CFP: Grad Conf @ U Toronto Dept of EAS (30 Dec.; 10 Mar.)

7TH ANNUAL GRADUATE STUDENT CONFERENCE
Department of East Asian Studies, University of Toronto

EVENT, MOMENT, WORLD: (RE)THINKING ASIA & EAST ASIAN STUDIES
Saturday, March 10th, 2007

With Keynote Address by and round table discussion with Dr. Harry
Harootunian, Professor of History and East Asian Studies at New York
University

Our work as scholars is inevitably influenced by the events that occur
in the world around us. These events, such as the War on Iraq, the
nuclear testing by North Korea, the rise of ultra-nationalisms in
Japan, or the protests in China of last year, shape the very framework
within which we come to understand our research. One of the most
pressing problems that we must face as scholars, especially in our
current geo-political moment, and the central problem that our
conference hopes to address, has to do with how we confront our own
agency as East Asian scholars in the reproduction of some of the
ideologies that maintain this framework. Where do we position
ourselves in relation to our contemporary moment when it
simultaneously structures and is structured by the work that we do?

With this in mind, we welcome submissions that take a variety of
perspectives on the notions of "event," "moment," and "world." Some
examples of the kinds of more specific questions one might address
with these themes would be: How are we to understand what constitutes
something's "eventness"? How are the nation and nationality
implicated in the production of our contemporary moment or of any
moment in history? How does the writing of moments and events from the
past produce effects on the contemporary moment, or vice versa? How
is this organization affected by the ethnographic gaze or the presence
of the nationalized other? These represent just a small sampling of
the possibilities that can be explored in relation to a variety of
fields of study including, but not limited to, Anthropology, Art
History, Cultural Studies, Education, History, Language Pedagogy and
Linguistics, Literature, Political Science, Religious Studies,
Sociology, Women?s Studies, Philosophy, Comparative Literature, and
Economics.

We will be holding a round table discussion entitled "The State of
East Asian Studies in North America" after all the panel presentations
have been given. During this time we hope to provide presenters,
discussants, and guests alike a forum in which they can discuss
questions related to understanding our role as East Asian scholars in
North America in light of our contemporary moment.

We would like to invite all those interested in presenting papers at
our conference to submit a one-page abstract (approx. 250 words) and
brief biographical information by Dec. 30th, 2006. The deadline for
submitting completed papers is Jan. 28th, 2007. Presenters will be
given 15 minutes to present their work. Panelists are also encouraged
to submit as panels of three.

Please email your submissions and enquiries to conference coordinator
Sean Callaghan at easgsc@chass.utoronto.ca