The Center for Southeast Asian Studies, in conjunction with the Walter Chapin Simpson Center for the Humanities at the University of Washington, Seattle (USA), invites academics, advanced graduate students, and independent scholars to submit paper proposals for the conference-workshop.
"BEYOND BORDERS: ALTERNATIVE VOICES AND HISTORIES OF THE VIETNAMESE
DIASPORA"
to be held on the Seattle campus of the University of Washington from Thursday, March 4th, to Sunday, March 7th, 2010.
- Organizers and co-coordinators:
Christoph Giebel and Judith Henchy (Univ. of Washington - Seattle)
- Co-coordinators and "keynote speakers in dialog":
Mariam B. Lam (Univ. of California - Riverside) and Jack Yeager (Louisiana State University). These two scholars of the Vietnamese diaspora will help frame the conference-workshop with distinct Francophone and American perspectives.
GENERAL CONCEPT: This March 2010 conference-workshop on the Vietnamese diaspora is the third in a three-part series, constituting a multi-year research initiative in Viet Nam Studies, "Alternative Voices and Histories in Viet Nam: Colonial Modernities and Post-colonial Narratives." The initiative's aims are:
* to bring together scholars from around the world who focus on new interpretations of Vietnamese history and historiography;
GENERAL CONCEPT: This March 2010 conference-workshop on the Vietnamese diaspora is the third in a three-part series, constituting a multi-year research initiative in Viet Nam Studies, "Alternative Voices and Histories in Viet Nam: Colonial Modernities and Post-colonial Narratives." The initiative's aims are:
* to bring together scholars from around the world who focus on new interpretations of Vietnamese history and historiography;
* to provide a forum for recent, disparate work on new sources and under-researched topics to critically engage with one another;
* and to make the results available to the wider academic community.
Our first and second conference-workshops, "Beyond Teleologies: alternative voices and histories in colonial Viet Nam" and "Beyond Dichotomies: alternative voices and histories in post-colonial Viet Nam" were held in Seattle in March 2007 and May 2008.
* and to make the results available to the wider academic community.
Our first and second conference-workshops, "Beyond Teleologies: alternative voices and histories in colonial Viet Nam" and "Beyond Dichotomies: alternative voices and histories in post-colonial Viet Nam" were held in Seattle in March 2007 and May 2008.
The trilogy of conference-workshops is based on the understanding that modern Vietnamese historiography has been unduly dominated by several particular and at times overlapping discourses reflective of the prevalent ideological presumptions of the 20th century, such as those that:
* privilege the perspectives, interests, and actions of a central state or states;
* impose nationalist and traditionalist notions on Vietnamese history and culture;
* subsume Vietnamese revolutionary visions and movements solely under communist teleologies;
* and enforce Cold War rhetorical postures by excluding, externalizing and de-legitimizing those that do not fit simplistic binaries.
By contrast, the workshops will highlight academic work that complicates, challenges and counters these paradigms, thereby enriching and expanding our understanding of the variety of modern Vietnamese historical actors, factors, and epistemologies, and suggesting the contours of alternative models.
CALL FOR PAPERS: For this workshop on the Vietnamese diaspora, "Beyond Borders," we are seeking papers that focus on the disparate margins of Vietnamese identities. Papers should explore the particular and multiple histories of Vietnamese overseas sojourn, migration and exile in early modern, colonial, war time, post-1975, and socialist contexts. At the same time, contributors can help articulate the initiative's interest in marginal voices in Vietnamese historiography with the disciplinary concerns of ethnic and global cultural studies. Papers might illuminate, among many other possible themes:
* colonial politics of exile and punishment throughout the global French empire;
* inter-colonial and transnational connections in exile, for example, by Vietnamese soldiers, workers, students, political activists, prisoners, travelers, or those subjected to colonial display;
* literary representations of diaspora, from colonialism and the anomie of "foreigners at home" to the contemporary Vietnamese imaginary of exile and return;
* diasporic community formations, acculturations, as well as ethnic enclave politics and economics;
* politically diverse exile groups during the war years and their relations with post-war refugee communities;
* comparative diasporic work, or multi-sited anthropological research on, for example, overseas Vietnamese student and migrant/contract labor populations, adoptees, or transnational out-marriages;
* exposure/isolation of particular demographics: e.g., Israeli-Vietnamese, Versailles-New Orleans, or non-identifying diasporic communities from Viet Nam;
* overseas Vietnamese linkages to Viet Nam, remittances, anti-communist rhetoric, generational concerns, and educational differences.
In general, the organizers welcome papers on the Vietnamese diaspora, broadly defined in time and space, that engage a wide range of sources and literatures, in particular new and under-researched ones.
Please submit, preferably electronically, BY MONDAY, NOVEMBER 2, 2009 to the organizers of the conference series:
* privilege the perspectives, interests, and actions of a central state or states;
* impose nationalist and traditionalist notions on Vietnamese history and culture;
* subsume Vietnamese revolutionary visions and movements solely under communist teleologies;
* and enforce Cold War rhetorical postures by excluding, externalizing and de-legitimizing those that do not fit simplistic binaries.
By contrast, the workshops will highlight academic work that complicates, challenges and counters these paradigms, thereby enriching and expanding our understanding of the variety of modern Vietnamese historical actors, factors, and epistemologies, and suggesting the contours of alternative models.
CALL FOR PAPERS: For this workshop on the Vietnamese diaspora, "Beyond Borders," we are seeking papers that focus on the disparate margins of Vietnamese identities. Papers should explore the particular and multiple histories of Vietnamese overseas sojourn, migration and exile in early modern, colonial, war time, post-1975, and socialist contexts. At the same time, contributors can help articulate the initiative's interest in marginal voices in Vietnamese historiography with the disciplinary concerns of ethnic and global cultural studies. Papers might illuminate, among many other possible themes:
* colonial politics of exile and punishment throughout the global French empire;
* inter-colonial and transnational connections in exile, for example, by Vietnamese soldiers, workers, students, political activists, prisoners, travelers, or those subjected to colonial display;
* literary representations of diaspora, from colonialism and the anomie of "foreigners at home" to the contemporary Vietnamese imaginary of exile and return;
* diasporic community formations, acculturations, as well as ethnic enclave politics and economics;
* politically diverse exile groups during the war years and their relations with post-war refugee communities;
* comparative diasporic work, or multi-sited anthropological research on, for example, overseas Vietnamese student and migrant/contract labor populations, adoptees, or transnational out-marriages;
* exposure/isolation of particular demographics: e.g., Israeli-Vietnamese, Versailles-New Orleans, or non-identifying diasporic communities from Viet Nam;
* overseas Vietnamese linkages to Viet Nam, remittances, anti-communist rhetoric, generational concerns, and educational differences.
In general, the organizers welcome papers on the Vietnamese diaspora, broadly defined in time and space, that engage a wide range of sources and literatures, in particular new and under-researched ones.
Please submit, preferably electronically, BY MONDAY, NOVEMBER 2, 2009 to the organizers of the conference series:
Christoph Giebel, Assoc. Prof. of History and International Studies, giebel@u.washington.edu and Judith Henchy, Head, Southeast Asia Section, University of Washington Libraries, and Lecturer in International Studies, judithh@u.washington.edu
c/o Center for Southeast Asian Studies
University of Washington, box 353650
Seattle, WA 98195-3650, USA
University of Washington, box 353650
Seattle, WA 98195-3650, USA
