Event Date
Join us for a dynamic conference showcasing original research by 13 scholars selected from more than 400 proposals submitted from around the world. Presenters will explore innovative approaches to the study of Asia through topics including Colonialism and Anticolonialism, Marginality and Representation, Gender and Sexuality, and Knowledge and Community. These cutting-edge projects highlight new theoretical perspectives, methodologies, and analyses shaping the field today.
Conference Program:
October 9
9:30–9:35 Welcome message
Eddy U, Director, UC Davis East Asian Studies
9:35–9:40 Opening remark
Ching Kwan Lee (Professor, UCLA)
9:40–11:20 Panel I Colonialism and Anticolonialism (Chair: Howard Chiang)
Napakadol Kittisenee (ABD, History, University of Wisconsin-Madison), “Magical Monks and Religious Sovereignty at the Mainland Southeast Asian Frontiers” (Discussant: Beatrice Zani)
Chendong Pi (ABD, Sociology, UC Davis), “Peripheral Nationalists and the Rise of Socialist Autonomy in China’s Inner Asian Frontier” (Discussant: Kennedy Wong)
11:20–12:30 Lunch Break and Tea Tasting
12:30–2:10 Panel 2 Marginality and Representation I (Chair: Michelle Yeh)
Kennedy Wong (Assistant Professor, Sociology, King’s University), “Relational Peripherality: Hong Kong’s Struggle for Democracy in a Multipolar Field of Geopolitics” (Discussant: Chendong Pi)
Chris Chan (Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in the Humanities, Stanford University), “Artists of the Floating World: Collaborative Dreaming and Peripheral Autonomy in Taiwan’s Pelagic Peripheries” (Discussant: Thomas Elias Siddall)
2:10–2:30 Coffee Break
2:30–4:10 Panel 3 Gender and Sexuality (Chair: Eddy U)
Anat Schwartz (Assistant Professor, Women’s Studies, California State University, Dominguez Hills), “At the Margins of Safety: Peripheral Feminism and the Politics of Surveillance in Post-#MeToo South Korea” (Discussant: Ala Uddin)
Thomas Elias Siddall (PhD student, Geography, University of Singapore), “Glowball in the Logistics Palimpsest: Queer Time, Labor, and Circulatory Urbanism” (Discussant: Linda Chu)
October 10
9:00–11:30 Panel 4 Marginality and representation II (Chair: Sheldon Lu)
Linda Chu (Assistant Professor, Graduate Institute of Translation and Interpretation, National Taiwan Normal University), “From Artificial Formosa to Indigenous Formosa: Re-centering Taiwan’s Austronesian Peripheries through Historical (Counter) Fictions” (Discussant: Patrick Clementi)
Ala Uddin (Professor, Anthropology, University of Chittagong, Bangladesh), “Living at the Edge: Rohingya Refugees, Borderland Agency, and the Reimagination of Asia from Below” (Discussant: Napakadol Kittisenee)
Beatrice Zani (Research Fellow, Interdisciplinary Laboratory for Economic Sociology, French National Center for Scientific Research), “Peripheries at Sea: Producing, Circulating, and Reworking Seafood Capitalism” (Discussant: Xiangjun Lei)
11:30–12:30 Lunch Break
12:30–2:10 Panel 5 Knowledge and Community (Chair: Michael Dylan Foster)
Patrick Chimenti (Assistant Professor, Literature and Film Studies, University of Minnesota), “Listening and Writing at the Edges: Kikigaki, Minicomi, and Ethnographic Literary Production in 1970s Japan” (Discussant: Chris Chan)
Xiangjun Feng (Assistant Professor, Faculty of Art and Humanities, University of Macau), “Centering Peripheral Knowledge and Peripheral Communities: Mesmerism in Sinophone Diasporas in the Early Twentieth Century” (Discussant: Anat Schwartz)
2:10–2:30 Coffee Break
2:30–4:00 Concluding Discussion
4:30–7:30 UC Davis Mid-Autumn Celebration (International Center Multipurpose Room)