Discussions on Asia: Graduate Student Conference

What is Asia, and how should it be studied, constructed, and narrated? This graduate student conference aims to put interdisciplinary researchers into discussion about Asia around the theme of contact. Coming into contact with someone or something is vital to human relationships. Beyond this everyday dimension of contact, narratives and representations of contact have also been foundational for knowledge production in the humanities and social sciences. Disciplines such as anthropology and area studies have been framed through stories and images of contact with foreign people, places, and objects. In this regard, “Asia” itself was constructed as an object of knowledge through stories, images, and concepts of contact. This conference will focus on contact as it pertains to the study and construction of Asia.

This conference is organized by and for graduate students. Keynote speaker Carol Gluck (Columbia University) will speak on “Patterns of Change: A Grand Unified Theory of Japanese History" on Friday.