Conference at a glance
Location: Art Center Kobe, Kobe, Japan
Dates: Friday, March 30, 2018 to Sunday, April 01, 2018
Conference Theme: "Recentering: Asian Spaces, Cultures and Ideas in the
21st Century"
Initial Abstract Submission Deadline: November 10, 2017*
Final Abstract Submission Deadline: January 11, 2018
Registration Deadline for Presenters: February 09, 2018
Submit early to take advantage of the discounted registration rates. Learn more
about our registration options.
Conference Theme: "Recentering: Asian Spaces, Cultures and Ideas in the
21st Century"
If globalisation is characterised by simultaneous networks of information, has
the concept of centres become obsolete? Or do certain recent geopolitical
developments – the fading of America’s “global leadership” being
counter-balanced by the rise of China’s, the latter’s new Belt and Road
Initiative promising to become a new Silk Road, Britain’s exit from the EU, and
the newly proposed trade agreements between Japan and Europe – put the world on
the verge of a radical recentering? Will the burgeoning mega-cities in Asia
displace the traditional nation-state in the competition for capital, status
and enhanced technologies?
Scholars and students of the humanities have long questioned the extent to
which shifts in formations of power – empires, countries, regions, cities –
resonate through cultural practices that centre on literary and aesthetic
meaning, expression and representation. This provokes further questions about
how such centres can be identified, defined and represented; and about their
relations of other types and modes of centering. Is cultural prestige dependent
on political centrality? Or can it be achieved though the circulation of forms
and aesthetics that operate in their own economy? For that matter, what is
central to its meanings and valuations of culture?
What of the humanities themselves? Fears of their marginalisation are based on
the assumption that they were once central, and that the only way to restore
their former authority is to argue against their subordination to scientific,
technological or vocational forms of education. Can the humanities find new
life in multi- or cross-disciplinary frameworks? How can they survive the
dominant trend towards more marketable or “useful” forms of education? What is
central to the humanities? Should older disciplines such as Literature and
Aesthetics reinvent themselves as it be Cultural Studies? Or should they now
concentrate on comprehending their own historical genealogies in relation to
current scholarly practices?
There is also the question of why, in the wake of post-colonial and
trans-national de-centerings, do elite Anglo-American universities retain so
much of their cultural capital? How might humanities redefine themselves if
recentred in Asian institutions? Is it possible for the prevailing discourses
of Western humanism to be combined with Asian values, goals and traditions?
Could such a transformation help to rehabilitate the humanities’ current
beleaguered status in America and Europe?
Our present historical moment compels us to think through the implications of
these and other modes of recentering. The Asian Conference on Arts and
Humanities 2018 provides an opportunity for academics, artists, writers and
students to explore the challenges of multi-faceted and interdisciplinary
rethinkings of the ways we imagine, articulate and work with centres.
While we invite proposals that deal with any aspect of recentering, we offer
the following list of possible areas of exploration. It is by no means final or
exhaustive; rather, we offer it to stimulate and provoke considerations of how
the humanities can engage with ideas of recentering and decentering.
The Concept of Centres
What is a centre? Do centres still exist in a globalised world?
What new definitions have emerged of power and centrality?
Can simultaneous networks of information be restricted to any specific
location?
Does the concept of place retain any relevance in a globalised world?
Will space-time compression inevitably accelerate?
Historical and Geographical Centres
The Silk Road(s) then and now: centres in motion.
The growing urbanisation of humanity, particularly in Asia.
Cities and metropoles as centres: from world city to global city to
mega-city.
Is the nation-state now obsolete? What might take its place?
Is it now possible to define a genuinely cosmopolitan ethics?
Centres and/of Knowledge
What lies at the centre of the humanities? Do they retain relevance in Asia or
the West?
What are specifically Asian modes of knowledge? Is the university itself an
imported form?
Can the humanities be recentred around specifically Asian values, goals,
traditions?
Can English language and literature studies be recentered as a multi-focal
globalised lingua franca?
Why in a decentred world has the elite Anglo-American academy retained such
prestige?
The Self as Central
How can memory be preserved as the locus of future-directed experience?
What alternative relations of person to collectivity might be possible?
Are there new definitions of transnational identity?
How has gender been transformed through interaction with global capital?
How are forms of knowledge gendered?
How does gender function in the institutional structures of academia?
In conjunction with our Global Partners, we look forward to extending you a
warm welcome in 2018.
The ACAH2018 Organising Committee
Call for Papers – https://acah.iafor.org/call-for-papers/
The conference theme for ACAH is "Recentering: Asian Spaces, Cultures and
Ideas in the 21st Century", and the organisers encourage submissions that
approach this theme from a variety of perspectives. However, the submission of
other topics for consideration is welcome and we also encourage sessions across
a variety of interdisciplinary and theoretical perspectives.
Submissions are organised into the following thematic streams:
Arts
Teaching and Learning the Arts
Arts Policy, Management and Advocacy
Arts Theory and Criticism
Social, Political and Community Agendas in the Arts
Visual Arts Practices
Performing Arts Practices: Theater, Dance, Music
Literary Arts Practices
Media Arts Practices: Television, Multimedia, Digital, Online and Other New
Media
Other Arts
Humanities
Media, Film Studies, Theatre, Communication
Aesthetics, Design
Language, Linguistics
Knowledge
Philosophy, Ethics, Consciousness
History, Historiography
Literature/Literary Studies*
Political Science, Politics
Teaching and Learning
Globalisation
Ethnicity, Difference, Identity
Immigration, Refugees, Race, Nation
First Nations and Indigenous Peoples
Sexuality, Gender, Families
Religion, Spirituality
Cyberspace, Technology
Science, Environment and the Humanities
Other Humanities
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