CALL FOR PARTICIPANTS

The 2015 Summer Institute in Asian American Studies

“The Subject(s) of Human Rights”

July 16-18, 2015

National Taiwan Normal University

Taipei, Taiwan

The 2015 Summer Institute in Asian American Studies will take place at National Taiwan Normal University in Taipei, Taiwan from July 16 to 18, 2015. This year’s gathering will address “The Subject(s) of Human Rights.” By “subject(s),” we refer both to social agents attempting to effect forms of change (progressive or otherwise) as well as to academic subjects organizing and regulating the sorts of knowledge produced around such subjects. In particular, we wish to engage with the possibilities and the limits of the stories that have circulated and the knowledge that has been produced around the broad topic of “human rights” understood primarily as a post-1945 discourse that has profoundly affected the movements of people and relations of power across the Pacific. In light of these concerns, how can we rethink the work we do as readers and writers, and as teachers and students, in the field of Asian American studies and beyond?

We are delighted to announce that participants at this event will include Dr David Palumbo-Liu, Louise Hewlett Nixon Professor at Stanford University and author of Asian/American: Historical Crossings of a Racial Frontier (Stanford UP, 1999) and The Deliverance of Others: Reading Literature in a Global Age (Duke UP, 2012); Dr Cathy Schlund-Vials, Director of the Asian American Studies Institute at the University of Connecticut, author of War, Genocide, and Justice: Cambodian American Memory Work (U of Minnesota P, 2012), and co-editor of Disability, Human Rights and the Limits of Humanitarianism (Ashgate, 2014); Dr Christopher Lee, Director of the Asian Canadian and Asian Migration Studies program at the University of British Columbia, author of The Semblance of Identity: Aesthetic Mediation in Asian American Literature (Stanford UP, 2012), and co-editor of Tracing the Lines (Talonbooks, 2013); and creative writer Madeleine Thien, award-winning author of Simple Recipes (2001), Certainty (2006), and Dogs at the Perimeter (2011). In addition to a series of lectures, seminars, literary readings, roundtable discussions, and “breakout” sessions focusing on individual research projects and professional concerns, the summer institute will also offer participants a chance to visit the Jingmei Human Rights Memorial and Cultural Park (the former Jingmei Detention Center) and to meet staff from the Preparatory Office of Taiwan’s National Human Rights Museum.

The Summer Institute welcomes applications from graduate students, academics, and community workers working in Taiwan, across Asia, and beyond. We are able to provide conference materials, food, and on-campus accommodation for all participants during the Institute. We regret to say that international participants will have to cover their own travel expenses. Those who are interested in joining us at SIAAS 2015 are kindly requested to fill out the following application form and mail it to siaas2015@gmail.com by February 28, 2015. We can only accommodate up to 40 participants. The acceptance results will be announced by March 31, 2015.

The Summer Institute in Asian American Studies is a multi-campus collaborative project generously sponsored by the Ministry of Science and Technology in Taiwan, with additional support from Academia Sinica, National Chiao Tung University, National Taiwan University, National Taiwan Normal University, and National Tsing Hua University. Members of the organizing committee include Guy Beauregard, Pin-chia Feng, Shyh-jen Fuh, Hsiu-chuan Lee, and Chih-ming Wang.