[Commlist] Inter-Asia Intermediality: A Two-Part International Workshop CFP

*Inter-Asia Intermediality: A Two-Part International Workshop*

Conveners: Brian Bernards (USC) and Elmo Gonzaga (CUHK)

Part 1: University of Southern California (Los Angeles), May 20-21, 2022

Part 2: Chinese University of Hong Kong, June 10-11, 2022


_Call for Papers_

Over the past two decades, /intermediality/and /inter-Asia/have emerged 
as key buzzwords in the humanities whose increasing presence as the 
theme and focus of scholarly conferences, journals, and monographs has 
followed a remarkably similar timeline and trajectory.

Discussions of /intermediality/grew at the turn of the millennium in 
response to technological innovations to the platforms and networks for 
media circulation and consumption. Almost concurrently with the rise of 
intermediality, /inter-Asia/emerged as a subfield of—as well as a 
challenge and response to the inadequacies of—the field of Asian area 
studies with the aim of connecting scholars at different institutions 
across the region while encouraging scholarship that would avoid the 
trap of East-West bilateralism by instead interrogating processes of 
regionalization in Asia in all their unevenness and variation.

“Inter-Asia Intermediality: A Two-Part International Workshop” intends 
to highlight the intersections between these two emergent fields by 
bringing them into a productive scholarly conversation. Beyond the 
continuity and smoothness of encounter and passage within and between 
different forms of media (as well as between Asian subregions), we are 
interested in intermediality’s contradictions and frictions amid the 
tenuous relationships within Asia. Neves and Sarkar’s pioneering edited 
volume /Asian Video Cultures /(2017) highlights how video acts as a 
mediator for the social and historical contradictions of a diverse 
region such as Asia. Similarly, we seek to explore in this conference 
how intermediality can intervene in similar, multiple ways in the 
dynamic and elusive cross-cultural, intraregional, and trans-border 
exchanges between East, Southeast, and South Asia.

The impact of the rise of digital media (and digital media’s 
refashioning—or remediation—of older media forms) as a catalyst of 
processes of inter-Asian regionalization—as well as its exposure of 
tensions and challenges in those processes—has not been sufficiently 
interrogated.To this end, our workshop will foreground two reciprocal 
and mutually reflexive questions for further inquiry:

  * How do processes of intermediality (including the frictions,
    contradictions, connections, and divergences between different
    platforms of media convergence) break up homogeneous or regionally
    bounded conceptions of Asia?
  * By modifying platform-specific media content for distribution and
    exhibition on unintended platforms or for unanticipated audiences,
    how do regionalized inter-Asian productions and circulations of
    media content challenge homogeneous or disciplinary-bounded
    understandings of specific media platforms?

    Subjects for submission may include:
  * The integration or cross-pollination of media platforms from East,
    Southeast, and South Asia, including but not limited to cinema,
    multimedia art, street art, televisual media, microblogging,
    live-streaming, video-sharing, video games, and music videos.
  * Inter-Asian media convergence through regional co-production,
    celebrity culture, cross-border migration and tourism, transnational
    racial and religious identities, feminist and LGBTQ+ activism,
    multilingual code-mixing, and shared environmental concerns (e.g.,
    haze, typhoons, tsunamis, flooding).

    Please note:
  * We are currently planning to hold the two-part workshop in a hybrid
    format (using Zoom-enabled conference rooms at both USC and CUHK),
    with both in-person and remote (via Zoom) participation options
    available to presenters.
  * As this workshop aims to curate a published volume, only previously
    unpublished papers or those not already committed elsewhere are
    preferred.As cinema and media studies scholars will comprise
    majority of the contributors, we hope to draw in some contributions
    from other areas, including art, literature, and photography.
  * The workshop will give */special consideration to scholars working
    on South Asia and Southeast Asia/*as well as */underrepresented
    languages and cultures/*(especially Indigenous ones) in the fields
    of Asian studies and media studies.

    Submission instructions:
  * *Please send a paper title, 250-400-word abstract, short
    bio*(including institutional affiliation), *location preference*(Los
    Angeles in May 2022 or Hong Kong in June 2022), and *modality
    preference*(in-person or online) to Brian Bernards
    <(bernards /at/ usc.edu)> and Elmo Gonzaga <(egonzaga /at/ cuhk.edu.hk)> by
    *December 6, 2021*.

    Confirmed presenters include:
  * Bliss Cua Lim, Nadine Chan, Palita Chunsaengchan, Lan Duong, Olivia
    Khoo, Adil Johan, Dorothy Wai Sim Lau, Joanne Leow, Shaoling Ma,
    Alden Sajor Marte-Wood, Sheela Jane Menon, Wikanda Promkhuntong,
    Phoebe Pua, Supawan Supaneedis, Jasmine Nadua Trice, Elizabeth
    Wijaya, Ka Lee Wong, Dag Yngvesson, Ling Zhang

    Recommended texts:
  * Weihong Bao, /Fiery Cinema: The Emergence of an Affective Medium in
    China, 1915-1945 /(Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2015)
  * Joshua Neves and Bhaskar Sarkar (eds.), /Asian Video Cultures: In
    the Penumbra of the Global/ (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2017)
  * Jihoon Kim, “Between Auditorium and Gallery: Perception in
    Apichatpong Weerasethakul’s Films and Installations,” in /Global Art
    Cinema: New Theories and Histories/, eds. Rosalind Galt and Karl
    Schoonover (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), pp. 125-141
  * Kuan-hsing Chen and Chua Beng Huat (eds.), /The Inter-Asia Cultural
    Studies Reader/(London: Routledge, 2007)
  * Jeroen de Kloet, Yiu Fai Chow, and Gladys Pak Lei Chong (eds.),
    /Trans-Asia as Method: Theory and Practices/(London: Rowman &
    Littlefield, 2020)
  * Prasenjit Duara (ed.), /Asia Redux: Conceptualising a Region for Our
    Times/(Singapore: ISEAS Publishing / New Delhi: Manohar, 2013)
  * Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, /Other Asias/(Malden, MA: Blackwell, 
2008)//


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