MCLC: Remapping Asian Migrations through Language--cfp

[Denton, Kirk]

MCLC LIST
From: Jacob Edmond <jacob.edmond at otago.ac.nz>
Subject: Remapping Asian Migrations through Language--cfp
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Remapping Asian Migrations through Language
An International Symposium hosted by the
University of Otago Asian Migrations Research Theme
University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand
Tuesday, 10 December 2013

The symposium “Remapping Asian Migrations through Language” addresses
language-based approaches to thinking about the encounters between, and
movements of, people and ideas in Asia. The symposium responds to the work
of keynote speaker Shu-mei Shih (see below) and others to establish
Sinophone studies as an alternative to nation and ethnic-centred Chinese
studies approaches and calls such as Jing Tsu’s for a “new area studies”
based on languages rather than regions. The symposium asks: how does
mapping Asia through the movements of languages change the way we think
about migration, the Asian region, and the idea of regional studies itself?

Proposals are invited for papers to be presented during this one-day
symposium at the University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand. To register
your interest, please submit an abstract of 250 words along with a brief
(100-word) bio note to Dr Tui Clery <tuinic222 at yahoo.co.uk> by Friday, 18
October. 

Please note that there is no registration fee for accepted speakers, but
speakers outside Dunedin will need to cover their own travel,
accommodation, and other costs of attendance.

The symposium is convened by Associate Professor Jacob Edmond on behalf of
the University of Otago Asian Migrations Research Theme.

 
Keynote speaker: Professor Shu-mei Shih 史書美
Shu-mei Shih is professor of comparative literature, Asian languages and
cultures, and Asian American studies at the University of California, Los
Angeles. She also currently holds an appointment at the University of Hong
Kong. She is the author of, among other works, Visuality and Identity:
Sinophone Articulations Across the Pacific (U of California P, 2007) and
The Lure of the Modern: Writing Modernism in Semicolonial China, 1917–1937
(U of California P, 2001). She is co-editor of Sinophone Studies: A
Critical Reader (Columbia UP, 2013), The Creolization of Theory (Duke UP,
2011), andMinor Transnationalisms (Duke UP, 2005).

Professor Shih is one of the key figures in the development of “Sinophone
studies,” a new approach to the study of Sinitic languages, literatures,
and cultures outside a national or ethnic paradigm. Like the Asian
Migrations Research Theme, Shih’s work engages the fields of diaspora,
intercultural, global, and transnational studies, and seeks to understand
culture beyond the boundaries of one nation. Her work has been
particularly concerned with diasporic and transnational Sinophone
communities. She has forcefully made the case against the traditional
focus on ethnicity and nation at the expense of attention to language in
the study of the movements of peoples and cultures beyond the boundary of
one nation.