The UCLA Asia Institute and the USC East Asian Studies Center invite graduate student and faculty participation as both paper presenters and commentators for the 4th annual JEASC conference and graduate student professional development workshop on the topic, “Religion, Political Identities and Sacred Symbols,” to be held Friday, November 15, 2013 on the UCLA campus.
The European distinction between religious and secular so basic to modern conceptions of political authority and the separation of church and state do not address contemporary relations among religion, governments and the ways in which people develop commitments to either their religions or their countries. The organizers invite paper proposals from students and faculty who work on religious practices in both historical and contemporary Asian contexts to join those who work on politics, especially political identities and the ways in which such identities involve the generation of symbols that either call upon or represent an alternative to religious symbols and rituals. Together we want to encourage students and faculty working on historical subjects to ponder the contemporary relevance of their work and those working on contemporary topics to recognize the ways in which historical materials matter to their research.
This workshop is sponsored by the UCLA-USC Joint East Asian Studies Center (JEASC) with funding from the US Department of Education Title VI National Resource Center program. The workshop is intended to give UCLA and USC graduate students and faculty studying East Asia an opportunity to meet in an interdisciplinary forum on a topic of common interest and comment on each other’s work as a kind of professional engagement and development.
Proposals for papers and to serve as discussants should be submitted by Friday, August 16, 2013. Final papers will be due by October 30.
For further information and to submit proposals, please contact:
Prof. David Kang kangdcATusc.edu (USC) or Prof. R. Bin Wong rbwongATinternational.ucla.edu (UCLA) or this site.