[with apologies for cross-posting]

 

Dear friends and colleagues,

 

We are excited to announce that the 2023 call for proposals for our AAR Seminar on Language, Poiesis, and Buddhist Experiments with the Possible is now open.

 

You can find our seminar CFP here. All proposals must be submitted through PAPERS. The deadline is Wednesday, March 1, 2023, 5:00 PM Eastern Standard Time. Detailed instructions are provided in the full call; please consult it carefully for information about procedures (and please note the limits on the number of appearances – one can only appear on the program two times in any capacity). For your convenience, we are also pasting the call below.

 

Best wishes,

Nancy Lin and Roy Tzohar (co-chairs)

 

Seminar description

Our seminar investigates, over the course of five years, the poiesis of language—its capacity to create, bring into existence, and shape worlds, selves, and our shared sense of reality. To better grasp this potential of language, we approach Buddhist textual engagement foremost in terms of experiments with the possibilities of language (rather than under given textual categories, genre distinctions, tropes, etc.) and examine how these have contributed to making the form and content of Buddhism itself, along with adjacent traditions. In doing so we emphasize that both content and modes of expression should be examined as inextricably involved in the process by which Buddhism took on its distinctive character as well as its sense of what is possible. We approach literary forms as an environment that enables Buddhists to find their voice, subject matter, style, and self-representation.

 

For the 2023 AAR Annual Meeting we invite proposals on the theme: 

Practices for transforming the real: language, imagination, and scholarly modes of engagement

This year, we seek to generate a mutually informing dialogue between Buddhist linguistic practices for making and transforming self and world, and scholarly modes of engagement with those practices. What relationships among language, imagination, and the real do Buddhist texts imply and enable? And what techniques for making or transforming self and world do these relationships make conceivable and practicable? 

Conversely, how do scholars recognize when and how Buddhist texts are deployed to shape the real, and how might our answers to such questions change how we engage with Buddhist texts? As we seek to question the scholarly assumptions we inherit and inhabit, how might Buddhist practices involving language expand our imaginative and critical resources? How might we develop alternative modes of interpretation so as to encounter Buddhist texts in new ways? 

We invite proposals that aim to address these questions through leading a close reading of a selection from a Buddhist primary text (we include both written and oral forms of language) or a text from an adjacent tradition that offers resources for reconsidering methods and approaches to Buddhist language.

In your proposal, please identify clearly the textual selection you propose to read (and submit an excerpt) and demonstrate its relevance to the theme. 

Format:

The format for 2023 will be a close-reading workshop taking place over two consecutive 90-minute sessions, divided by a half-hour break. 

· Presenters will not give a paper; instead, they will introduce and lead a close reading of their text that addresses the seminar questions and theme outlined above, engaging in discussion with designated respondents and the audience along the way. Ample time will be devoted to each text selected to permit sustained discussion.

· Presenters will be required: 1) to precirculate their text excerpt and any supporting materials to all formal seminar participants (steering committee, respondents, and other presenters); 2) to post in advance via the AAR platform both a brief introduction to their text and their textual excerpt (in one or more languages, as germane to the text in question) and an English translation (unless the text was composed in English), which can be accessed by all AAR 2023 attendees; and 3) to display their text (and translation, if applicable) via the available AV setup or handouts.

· Collaborative work is encouraged and will be given special consideration.

· We plan to designate at least two respondents for every text. If you are interested in responding to a workshop text, please submit a proposal specifying that you are interested in a respondent role, and briefly explaining your interest in our seminar theme and questions.

· Our seminar is committed to fostering diversity in terms of race, ethnicity, gender, rank, institutions, etc. and these issues will be given special consideration.

Deadline: 
All proposals should be submitted via PAPERS anytime until Wednesday, March 1, 2023, 5:00 PM Eastern Standard Time when the CFP closes.