“Narratives of (Il)legibility in East Asia”
Call for Papers: 5th Annual SEAS Graduate Student Symposium
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
May 5th, 2018

Application: https://goo.gl/forms/aSnO4QCeNjHmb4VH2

Keynote Speaker: Johanna Ransmeier, University of Chicago

The deadline for submissions is Friday, February 2, 2018.

Society of East Asian Studies (SEAS) at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign is pleased to welcome abstracts, papers, and panel proposals for its 5th annual graduate student symposium. The symposium will be held at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign on May 5th, 2018. The theme for this year is:

“Narratives of (Il)legibility in East Asia”

With the theme “Narratives of (Il)legibility in East Asia,” this conference aspires to nurture interdisciplinary discussions that contribute to understandings of East Asia. The conference aims to explore various questions relevant to past and present lived experiences in East Asia including: What criteria has been used to produce social categories and how has such criteria operated as techniques of inclusion and exclusion? How has the construction of legible bodies and practices in East Asia been involved in the (re)production of social hierarchies related to class, gender, sexuality, race, nationality, and (dis)ability? We invite papers that explore social, cultural, historical, religious, and political factors that have been influential in shaping communities in East Asia. We encourage submissions from diverse subfields and welcome papers that engage with issues related to Korea, Japan, Taiwan, China, and the broader East Asian region, including diasporic East Asian communities.

We are interested in papers from various disciplines, including but not limited to: history, law, gender studies, anthropology, film/media studies, sociology, literature, comparative literature, art history, religious studies/religion, linguistics, musicology, and political science.

Submission Information:

Abstracts for individual papers (20 minutes maximum) should be no more than 300 words in length and may be submitted using this online form. We also welcome proposals for integrated panels. Those wishing to propose a panel are invited to email Qianhui Ma at seas.uiuc@gmail.com. A panel should consist of no more than three papers, each twenty minutes in lengt