Request for Workshop Proposals – InterAsian Connections VI: Hanoi (2018)

Conference on InterAsian Connections VI: Hanoi (December 4-7, 2018)
Hosted by Vietnam Academy of Social Sciences

Organized by: Social Science Research Council InterAsia Program, Duke University Global Asia Initiative, Göttingen University Global and Transregional Studies Platform, the Hong Kong Institute for the Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Hong Kong, Asia Research Institute at the National University of Singapore, Seoul National University Asia Center, Vietnam Academy of Social Sciences, and Yale University – collectively the Organizers.

Request for Workshop Proposals

InterAsian Connections VI: Hanoi is the sixth in a series of conferences showcasing innovative research from across the social sciences and related disciplines that explores themes that transform conventional understandings of Asia. Crossing traditional area studies boundaries and creating international and interdisciplinary networks of scholars working to theorize the intersection of the “global” and the “regional” in a variety of contexts, Asia is reconceptualized as a dynamic and interconnected historical, geographical, and cultural formation stretching from West Asia through Eurasia, South Asia and Southeast Asia, to East Asia.

The 2018 Hanoi conference—comprised of both closed, director-led thematic workshops and plenary sessions open across workshops and to the general public—will be structured to enable intensive “working group” interactions on specific research themes as well as broader interactions on topics of mutual interest and concern. Each workshop will have two directors with different institutional affiliations, preferably representing different disciplines.

Joint proposals are invited from faculty members at accredited universities and colleges in any world region who are interested in co-organizing and co-directing a thematic workshop that addresses one of the following broadly conceived workshop themes (click here to see full description of workshop themes):

Sites of InterAsian Interaction
Territorial Sovereignties and Historical Identities
Transregional Religious Networks
Environmental Humanities in Asia
Rethinking Conceptual Frameworks for the Rise of Asian Cities
Infrastructures and Networks

Application Process for Workshop Directors

Applications are invited from scholars who would like to convene an international workshop that brings together a group of researchers working to address one of the broadly conceived workshop themes located in an InterAsian research landscape.

All workshop directors are encouraged to think about InterAsia in the context of connections, convergencesand comparisons. We are interested in developing the study of connections – the exploration of historical and/or contemporary transnational/cross-national/trans-regional processes, structures, practices, and flows within and across the territorial and imaginative space of Asia, secondly convergences or the responses of different Asian societies to common processes, and finally comparisons involving the investigation of societies/polities within Asia, especially those that utilize innovative units of comparison. In addition to the investigation of particular issues and processes as described in the workshop themes, the conference aims to critically investigate the ways in which fields of knowledge map Asia and imagine alternatives. Workshop directors should encourage papers that promote a conscious InterAsian project of inquiry. We aim at gathering as broad an international and multi-disciplinary representation of scholars as possible. We also encourage proposals for workshops that will see participation by activists, policymakers, media practitioners, and cultural producers addressing different aspects of the InterAsian conference theme.

Each workshop should have two directors (with different institutional affiliations and preferably representing different disciplines) and will include 10-12 participants (senior and junior scholars, graduate students, other researchers) chosen competitively from across relevant disciplines in the social sciences, humanities and related fields. Workshop Directors will be selected by the Organizers and are then expected to help recruit and select workshop participants, thus they should have sufficient research experience on the region and themes of their proposals. Directors will be selected according to four criteria:

The theoretical and/or empirical contributions of the workshop—i.e. the extent to which the proposed workshop represents an innovative and original contribution to existing scholarship on the subject;
The InterAsian relevance of the workshop—i.e. the extent to which the proposed workshop takes forward the intellectual mandate of the conference, of redefining “Asia” as a dynamic and interconnected formation, whether through innovative comparative approaches or through a focus on connections within and across the traditionally defined regions of Asia (West Asia, Eurasia, Central Asia, South Asia, Southeast Asia, and East Asia). Arguments that particular topics imply specific geographic configurations within and across Asia will be welcomed;
The anticipated composition of the workshop—i.e. the extent to which the workshop will elicit participation from a diverse community of scholars, with preference given to workshops that have multi-disciplinary and international appeal, and that involve scholars and researchers at different stages of their careers;
The anticipated research outcomes of the workshop—i.e. the extent to which the workshop has the potential to generate new and innovative research agendas and to forge/sustain intra and inter-regional networks of scholarly research and exchange among institutions and individuals working in and on Asia.

Note: workshop directors from the last two InterAsian Connections conferences (Istanbul 2013 and Seoul 2016) may not apply to serve as workshop directors, but may choose to apply as workshop participants.

The deadline for application submissions is October 31, 2017 and decisions will be announced by early November.

Once these workshop directors have been selected, we will issue a second Call for Workshop Papers for individual paper submissions (please look for this call in December 2017).

Applicants should submit the following materials. Click here to download application materials

Application cover sheet–basic workshop details
1-2 page C.V. for each workshop director (academic qualifications and employment history; list of publications)
1-page abstract of the workshop that could be circulated as an open call for papers (may be single-spaced). As a note, if selected to lead a workshop, directors may be asked to revise this CfP prior to circulation.
Answers to five questions (3-4 pages, may be single-spaced)

Director’s Responsibilities

Following the selection of workshop directors, the Organizers will announce an open call for individual paper submissions for all conference workshops, including thematic workshops and workshops organized by the host institution, Vietnam Academy for Social Sciences, and the Organizers. The responsibilities of the workshop directors include:

Helping to recruit individual paper submissions from interested international workshop participants (senior and junior scholars, graduate students, other researchers) competitively from across relevant disciplines in the social sciences, humanities, and related fields;
Collaborating with the Organizers to select 10-12 participants for their workshop;
Communicating with workshop participants once they have been selected, including providing feedback on participant draft paper submissions approximately four months in advance of the conference;
Preparing a workshop agenda and workshop concept note;
Convening daily meetings of the workshop at the conference as well as participating in a plenary session;
Presenting a research statement at the conclusion of the conference and submitting a final workshop report.

The Organizers will cover all costs of directors’ attendance, including economy class travel and accommodations. Workshop directors will each receive a $1,000 honorarium. Funds will also be available to cover partial expenses of the workshop participants, based on an assessment of needs.

Workshop Themes

Sites of InterAsian Interaction

This workshop would focus on locations through which Asia is made, unmade and remade. These sites are ones through which people, goods, ideas, texts and images traverse, consolidate, are translated and get refracted. The sites themselves could be of different types and scales, from global cities to trucking stops to penal colonies or tourist resorts. They may be permanent or temporary or ephemeral. Papers may address case studies of particular sites, or the topography of networks or different dimensions of the connections and confluences studied. The workshop can bring together the historical and contemporary, the spatial and the temporal dimensions of interactions across the Asian expanse as well as between Asia and the world.
Territorial Sovereignties and Historical Identities
Territorial conflicts among sovereign states, whether on land or sea, have been around since the appearance of the very idea of sovereignty in Europe. Yet as Thongchai Winnichakul and others have revealed, the very idea of a sovereign ‘geobody’ in Asia is not much more than a century old. Workshops in this area could explore how historical materials and events that do not speak to the modern notion of sovereignty utilized to make sovereignty claims. To what extent is the mobilization around historical identities the more important factor? How rapidly can these identities change? How do states and other players negotiate between relatively recent international laws, identity mobilization and assertions of raw power?
Transregional Religious Networks
Religious mobilization in Asia has long relied on the movement of actors, ideas and institutions across national and imperial boundaries: movement is a constant despite enormous transformations in technologies of border control, ideas of sovereignty, and notions of citizenship. With the rise of a global discourse on terror, moreover, religious movement is routinely represented as a threat to state sovereignty: even as international pilgrimage attracts record levels of participation, adherents today must comply with increasing demands for security. Workshops in this area could explore the role of new strategies used by such networks to facilitate movement and the dissemination of new rationales that seek to attract followers to transregionally imagined forms of community. We will explore as well how conflict among religions and between religions and states often centers on concerns to proscribe or promote specific kinds of movement, with political consequences both for members of religious networks but also for the multi-religious Asian nation-states which these networks traverse. How and when, for instance, do political actors distinguish between religious teachers, proselytizers, pilgrims, labour migrants, and refugees? When and how do counter-movements that seek to (re)place particular religions within borders become popular? Finally, what can these networks tell us about the mutual entailments of religion, politics and sovereignty across modern Asia?
Environmental Humanities in Asia
The topic of Environmental Humanities has been gaining popularity over the last several years. While the need for such an area of inquiry is palpable from the environmental crisis facing the planet, it is unclear what the agenda of such an inquiry should be. First, how would such an approach both demarcate its territory of inquiry and also speak to or join the more developed inquiries conducted by technical, geo-engineering and market approaches? Second, in what ways might the particularity of problems in Asia (eg population density or significance of the billion people dependent on circum-Himalayan rivers) and the approaches developed in this area be different from other parts of the world? What are some of the themes that thread through the diverse projects undertaken about this topic? These questions are suggested as examples only of the kind of questions to be posed at this stage of the field’s development.
Rethinking Conceptual Frameworks for the Rise of Asian Cities
This workshop should focus on the apparent disconnect between the rise of urban nodes in the Inter-Asian region and existing urban studies paradigms (both in the social sciences and humanities) that remain largely Euro-centric and positivist. Asian urban nodes accommodate a growing percentage of the world’s population. They have unique historical baggage and are faced with volatile, competitive pressures today. The workshop expects papers to capture the lived experiences of their populations as they engage the tumultuous modern transformations of Asia in the past century and the reconfigurations of spaces in the new century. New analytical tools should be devised to highlight diverse energies to become “urban”, contesting political agendas and moral imagination.
Infrastructures and Networks
Workshops in this area could explore infrastructures as material and organizational networks “that facilitate the flow of goods, people, or ideas and allow for their exchange over space” (Larkin 2013), a useful concept to study the circulation of knowledge and practices that transcend national and political boundaries, re-defining a region. The concept should be central in the history of trade, material and human flows, circulation of technological knowledge and practices that are entangled with not only built infrastructures, but also organizational and regulatory networks, and cultural imaginaries.

Deadlines/Timeline

October 31, 2017 – Workshop director proposals due
November 2017 – Workshop director selections announced
Late November 2017 – Revised Call for individual workshop papers due from selected directors (if applicable)
By December 1, 2017 – Call for individual workshop papers circulated
January 15, 2018 – Workshop paper proposals due
February 2018 – Workshop participant selection
June 2018 – Draft workshop papers due
August 2018 – Director comments due to participants on all draft papers
November 2018 – Final, revised workshop papers due
December 2018 (tbd) – InterAsian Connections VI: Hanoi