Event Details

End: December 1, 2018
Contact: cw070145@gmail.com
More Info: http://international.ucla.edu/apc/article/197181

Sinophone Studies:
Interdisciplinary Perspectives and Critical Reflections
April 12-13, 2019
University of California, Los Angeles

 Organized by Professor Shu-mei Shih (UCLA)

Since the initial conceptualization of Sinophone studies over a decade ago as a field that examines Sinitic-language cultures and communities marked by difference and heterogeneity around the world, scholarly work in the field has become more and more interdisciplinary, involving not only literary and cinema studies, but also history, anthropology, musicology, linguistics, art history, dance, and others. Now we routinely see “Sinophone” as a specific marker with multiple implications that are no longer merely denotative, enabling, on the one hand, marginalized voices, sites, and practices to come into view, and, on the other hand, an expanded conversation with such fields as postcolonial studies, settler colonial studies, immigration studies, ethnic studies, queer studies, and area studies. There have been vibrant debates at the definitional and conceptual level about critical issues and standpoints, such as the pros and cons of the diasporic framework (diaspora as history versus diaspora as value), the difficulty of overcoming Chineseness, the strength and pitfalls of language-determined identities, imperial and anti-imperial politics, racialization and self-determination of minority peoples, place-based cultural practices, the dialectics between roots and routes, and many others, and presently, scholars in disciplines other than literary and cinema studies have begun to join these conversations. The increasingly interdisciplinary nature of Sinophone studies compels us to take stock, at this particular historical conjuncture, of where this inherently interdisciplinary field has been, where it is going, and where it might go in the future.

The conference calls for paper proposals that engage with the broad contours of Sinophone studies as described above with the aim of gathering selected conference papers into a new reader entitled Sinophone Studies: An Interdisciplinary Reader, after the 2013 volume, Sinophone Studies: A Critical Reader (Columbia UP). The 2013 volume was largely limited to literary and cultural studies, and the current volume in preparation will give preference to disciplines that are not yet represented in the 2013 volume as well as more conceptual and theoretical essays that elaborate upon Sinophone studies as an interdisciplinary field and the ways in which Sinophone studies has reframed existing discussions and challenged specific centrisms and boundaries.

Please send your paper proposal of no more than 300 words to Kunxian Shen at cw070145@gmail.com by December 1, 2018. Notifications of proposal acceptance will be sent by December 15 to allow presenters time to apply for travel funding. Full papers are expected for delivery at the conference. The conference organizers will provide lodging, refreshments, and some meals, but will not be able to cover travel expenses. Conference registration is free.