[KS] [CFP] Situations International Conference: Asian Diaspora in the 21st Century

[Sungjin Shin]

Dear Korean Studies List,

*Situations* is currently accepting essays for presentation at our annual
conference titled *"Asian Diaspora in the 21st Century: Transnational
Hauntology and Affective Production."* The conference will take place on
November 22-23, 2024, at Yonsei University, Seoul, South Korea.

Call for Papers details:

Scholars have extensively debated the meaning and significance of *diaspora*.
At their inception, classic diaspora studies considered a racial or ethnic
group’s dispersal caused by religious difference, the Jewish people being
the archetype in understanding diaspora. The scope of modern diaspora
studies has been expanded to embrace emancipatory politics and the
exploration of various conditions of racial, ethnic, and political
minorities. Contemporary diaspora is characterized by fragmentation,
dislocation, and globalization, and these new features must be clearly
redefined and analyzed. Non-European diaspora experience, Asian diaspora in
particular, has not been extensively explored. Raising questions about the
magnitude and the limited destinations of Korean migration being identified
as a diaspora, Gerard Chaliand and Jean Pierre Rageau argue that “the total
number of overseas Koreans lacks the massive proportions of a typical
diaspora, such as the Irish case, in which more than half of the population
emigrated from their homeland” (1995). Should we define an ethnic group’s
diaspora through size or distance? Doesn’t the atypicality of the Korean
diaspora call for a retheorization of diaspora today?



A small group of migrants may have felt themselves to be in a precarious
situation in the 19th and 20th centuries, but in the 21st century,
diasporic subjects have multiple ways of retaining contact with their
communities of origin, thanks to advances in communication technology and
frequent air travel. Contemporary diasporas in the 21st century can be
characterized by varieties of diasporic experience that no longer
necessitate a permanent break from one’s homeland. The consciousness of
being a diasporic subject may no longer depend as much on a physical and
geographic separation from a homeland. What does diasporic consciousness
mean then in a world where contact and even return to the homeland is
possible? And turning away from the attention of ethnicity or race on
diaspora to the emotional experience of being unsettled, displaced, and
haunted, may unveil a greater understanding of our being in the 21st
century.



Playing on the concept of ontology and resonating with his lifelong project
of deconstruction, Jacques Derrida suggests by the term, hauntology, how to
engage ghosts and historical remnants from the past. (Hau)ntology is a
neologism that reminds us that we are always displaced and unhomed. When
diasporic subjects seek to break away from their past, it can always come
back to haunt their present experience associated with mixed feelings of
melancholia, rage, alienation, anomie, and hopefulness for a better future.
The displaced subjects’ affective production transcending the limited ties
of kinship and nation can mediate the deterritorialized humanity in the 21st
century. *Situations* (Volume 18, No. 1, 2025) calls for papers that
explore concepts of migration and diaspora in the 21st century and/or
papers that examine literary and cultural content representing, mediating, or
rearticulating the diasporic consciousness of Asian diaspora communities.



Possible topics:

·      Contemporary diasporas: North Korean defectors, the Zainichi
community, the Chinese diaspora in Southeast Asia, and the South Asian
diaspora in African and Arab states

·      diasporic consciousness: displacement and lost land, homeland and
host land

·      language barriers and linguistic isolation

·      citizenship and sense of belonging

·      the myth and politics of return

·      refugee camps, resettlement, and national borders

·      gendered experience within diasporic communities

·      inter-Asian migration and politics of asylum

·      the problem of collective memory in diasporic communities

·      assimilation and de-assimilation in one’s adopted land

·      diaspora and the “blue humanities” centered on oceans and seas





*Confirmed Keynote Speakers:*

John Lie, Distinguished Professor of Sociology, U.C. Berkeley

So-young Kim, Professor of Cinema Studies, Korea National University of Arts





Early inquiries with 200-word abstracts are appreciated. *By **3**1 *
*August** 2024*, *we would invite you to submit your 4,000-word
Chicago-style conference presentation with its abstract and keywords* (the
acceptance of the presentation will be decided based on the 4,000-paper).



Each invited participant is then expected to turn his or her conference
presentation into a finished 6,000-word paper for possible inclusion in a
future issue of the SCOPUS-indexed journal, *Situations: Cultural Studies
in the Asian Context*. All inquiries and submissions should be sent to both
situations at yonsei.ac.kr and skrhee at yonsei.ac.kr.



Submissions should follow the Chicago Manual of Style (16th ed.), using
only endnotes.



*Notes:*

*We will provide hotel accommodation for those participants whose papers we
accept. The presenters will share twin bedrooms.*


For any questions about the event, please contact situations at yonsei.ac.kr.


Thank you,

Sungjin


-- 
Sungjin Shin, Ph.D.
Instructor and Postdoctoral Researcher
Department of English Language and Literature
Yonsei University, Seoul, South Korea
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