The Texas Asia Conference (TAC) is a biennial and international graduate student conference organized by the graduate students of the Department of Asian Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. The upcoming conference will take place on February 25th and 26th, 2022, at the University of Texas at Austin’s Glickman Conference Center (the conference will move online if necessary). The conference provides a space to present and engage with graduate research work centered on Asia as a regional focus from various disciplinary perspectives.

 

With this year’s conference theme, Transitions and Transformations, we invite proposals for individual papers and/or panels that explore various approaches to this topic. The last two years have made precarity a widespread condition. Faced with constant changes and conflicts, we are reaching an inflection point from which political institutions, public health, and ecosystems are taking unpredictable turns. Instead of returning to what has previously been considered the norm, it is high time for us to anticipate and adapt to the new normal. A time of crisis is also a time of opportunity, as we are witnessing new directions and conversations emerging from academia, ranging from reconsiderations of time and space to reassessments of asymmetrical geopolitical relations. Standing at this threshold moment, we propose a colloquium where important dialogues on the shared future of Asia and the world can be initiated. How do we reimagine Asia in a time of transitions and transformations? What are some possible contributions that scholarship on Asia can make to help us better cope with the challenges of the Anthropocene?

 

The conference will include keynote lectures from two prominent scholars in East Asian and South Asian Studies, Professor Jason McGrath (Associate Professor in Asian and Middle Eastern Studies at the University of Minnesota) and Professor Gil Ben-Herut (Associate Professor in Religious Studies at the University of South Florida). In addition to engaging with the keynote speakers, conference participants will receive feedback from University of Texas at Austin faculty, who will join as panel discussants.

 

We invite papers and panels drawing on multidisciplinary scholarship, including but not limited to: Asian studies, Asian-American studies, religious studies, history, anthropology, comparative literature, linguistics, women’s and gender studies, LGBTQ+ studies, film studies, literature, political science, government, and sociology.

 

Possible topics may address, but need not necessarily be limited to the following themes:

 

“Worlding” Asia: Asia in Global Context

Environment, Ecology, and Future of Asia

Diaspora, Migration, and Movement in and through Asia

Asian History, Culture, and Literature

Religion, Ritual, and Practice

Language, Identity, and Power

Genders and Sexualities in Asia in Flux

New Theoretical Approaches to Asian Studies