UCLA and Waseda University are pleased to announce a limited number of SUBSIDIES to cover most or all of the cost of attending a major international symposium titled “EMPIRE OF OTHERS” to be held at UCLA on March 20–22, 2017. The second in a series of annual symposia sponsored by the Tadashi Yanai Initiative for Globalizing Japanese Humanities, the three-day event will feature keynote lectures by Karatani Kōjin and Lisa Yoneyama and bring together leading scholars of Japanese empire from East Asia (Japan, Korea, Taiwan), Southeast Asia, and North America. (Please see the partial list of speakers and discussants at the end of this email.)
Over the past two decades, colonial studies has emerged as a dominant mode in the study of East Asian cultural history. To begin to make sense of the scope and variety of this diverse work, and because the study of Japanese empire has often taken place in dispersed areas with limited dialogue among scholars working in different disciplines and regions, this symposium aims to assess the current state of empire studies and rethink the possibilities of the field for the future while fostering dialogue and collaboration among researchers working across fields and perspectives.
The title of the conference, “Empire of Others,” emphasizes the need to reconsider a metropolitan perspective in empire studies that itself reproduces imperial modes of thought and strategies of rule. Rather than understand empire as a monolithic, unified concept, we seek multiple and dialogic versions. At the same time, while such an approach to the study of empire lends itself to a dialogic or comparative approach, hierarchialized comparison and unequal spaces of dialogue are also part and parcel of imperial power. Comparison and dialogue are methods, but also objects of analysis. It is on the ground of a self-conscious attention to the methodology of empire studies that a reconsideration of these and other approaches to the history and continuity of empire may take place.
Advanced PhD students and junior scholars whose research relates closely to the theme of the symposium are encouraged to submit a CV and a brief word description (250–300 words) of their research by January 16th to Yixin Zhu, Program Manager in the Department of Asian Languages and Cultures at UCLA (yixin.zhu@humnet.ucla.edu).
Sincerely yours,
Seiji Lippit
Chris Hanscom
Participants (presenters & discussants)
Brian Bernards (USC)
Michael Bourdaghs (Univ. of Chicago)
Chris Hanscom (UCLA)
Todd Henry (UCSD)
Hwang Hoduk (Sungkyunkwan Univ.)
Ji Hee Jung (Seoul National University)
Kim Yerim (Yonsei University)
Ko Youngran (Nihon University)
Yong Woo Lee (New York University)
Richi Sakakibara (Waseda University)
Serk-bae Suh (UC Irvine)
Shin Ji Young (Yonsei University)
Cindi Textor (Yale University)
Vo Ming Vu (Vietnam National University)
Travis Workman (Univ. of Minnesota)
Wu Pei-Chen (National Taiwan Normal University)
Christina Yi (Univ. of British Columbia)
Yi Yeonsuk (Hitotsubashi University)
Dennis Washburn (Dartmouth College)
