Tenth Annual Symposium of the Consortium

for Asian and African Studies(CAAS)

Cultural Expression in the Era of Globalization

SISU ( Shanghai), October 19th  and 20th, 2019

CALL FOR PAPERS

The 2019 theme of the CAAS symposium to be held at SISU in Shanghai is about culture expression. 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 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 means of 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, which is a social and collective behavior, is made up of its rites, folk customs, habits and customs in interpersonal communication. Last but not least, 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, while making their way to other cultures, have realized the necessity and importance 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 the era of globalization, each culture has a chance to complete the reconstruction of their own culture 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.

It follows that all disciplines such as history, religion, art, politics, media, society, economy, anthropology and etc., are included in our perspective and each of them is worth meticulous and profound exploration.

Graduate students and faculty members of the seven CAAS member universities (Leiden, INALCO,SOAS, HUFS, Columbia, TUFS, SISU) are invited to submit papers dealing with these and related questions with regard to Asia, Africa in terms of their interrelated histories and present-day communication.

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 for presentation on the basis of merits of their content and approach. The papers will be grouped by themes, and presented in workshops, with

15-minute presentations by each speaker, as well as discussion among speakers, participants and audiences. The organizers will 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 before September 15th, 2019 (not more than 3,000 words) and will be made available to symposium participants.

English is the working 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)           one-page proposal and a brief 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. Tong CHENG) and yangy@shisu.edu.cn (Prof.YANG Yang) with reference to the CAAS Symposium.

The deadline for submission is Mar. 20, 2019.

Applicants will be notified of their selection for presentation by April 30, 2019.

SISU will provide the 10th Symposium participants with accommodation from Oct. 18-20, 2019. However, as in earlier CAAS Symposium, travel expenses will not be covered by the host institution.

For further information about the Symposium, please contact the SISU CAAS coordinator, Prof. Tong CHENG, tcheng@shisu.edu.cn