Archive for calls, 2021

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[Commlist] CfP: Zines and self-publishing in Chinese cultures [Two-day online conference

Mon Nov 08 19:11:59 GMT 2021





Theme: A two-day conference exploring zines and self-publishing in Chinese cultures*. The conference encourages submissions from any intellectual, academic or artistic perspective, and we further encourage contributions that explore zines and self-publishing related to feminist perspectives and LGBTQI+ themes.


*The conference focuses on zines and self-publishing cultures related to Greater China and China in the broadest conception. This includes, but is not limited to, Mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, speakers of Chinese related languages or languages spoken in Greater China and the Chinese diaspora.


Date: January 14th and 21st

Time: 09:00 - 17:00 GMT

Format: Online, but we can help organise regional clusters for those who wish to take part communally and offline

Submission Deadline: November 26th

Contact: (carwyn.morris /at/ manchester.ac.uk)

Submission:https://forms.gle/Ukq7kSZWEPYbUMsL7 <https://forms.gle/Ukq7kSZWEPYbUMsL7>


About:zines, often forms of do-it-yourself self-published booklets, were thought by many to be a potential casualty of the digital age. Rather than losing their relevance, zines have re-emerged as a profound, powerful, and intimate form of story-telling, information sharing and artistic practice. Furthermore, the rise in digital media may have helped zine scenes grow, with digital formats circulating online, printing services easier to access, greater knowledge about zines, and the ability to edit zines digitally.


Yet, while zines are increasingly popular, published research on zines in Chinese cultures is still limited. This is surprising, as zines in Chinese cultures have been used to tell many academically relevant stories, including stories of protest, migrant lives, diasporic thought, racism, food cultures, gender inequality and LGBTQI+ struggles. Additionally, zines as self-published media circulate transnationally while enabling transnational conversations and solidarity. Zines do all of this while also being a form of self-publishing that can circumvent multiple modes of censorship.


Furthermore, zines are one form of self-publishing but zines do not exist in a bubble. While this conference is centred on zines, the conference is open to discussing other forms of self-publishing alongside conversations on zines. This includes self-published writing, video and audio, including self-published music and podcasts.


The conference will also host two onlinezine making workshops. One zine making workshop will be hosted by Hong Kong’s Zine Coop and another by the Shenzhen/NYC based Little Mountain Press. We also hope to compile and circulate a conference zine catalogue, where zine makers can share their zines to conference participants. Through these activities we hope to reflect on the practice and content of zines in Chinese cultures and to inspire participants to make their own zines. We hope to have you on board too!


As an emerging area of research, this conference isnot limitedto ‘zine experts’ (or any other ‘experts’) but seeks to bring interested parties together toimagine new possibilities. This may include, but is not limited to, (i) those researching zines related to Chinese cultures, (ii) scholars of zines more broadly, (iii) scholars of self-published and feminist media related to Chinese cultures and (iv) zine makers. To help discuss these issues we have several academic and non-academic experts already confirmed as taking part in the conference, includingLittle Mountain Press <https://www.littlemountainpress.com/>,Zine Coop <https://zinecoop.org/en>,Krish Raghav <https://twitter.com/krishraghav>,Rosemary Clark-Parsons <https://www.sp2.upenn.edu/people/view/rosemary-clark-parsons/>,Hongwei Bao <https://www.nottingham.ac.uk/clas/people/hongwei.bao>,Dian Dian <https://emory.academia.edu/DianDian>,Kirsty Fife <https://www.mmu.ac.uk/infocomms/staff/profile/index.php?id=5329>,Denise Kwan <https://www.objectstories.co.uk/>,Melanie Ramdarshan Bold <https://www.ucl.ac.uk/information-studies/melanie-ramdarshan-bold> andKin Long Tong <https://www.researchgate.net/publication/344709339_DIY_Print_Activism_in_Digital_Age_Zines_in_Hong_Kong's_Social_Movements>.


Submission:We encourage submission of individual papers and full sessions, including experimental formats, onany topic related to zines and self-publishing in Chinese cultures. Topics could include, but aredefinitely not limited to:


- Zines as mediums of resistance

- Your experience as a zine creator

- Zines as artistic practice

- Zines as forms of feminist practice and world making

- Zine scenes and zine fairs as sites of sociality and world making

- Why have zines emerged as a popular medium for China and the Chinese diaspora?

- The relationship between self-publishing and censorship

- The relationship between zines and historic publishing cultures

- The role of zines in academic output

- What we learn from making zines

- What should a research agenda on zines and self-publishing in Chinese cultures include?


If you are interested in participating, presenting, sharing your zine or engaging in other forms of discussion, please fill in this form:https://forms.gle/Ukq7kSZWEPYbUMsL7 <https://forms.gle/Ukq7kSZWEPYbUMsL7>


Submissiondeadline for abstracts and sessionsis November 26th, but we encourage you to submit earlier if possible.


A small number ofbursariesmay be available to help those who would be unable to attend otherwise, for instance, due to a loss of wages or child care costs.


Outputs:The conference will release a special issue in theBritish Journal of Chinese Studies <https://bjocs.site/index.php/bjocs>. This Open Access journal shares ourpublishing philosophy <https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/scholcom/159/> and editors said they are willing to publish outputs, including textual and visual output, that other journals may not publish, such as this recent piece ondigital art <https://bjocs.site/index.php/bjocs/article/view/72>. We may also contribute a co-authored piece to theMade in China <https://madeinchinajournal.com/> journal.


In the spirit of the conference, the conference organisers have created their own zine, a reflection on 1930s women’s issues, as understood through the letters section to 1930s Chinese women’s magazine,Linglong <https://kjc-sv034.kjc.uni-heidelberg.de/frauenzeitschriften/public/magazine/issue.php?magazin_id=3>. The zine creation team is multidisciplinary, including postdoc Carwyn Morris, photographerLiz Hingley <https://www.lizhingley.com/>, fashion designerJingyi Ye <https://seventy-five.co.uk/> and PhD student Bonnie Wang. We look forward to discussing this zine and many other zines at the conference.


Finally, we hope to put together a zine conference catalogue to be shared internally at the conference, but potentially externally as well. We’d love to include your zines and your ideas in this zine catalogue, and to think about the best way of sharing these ideas.


This event is supported by the University of Manchester hosted Hallsworth Conference Fund.


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