Call for Papers: Engaging ‘China’: Perspectives from the Margins
Oxford China Humanities Graduate Conference (10-11 Jan 2018)
www.oxfordchgc.wixsite.com/engagingchina
Keynote speakers: Peter K. Bol (Harvard), Henrietta Harrison (Oxford)
Deadline for submission: October 15th 2017, 17:00 (GMT)
Graduate students are invited to submit abstracts for the second annual University of Oxford China Humanities Graduate Conference, which takes the theme of ‘engagement’ in the Chinese context as its point of departure. We welcome papers that work with modern and pre-modern subject material and from all humanistic disciplines, including but not limited to history, literary and cultural studies, art, film and media studies, philosophy, human geography, anthropology, musicology and religion.
This conference asks applicants to critically assess through the lens of ‘engagement’ how the idea of ‘China’ as a geographical, cultural and national signifier is created. How is China engaging with neighbours close and far away? How does it attract the world and communities within? How do communities within and without engage with China? How does engagement inform the ways in which ‘China’ is conceived? Through this conference, we wish to highlight the ways, both past and present, in which ‘engagement’ is central to understanding ‘China’.
Possible topics may include (but are not limited to):
1. Circulation of philosophical and religious texts, ideas, and institutions
2. ‘China’ in cultural products, including literature, film, visual art, theatre, music, etc.
3. Cultural production of minorities within China and the Chinese diaspora
4. Subcultures in China
5. Exchanges of material culture
6. Linguistic exchange
7. Trade and the tributary system
8. Diplomacy, war, and peace
9. Tourism and migration to, from, and within China
10. Cross-border dimensions of environmental and health issues
11. Co-operation and conflict in science and technology
12. Methods and attitudes of scholarship in and about China
The conference will be held predominantly in English but we accept a limited number of submissions written in both English and Chinese and presented in Mandarin.
We plan to produce a special issue in a peer-reviewed journal out of the best conference papers. Successful applicants who wish to be considered for publication are encouraged to submit a full paper at the time of the conference.
Please submit a 250–300-word abstract and 150-word biography to oxfordchinagradconference@gmail.com by October 15th 2017, 17:00 (GMT).
Organising committee – Yeo Min Hui, Frances O’Morchoe, Stefano Gandolfo
