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Call
for Papers
Dear
Sir, Madam, the International Institute for Asian
Studies (Leiden), Asia Centre (Seoul
National University), Vietnam National University(Hanoi),
Leiden University
(Leiden), and École des Hautes Études en
Sciences Sociales (Paris) are organising a two-parts conference In Comparison: Korea and
Vietnam in History. For the first part, we invite the
submission of paper abstracts on the ‘pre-modern’ and ‘colonial’ periods of
Vietnam and Korea. Scholars do not need to be experts on both countries,
but we welcome proposals that are framed in a way that can lead to
interesting interactions with people working on the other country.
Vietnam
and Korea as Longue Durée Subjects:
Negotiating
Tributary and Colonial Positions
Application
deadline
5
July 2016
Conference
dates
3-4
March 2017
Venue
Hanoi,
Vietnam
The
conference
Comparative
studies are located at the heart of humanities and social science studies
(Détienne 2000, Werner and Zimmermann 2004; Felsky & Friedman 2013),
particularly in area studies (Anderson 1998, Lieberman 2009). In that field
especially, implicit or explicit comparisons often determine certain
conceptions of regional and sub-regional orders. For example, the study of
East Asia is implicitly situated within a comparative approach to China and
the Sinitic culture. What other “strange parallels” (Lieberman) could
possibly be operational to set a “comparative gesture” (Robinson 2011) that
would not be determined by usual ‘silo-style’ conceptions of Asia? How to
trigger new connections and parallels in area studies?
In
partnership with a number of universities and institutions, IIAS and its
partners set out to address this “comparative gesture” by initiating a
deliberate by-pass of dominant geometries and meta-narratives. One way to
do so will be by organizing conferences or other forms of interactive platforms
that would explore unexploited or only partially studied parallels and
connections. In doing so, it will not only seek to contribute to renew how
‘Asian studies’ is methodological framed. By identifying new articulations
beyond established approaches of global history, it seeks to underscore the
intellectual merits – as well as limits – of comparisons as a social
science and humanities method.
Conference
1:
Vietnam
and Korea as Longue Durée Subjects: Negotiating Tributary and Colonial
Positions
The
first proposed event will focus on Korea and Vietnam, two major regional
nations and societies in Asia: as great kingdoms in the pre-modern period
they developed, sometimes within and sometimes outside of the Sinitic
“tributary” system, strong political organizations and original
civilizations. The vicissitudes of the modern and contemporary periods,
first with the experience of colonial subjugation, then international
warfare and civil conflicts resulting in division of the two countries set
much connections and parallels in the two countries’ trajectories. Today,
Vietnam and Korea continue to stand at the edge of the two great
ideological systems that shaped the twentieth century, socialism and
capitalism, yet in a divergent ways – Vietnam being reunified and having
entered post-communist-pro-capitalist State authoritarianism while Korea
remains divided between two models of statehood and governance.
The
conference is conceived as an exploratory exercise to identify points of
connections in which scholars of Vietnam and Korea could confront their
work and engage their paradigms. As an ongoing project historically
grounded with contemporary perspective situated within the larger
Asia-global spectrum as well as for practical sake, the first part of the
conference entitled “Vietnam
and Korea as Longue
DuréeSubjects:
Negotiating Tributary and Colonial Positions” will focus on
two conventionally agreed historiographies of the countries’: their
‘pre-modern’ and ‘colonial’ periods. An underlying question this conference
aims to address will be: How the Korean and Vietnamese states and
their civil societies, concepts that shaped during the tributary system,
became formulated during the modernization period?
Various
approaches and disciplines are invited to interact.
Topics
that would be particularly relevant for the conferences include – but
should not be restricted to – the following:
- Ancient kingdoms:
indigenization of Sinitic culture and resources; articulation with
vernacular cultures (e.g. indigenous religious systems and beliefs);
- Pre-modern urban cultures,
bureaucracies, statehood;
- Ways of dealing with the
world and China: diplomatic cultures and techniques, exchange,
commerce, piracy;
- Western incursions and
missionary experiences in Korea and Vietnam
- Looking at China, Japan and
other Asian countries from Korea and Vietnam;
- Writing and languages
(relation to Chinese writing systems, and vernacularization processes;
linguistic innovations and hybridization);
- Colonial experiences,
including differences of governmentalities, processes of
modernization; cities and modern urban cultures; transcultural
experiments; forms of political (and cultural) resistance and
contestation; new cosmopolitanisms.Individual presentations may not be
restricted to works explicitly comparing Korea and Vietnam, yet
presenters have to bear in mind the ultimate purpose of framing
debates in comparison between the two Asian countries and their
societies. Likewise, studies from scholars specialized on China,
Japan, and other Asian countries are welcome, provided they contribute
to the general problematic of the workshop. Junior scholars are
particularly encouraged to submit abstracts.
A
second part of the conference, focusing on the contemporary Korean and
Vietnamese conditions, from 1945 onward, will be held in Korea the
following year.
Requirements
Paper
proposals should be submitted via the form available on our website
by Tuesday 5
July 2016. Successful applicants will be notified by 31
August 2016 and will be required to send a draft paper (6000 – 8000 words)
by 15 January 2017. | Go to the submission form
Financial
support
Participants are expected to pay their own travel and accommodation
expenses. Limited financial support may be made available to some scholars
who reside in Asia and some junior or low-income scholars from other parts
of the world. If you would like to be considered for a grant, please submit
the Grant Application Form
in which you state the motivation for your request. Please also specify the
kind of funding that you will apply for or will receive from other sources.
Please note that the conference operates on a limited budget, and will not
normally be able to provide more than a partial coverage of the costs of
travel. The form should be submitted by 5 July 2016. Requests for funding
received after this date will not be taken into consideration.
Information
Further information about the venue, suggestions for accommodation, and
logistics will be provided on our webpage once
the proposals have been accepted.
For
questions, please contact Ms Martina van den Haak at m.c.van.den.haak@iias.nl
Steering
Committee
Prof. Kang Myungkoo (SNUAC)
Prof. Nguyen Van Kim (VNU)
Prof. Remco Breuker (Leiden University)
Dr Valérie Gelézeau (EHESS)
Dr Philippe Peycam (IIAS)
An
initiative directed by IIAS
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