CFP: Visualizing Global Asia at the Turn of the 20th Century (3 Nov; 29 Apr-1 May; Yale)

Visualizing Global Asia at the Turn of the 20th Century

An Academic Conference sponsored by the Visualizing Cultures Project and the Center for East Asian Studies, Yale University Yale University, New Haven, April 29 May 1, 2010
Coordinators Peter C. Perdue [Yale] and John W. Dower [MIT]

The Visualizing Cultures project
[http://visualizingcultures.mit.edu] and the Council on East Asian Studies at Yale University [http://research.yale.edu/eastasianstudies]
invite contributions to an academic conference focused on the relationship between visual imagery and social change in modern Asia. We will assemble scholars of history, art history, history of photography, and history of technology specializing in China, Korea, Japan, United States, Europe and the Philippines to discuss how to integrate visual and textual media in research and teaching, using to the fullest the opportunities presented by the Internet.

This will be one of the first academic conferences devoted to image- driven scholarship and teaching about Asia in the modern world. The topic is "Visualizing Global Asia at the Turn of the 20th Century". Images presented must be available for online publication.

John Dower, professor of Japanese history at MIT, and Shigeru Miyagawa, professor of linguistics and foreign languages and literatures at MIT, founded the Visualizing Cultures project to investigate the impact of visual media on cross-cultural interaction between Asia and the West. This project has expanded the scope of traditional historical study beyond written texts, creating truly visual narratives that integrate large numbers of graphics, including popular and commercial images with scholarly commentary. The Visualizing Cultures platform allows educators to download and use freely all content, for non-commercial purposes. The Visualizing Cultures team has worked with scholars to create truly innovative and elegant online publications.

So far, the project has produced units on subjects like the Perry mission to Japan, Sino-Japanese and Russo-Japanese wars, the Yokohama treaty port, Felice Beato's pioneer photographs of Japan, consumer culture and the Shiseido cosmetics firm, and the Canton trade system in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. New units in production include John Thomson's standard-setting photography of China, the Opium War, the histories of Beijing and Shanghai, interwar Tokyo, and the U.S.-Philippines relationship from 1898 through World War Two. Visualizing Cultures uses rare publications as well as archival materials from a variety of museums and art collections, including the Smithsonian Institutions Freer and Sackler Galleries, Boston Museum of Fine Arts, Peabody Essex Museum, Hong Kong Museum of Art, Yales Beinecke Library, Shiseido archive in Japan, Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth, and Smith College Museum of Art.

We invite interested researchers to submit contributions for presentation at the conference at Yale in Spring 2010. These presentations should integrate visual and textual content. We especially encourage contributions that use rare materials from archives and museum collections. Many of the contributions may become the basis for new units on the Visualizing Cultures website. Please contact the organizers for further information.

Contact emails: peter.c.perdue at yale dot edu; Visualizing Cultures c/o Director Scott Shunk: shunk at mit dot edu