[KS] CFP: "Archipelagic Asia" at ACLA Taipei (organized by Nicolai Volland and Leo Ching)

[Jooyeon Rhee]

*Archipelagic Asia*



Organizer: Nicolai Volland

Co-Organizer: Leo Ching



The study of literature of/in Asia remains fragmented, along the lines of
nations, histories, ethnicities, languages, and disciplines—all concepts
that are rooted, epistemologically and pragmatically, on *terra firma*, on
the supposedly sound conceptual ground of a continental Enlightenment
tradition. What happens, however, when we shift our point of view, and
instead adopt an oceanic perspective on literatures from the Western
Pacific region?

Groundbreaking work from oceanic studies, archipelagic studies, and the
“blue humanities” has inserted critical acumen to literary metaregions such
as the Caribbean, the Mediterranean, and the Indian Ocean, but is only
beginning to be perceived in Asian literary studies. Oceans connect as much
as they separate; they provide space for movement and mobility, in the
physical and the metaphorical sense, and for comparison and relational
thinking; and they challenge rigidly drawn disciplinary boundaries. The
oceanic and the archipelagic, as critics such as Epeli Hau‘ofa, Édouard
Glissant, and Françoise Lionnet have pointed out, harbor the potential to
create alternative spaces for thought, push back against dominant
epistemologies, and celebrate the minor, peripheral, and marginal.

This seminar invites contributors to rethink the conceptual apparatus and
the critical parameters in which we think about literature from Asia. We
welcome paper proposals that rethink East Asian, Southeast Asian,
Inter-Asian, and Transpacific literatures from oceanic and archipelagic
perspectives. How can a maritime perspective help to unsettle and
reconstitute the field? How can individual Asian literatures, or authors,
or genres, be reconceived in oceanic terms? How can oceans help us think
across disciplinary boundaries? And how are our approaches to archipelagic
Asia in turn linked to, and intervene in, current critical conversations
such as the Anthropocene, decoloniality, and the Global South?
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://koreanstudies.com/pipermail/koreanstudies_koreanstudies.com/attachments/20211027/1afb1e26/attachment.html>