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In early 2023, the Global Asias Initiative (GAI) is kicking off a three-year collaboration with Japan Foundation New York (JFNY) aimed at creating a network of junior scholars between the United States and Japan. The collaboration will involve a Cyber Chats series in spring 2023, a year-long early career networking project designed to cultivate substantial engagement between scholars in the US and Japan, participation in the Global Asias 7 conference (spring 2025), and eventually a publication in Verge: Studies in Global Asias.

To build a conversation about Global Asias and Japan Studies and to identify potential applicants for the early career networking project, we are excited to launch a new Cyber Chats series. For these two Cyber Chats (on “Challenges and Opportunities for Global Asias Approaches to Japan Studies” and “Migration, Identity, and Diasporas at the Intersection of Japan Studies and Global Asias”) JFNY partners with Verge: Studies in Global Asias and the GAI to continue developing the conceptual horizons and institutional possibilities of Global Asias scholarship. As always, we aim to bring scholars working with Global Asias approaches, topics, and orientations into conversation to identify some of the opportunities and challenges inherent in this emerging multidisciplinary knowledge formation.   

Note: For this Cyber Chat series, participants can be based anywhere. However, applicants to the early career scholars networking project, which is funded by JFNY,  must be based either in the United States or in Japan. These online conversations are being scheduled at a time that is accessible to scholars located in both countries.  

Global Asias Cyber Chat 1: “Challenges and Opportunities for Global Asias Approaches to Japan Studies”

Monday, April 24, 2023, 7:00–9:00pm EST | 8:00–10:00 am Tokyo time 

Academic disciplines — like Japan Studies — come with their own methodologies, assumptions, canons, and lineages of received wisdom. Thinking across disciplines — such as is required by multidisciplinary approaches like Global Asias — requires deep listening, some relinquishment of expertise, and an openness to ways of thinking otherwise.   

• How does the concept of Global Asias encourage you to navigate the epistemic expectations of, and generate alternatives to, the disciplinarity of Japan Studies?  
• What are some of the challenges/obstacles in Japan Studies to enacting Global Asias scholarship using interdisciplinary, or multidisciplinary, approaches?   
• What kinds of tools and resources need to be developed to address the challenges/conflicts/disagreements that inevitably arise as part of Global Asias as a collaborative scholarly enterprise related to Japan Studies?   

GAI will provide all Cyber Chat participants with a year-long Project Muse subscription to Verge: Studies in Global Asias, so that they can become more familiar with the field.  

We would love to be in conversation with you and look forward to using these Cyber Chats to create collaborative spaces for people to think through these issues together. This is an open format conversation via zoom but to limit the size of the group we will use an application process. Applications due by Monday, April 3, 2023 and can be submitted here: https://bit.ly/spring2023cyberchat.