THE 3RD INTERNATIONAL STCS CONFERENCE ON

CONTEMPORARY EAST ASIA AND THE CONFUCIAN REVIVAL

organized by the Department of Asian and African Studies, Faculty of Arts, Ljubljana University in collaboration with the Scientific Research Center of the Slovene Academy for Science and Art (ZRC SAZU)

Date: October 3th – 5th 2014
Venue: Ljubljana, Scientific Research Center of the Slovene Academy for Science and Art (ZRC SAZU), Novi trg 2

CALL FOR PAPERS

The aim of the STCS conferences, organized by the Department of Asian and African studies at Ljubljana University is to encourage and advance the study of specific topics related to China and East Asia through the exchange of information across disciplinary lines and to strive to create and maintain a multidisciplinary space for the fruitful exchange of ideas on different types, images, and categories of East Asian cultures.
The 2014 conference is dedicated to the intellectual currents of Contemporary Modern Confucianism and their impact on modern East Asian societies.
In the 21st century, Asian societies redrew the map of progress: the balance of economic power, if not the political one, is shifting from the Euro-American to the Asian region. This shift leaves us facing many problems linked to transformations of material and ideational paradigms, defining not only the development of Asian societies, but also strongly influencing international relations. Strategic solutions to these problems need to consider broader perspectives within the context of particular cultural backgrounds. They are not limited to economic and ecological issues, but also include political and social roles of ideologies and culturally conditioned values, representing the axial epistemological grounds on which rest the most characteristic and enduring institutions of these societies.
One of the central recent theoretical concerns in this area is connected to various developmental trends of the East Asian Confucian revival. The intellectual current of Contemporary Modern Confucianism. was mainly developed during the 20th century in Taiwan and Hong Kong, but also gained a wide spread popularity in most of the other East Asian societies that were traditionally influenced by Confucian thought, as for example Japan and South Korea. It forms the most influential and important stream of thought in contemporary East Asian theory and represents a crucial part of new dominant ideologies in the P.R. China. It is defined by a search for synthesis between Western and traditional East Asian thought, aiming to elaborate a system of ideas and values, suitable to resolve social and political problems of the modern, globalized world. Thus, the contents of the conference are not only focused upon the main Modern Confucian philosophical approaches, ideas and methods. They furthermore also aim to illuminate the political, social and ideological backgrounds of the so called Confucian revival on the one hand, and its inherent connection to the ideological foundations of East Asian modernity on the other.
In the last few years, scholars involved in Asian studies have paid increasing attention to different developmental patterns and their causes in this research field. Therefore, the main purposes of the conference are to:

– open a dialog between scholars of different disciplinary lines and to offer a platform for the presentation and discussion of recent academic elaborations in the theory and practice of this important intellectual movement;

– highlight the significance of Confucian revival in the making of contemporary East Asian cultures and ideologies;

– revise recent historical approaches in related topics that have been prevalent in the study and research of East Asian modernization;

– elaborate existing theories, interpretations patterns and methods of investigation regarding the classical Confucianism;

– create new common methodological grounds of the Confucian revival and other related aspects of East Asian traditional cultures;

– form new research approaches and joint methods in contemporary and future Asian studies;

We invite proposals for panels, round table discussions, and papers concerning these topics for the conference. Submissions from all disciplines within East Asian studies are welcome.

Proposals (including the author’s name, academic qualification, institutional affiliation, position, contact information – address, telephone number, e-mail, and a short abstract of no more than 250 words) should be sent to tea.sernelj@ff.uni-lj.si before March 21st, 2014. Scholars who will submit their proposals by this deadline will be notified of their inclusion into the conference before May 15th, 2014. Accepted languages for the conference are English, Japanese, Korean and Chinese.

The organizers of the conference will publish a selection of the conference papers in an edited volume and/or a special issue journal.

The conference fee which includes support for obtaining visas, materials for the conference, a banquet dinner and coffee break refreshments is 70 Euro (35 Euro for PhD Students). This fee is to be paid on the day of registration.

Accommodation is possible in hotels or hostels near the city center (a list of the hotels will be provided).

Any further questions are welcome. Please write to tea.sernelj@ff.uni-lj.si

Organizational committee:

Prof. Dr. Jana Rošker
Assoc. Prof. Dr. Nataša Vampelj Suhadolnik
Assist. Prof. Dr. Nataša Visočnik
Assist. Prof. Luka Culiberg
Tea Sernelj, Assistant researcher
Matjaž Vidmar, Assistant researcher