium is to support academic activities and projects related to the Hmong of Asia, Hmong transnationalism, and Hmong America. The Consortium encourages various types of Hmong Studies, including comparative research and the study of the Hmong relations with other ethnic groups, whether in Asia, the United States, or elsewhere. Originally an alliance between the University of Wisconsin-Madison and the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, since the end of 2013 Chiang Mai University has joined the Consortium. Hmong Consortium website: http://hmongstudies.wisc.edu/index.htm

Buddhism and Healing: UK Association of Buddhist Studies Conference 2014

University of Leeds, July 1-2, 2014

This two-day conference will bring together internationally renowned scholars to explore the theme Buddhism and Healing from their respective fields of study. The conference will address this subject through innovative ways from a wide range of interdisciplinary perspectives such as textual studies, history of medicine, medical anthropology and ritual studies. One major objective is to further our understanding of healing by investigating the complex interrelationship between body and mind in Buddhist thought and practices in a wide range of different cultural and historical contexts. The aim here is to move beyond what is now widely regarded as a problematic dichotomy in Buddhist Studies, in order to propose a new and more satisfactory model of the dynamic body/mind relationship.

For more details, see:
http://ukabs.org.uk/conferences/2014-conference/

CFP: Citizens, Civil Society and the Cultural Politics of Heritage-Making in East and Southeast Asia

Dates  11-13 December 2014
Deadline for paper submissions:  1 June 2014
Location:  Institute of Sociology, Academia Sinica, Taiwan


Keynote speakers
Professor Laurajane Smith, Australian National University
Professor Wan-Yao Chou, National Taiwan University
Professor Jeroen de Kloet, University of Amsterdam

Organizers
Institute of Sociology, Academia Sinica, Taiwan
Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore
International Institute for Asian Studies, the Netherlands

The conference
Since David Lowenthal first noted the acute ascendancy of heritage as a discourse and, indeed, likened it to religion, the cult of heritage has spread beyond the Euro-American world to win adherents in the further reaches of Asia. This is in no small way due to the rise of the modern nation-state, and the formulation of heritage as a given, constitutive part of nations. However, what constitutes heritage is never a given, and it is commonly "made" through a process embedded in an evolving cultural politics involving actors such as the state, local communities and civil society organizations, and international institutions or activists. While these actors are not always distinct, a series of three conferences have been planned to highlight the role of each in turn without neglecting their inter-relationships. The first conference has taken place in Singapore in January 2014, focusing on the role of the state <http://list.iias.asia/lists/lt.php?id=bE9XXQVKAlIHGgcFCgZS>

The second conference in the series, to be held in Taiwan in December 2014, focuses on the role of citizens, local communities and civil society organizations in heritage-making. The third conference will take place in the Netherlands in 2015, and will focus on international organizations and activists.

In considering the role of local communities and civil society organizations in heritage-making, the second conference will dwell on the figure of the citizen, broadly understood. What are the rights, privileges, and responsibilities of a citizen, and how does this relate to the modern nation-state and the notion of heritage,
particularly in the contemporary environment where the role of the state and that of citizens are being reconfigured to serve a neo-liberal agenda? How does citizens' involvement in heritage-making contribute to the civility of a shared societal life, and indeed, in some countries, to the sense of nationhood and civilization? In other words, what are the dynamics involved when local communities, as citizens, not just in the narrow legal-constitutional sense (with the propensity this restrained status has to turn citizens into citizen- consumers), but more broadly speaking in the socio-political sense, engage in the definition of their heritage-scape through a common civil space where multiple interests and agendas vie for resources and meanings? In raising these questions, the conference explores how processes of heritage-making, as part of the everyday cultural practices through which cultural citizenship is asserted and discursively constituted, challenges the dominance of the state in defining its citizens.

At the same time, the word "citizen" is also a historical referent for "city inhabitants". Indeed, much of the dynamics of citizenship is embedded in the social effervescence that cities evoke. Cities, where traces of the past, present and future are enfolded in the built environment, become spaces where the memories and aspirations of large populations of inhabitants are constantly negotiated. Without losing sight of the larger contexts in which cities are organically embedded, this conference has a special - but not exclusive - interest in the role of cities and their inhabitants as well as concerned civil society organizations in heritage-making. As cities evolve at a breakneck speed in the twenty-first century, where new iconic buildings continue to rise on the ruins of the past, how do cities maintain their historical character and socio-cultural fabric, or does it matter at all? What is the impact of such changes on city inhabitants, and how do they organize themselves to retain the meaning of shared spaces through the idiom of heritage? Finally, given the connectivity of cities and their influence on the global stage, what are the strategies that cities and their local communities employ to
inscribe their heritage-scape, not only as part of national heritage, but also as part of world heritage?

Themes

With these issues in mind, we invite papers looking into the following themes:
 Representing the local in global cities
 Memories and aspirations in global cities
 Built heritage, ruins, and their social lives
 Contending with gentrification
 The social landscape as heritage
 Conflicts and resolutions of heritage-making
 Cultural activism and vernacular heritage
 Local identities and linguistic heritage
 Citizens, civil society and national as well as local heritage-making
 Local communities and the heritage-scape
 Civil society involvement in heritage-management
 Prospects of social innovation in heritage-management

It is suggested that papers should cover cities, townships and their associated rural landscapes in East and Southeast Asia.

Requirements
Paper proposals should include a title, name of author, institutional affiliation, email address, an abstract (300 words) and a brief personal biography (150 words). The proposal should be submitted in word document format by June 1 2014 to Ms. Kathleen Mariska Azali (email: kathleen_azali@iseas.edu.sg)

Successful applicants will be notified by July 15 2014 and will be required to send in a completed draft paper (6000 - 8000 words) by November 15 2014.

Accommodations and a modest travel grant will be provided for all accepted participants.

Conveners
Professor Michael Hsiao, Distinguished Research Fellow and Director,
Institute of Sociology, Academia Sinica, Taiwan

Dr Hui Yew-Foong, Senior Fellow, Institute of Southeast Asian
Studies, Singapore

Dr Philippe Peycam, Director, International Institute for Asian
Studies, The Netherlands

Local organizing institutions
Graduate Institute of Building and Planning, National Taiwan
University

Center for Traditional Arts and Graduate Institute of Architecture
and Cultural Heritage, Taipei National University of the Arts

Department of Cultural and Creative Industries Management, National
Taipei University of Education

CFP: Workshop-Muslims Negotiating Modernities

Vanderbilt University, September 18-21, 2014
III. Muslims Negotiating Modernities

In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, the various practitioners of Islam found themselves faced by different, often alien, political and legal systems, market forces, technology developments, and new forms of cosmopolitanism that required response and adaptation. Some of these encounters precipitated the crises that ultimately generated new traditions. One important response was that of "fundamentalism," which led some Muslim intellectuals and politicians to hearken back (in a tendency echoed by some modern scholars) to an idealized fantasy of "original" Islam they believed was subsequently sullied by innovation. In opposition to the general assumption that Muslims only "reacted" to external modernities, and that Muslim modernities are essentially derived from encounters with fully-formed European modernity, we will examine conceptions of newness, innovation, and modernity in Muslim worlds, and explore the myriad modernities Muslims generated. In this year we will explore, for example, Islam beyond Arab culture and language (the majority of Muslims worldwide do not speak Arabic); the rise of empire and the institutionalization of religion; debates around gender and sexuality; responses to colonialism; questions raised by technology and globalization; and meeting the challenge of being a minority religion in Europe, North America, and so forth.The results will demonstrate the recursive generation of innovation that can ultimately be traced through the whole of Islamic history.

For more information go to: http://as.vanderbilt.edu/religiousstudies/IslamProject.php
or contact Christen Harper, RLST.workshops@vanderbilt.edu<mailto:RLST.workshops@vanderbilt.edu>.

The workshop is sponsored by the Religious Studies Department and the Islamic Studies Group, with generous support of the Fant Fund, Office of the Dean, College of Arts and Science, Vanderbilt University.

The workshops are Co-Convened by Tony K. Stewart, Gertrude Conaway Vanderbilt Chair in Humanities, and Richard McGregor, Associate Professor of Religious Studies.

CFP: The World's Fair Since '64

October 24-25, 2014

Location: Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation of the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.

This workshop proposes to examine world's fairs since (and including)1964, a period marked by tremendous variability in the location and impact of the genre.  Participants may wish to cover any of the fairs from 1964 to the present, as well as fairs planned for future dates.  The themes below are of interest--Asian themes, and comparative Asian/western themes are particularly encouraged.

            +Formal International Expositions since 1964
            +National-level world's fairs since 1964
            +World's fairs proposed but never realized
            +Urban planning/development and the world?s fair
            +Cold War and Post-Cold War international relations and the world's fair
            +New technologies and science, new design aesthetics and the world's fair
            +Comparative analysis of fairs pre and post-1964
            +World's fairs and historical memory
            +World's fairs and identity (race, class, gender, ethnicity and nationality)
            +The emergence of Asian world's fairs
            +Key historical figures in recent world's fairs
            +Comparative analysis of world's fairs and Olympics, (and other intl. events)
            +Other themes welcome!

Though the core analytical focus will be historical, scholars from across the humanities, social sciences, and art/design fields are welcome to participate.  Participants will prepare an essay (2500-5000 words) to circulate one month in advance of the workshop.  The workshop will consist of brief presentations, followed by in-depth discussion of each paper, as well as thematic sessions looking at cross-cutting aspects of the works
presented.

Accepted participants may receive a subsidy to defray expenses.

This workshop is supported by the Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation of the Smithsonian Institution, the College of Arts and Sciences of Drexel University, and the Department of the History of Science and Technology, Johns Hopkins University. Please send abstracts of 250 words to Scott Gabriel Knowles (
sgk23@drexel.edu) and Robert H. Kargon (kargon@jhu.edu) by April 21, 2014.