Tenth Annual Symposium of the Consortium
for Asian and African Studies (CAAS)
Cultural Expression at the Age of Globalization
SHISU ( Shanghai), October 19th and 20th, 2019
CALL FOR PAPERS
The theme of the conference in 2019 is about cultural expression. Since cultural exchange is one of the important driving forces for the development of human civilization. To achieve communication, first of all, each party consciously or unconsciously demonstrates their own culture, expressing their own culture in a way so that it can be recognized exclusively by the other party, and then be accepted and restructured before being incorporated into the culture of the other party.
As for the concept of culture, in a broad sense, it is the sum of material wealth and spiritual wealth created by human beings in the process of social and historical practice. While in a narrow sense, culture refers to the ideology of a society and the institutions and organizations that are compatible with it. It is the sum of the forms of social spiritual life that have occurred and developed on the basis of certain material production methods in history. It is generally divided into the following branches: physical culture, institutional culture, behavioral culture, and mentality culture. The physical culture is the sum of human material production activities and products, and concrete and practical things that are tangible, such as clothing, food, housing, and transportation.The institutional culture is the norm established by human beings in social practice to regulate their own behavior and regulate mutual relations.The behavioral culture is made up of its rites, folk customs, habits and customs in interpersonal communication. It is a social and collective behavior. Mentality culture refers to the social psychology and social ideology of people, including people’s values, aesthetic tastes, ways of thinking, and the resulting literary and artistic works.
In the process of globalization, Asian and African countries and their various ethnic groups have got access to other cultures, but in the meantime, realized the necessity of self-cultural expression, including methods, contents and processes of cultural expression, so as to be recognized and accepted by other cultures to a certain extent. Meanwhile, in the process of cultural integration in globalization, each culture has a chance to complete the reconstruction of their own cultures and achieves the goal of harmonious coexistence with other civilizations. This whole process is performed not only on the individual level, involving the expression, reception and reconstruction of cultural elements such as the living habits, words and deeds, etc., but also on the level of products, and on the level of institutions and values.
Therefore, in this framework, all disciplines such as history, religion, art, politics, media, society, economy, anthropology and etc., are worth profound exploration and will be covered.
Graduate students and faculty of the seven CAAS member universities (Leiden, INALCO,SOAS, HUFS, Columbia, TUFS, SISU) are invited to submit proposals for papers dealing with these and related questions with regard to Asia, Africa, and their interrelated histories and presents.
All disciplines of Area Studies are welcome, including, History, Sociology, Anthropology,Political Science, Economy, Migrant Studies, Geography, Religious Studies, Literature,Linguistics, Theater and Film Studies as well as multi- and interdisciplinary approaches that combine them.
Papers will be selected based on content and approach. The papers will be grouped by themes,which will be conducted as workshops, with 15-minute presentations by speakers, and as much discussion as possible among participants and audience. The organizers can also accept panel proposals with three or four presentations. Each panel must contain at least one CAAS presenter, but it can include non-CAAS presenters as well. Papers should be submitted to the organizers by September 15th, 2019 (not more than 3000 words) and will be made available to symposium participants.
English is the language of the Symposium, and as in the past nine CAAS Symposium we especially welcome applications from graduate students and post-docs as well as from faculty members.
Application procedures:
* For individual applications, applicants should send:
1) a one-page proposal describing the topic and approach of the paper,
2) a brief curriculum vitae of one page maximum
* For panel proposals, applicants should send:
1) a one-page proposal of the panel,
2) a one-page proposals and curriculum vitae from each presenter.
Proposals should be combined into a single PDF document, which should be sent as an
e-mail attachment to tcheng@shisu.edu.cn (Prof.Cheng Tong) and yangy@shisu.edu.cn (Prof.Yang Yang) with reference to the CAAS Symposium.
The deadline for submission is Feb.28, 2019.
Applicants will be notified of their selection by April 30, 2019.
As in earlier CAAS Symposium, travel and accommodation expenses will not be covered by the host institution.
For further information or questions about the Symposium, please contact the SHISU CAAS coordinator, Prof. Tong CHENG, tcheng@shisu.edu.cn
