Tel Aviv University,
The Department of East Asian Studies

Asia on Its Own Terms:
Towards New Terminology and Narratives for Research in Asian Studies

Doctoral Summer Scholarships
Asian Spaces

The program Asia on Its Own Terms (funded by Yad Hanadiv) of the Department of East Asian Studies at Tel Aviv University is happy to offer six-weeks fellowships for outstanding doctoral students. The applicants will be part of a research group comprised of faculty members, post-docs, and graduate students that focuses on the topic of spaces in Asia.

Program Objective:

In recent years there is a growing scholarly interest in transitional processes in East and South Asian countries. Nonetheless, so far there have been relatively few attempts of an integrated and comparative study of these regions by venturing across geographical, political, and linguistic boundaries. The Asia on Its Own Terms program aims to readdress this shortcoming by facilitating interdisciplinary and cross-regional dialogues between local and international scholars and students specializing in China, India, Japan and Korea. It is “border-crossing” both in cutting across parochial regionalism and artificial borders, and in cutting across disciplines.

Our Gender Research Group:

During the third year of the Asia on its Own Terms Program, we have chosen Asian Spaces as our scholarly focus. Space has become the object of inquiry in various disciplines in recent years. A concrete, imagined, or conceptual geo-physical, social, political, as well as a metaphoric notion of expanse of sorts, space has been interpreted and approached in multiple ways and from various perspectives. The aim of our research group is to examine, in the Asian context, questions related to the interaction between humans and the physical space in which they exist; how they construct, produce, and invest physical space with meaning; and how they conceptualize and imagine the physical space that lies around, between, and beyond them. In particular, we are interested in the reciprocal or dialectical processes through which humans and space affect each other, as well as in the role of extra-human agents (such as gods, ghosts, and objects) in all of the above. Themes related to how spaces are bounded, the liminal zones around and in-between them, the divisions between what is regarded, understood, and constructed as “inside” or “outside” such spaces, are also part and parcel of our inquiry.

Venue:

The East Asian Studies Department at Tel Aviv University, with its unique purview on the study of China, India, Japan and Korea as well as its diversity and deeply-rooted interdisciplinary nature, along with its cohort of researchers covering a broad range of periods, topics and disciplines, opens a program of excellence for students who are interested in delving into this fascinating field of research.

Studentships:

The program invites students from different disciplines, including Asian Studies, History, Philosophy, Religious Studies, Anthropology, Sociology, and Political Science. The summer program will begin on May 7th 2016, and end on June 17th. Participants will be able to attend an intensive graduate seminar titled “” taught by Robin Yates and Grace Fong. Participants will also present in our annual workshop.

The fellowship will cover the participants travel expenses (economy class only) and campus Housing.

“Asian Spaces”

• Every participant in the program is invited to present a short paper concerning her/his work in an international workshop on May 16-18.

Eligibility:

Interested individuals are requested to send the following documents (in English).

• Curriculum vitae.
• A description of the applicang’s research interests and its relevance to the Nature/Spaces Research Group in the Asia on its Own Terms Program (up to 500 words).
• A letter from the PhD supervisor
• Title and abstract for a presentation (if applicable).