Graduate Student Conference, “Porosity”

Oct. 25-26th, 2024

Department of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies (AMES)

University of Minnesota, Twin Cities

Keynote Addresses

Dr. Jinying Li, Assistant Professor of Modern Culture and Media at Brown University

Dr. Reginald Jackson, Associate Professor of Premodern Japanese Literature and Performance at the University of Michigan

Call for Papers: Porosity

In today’s globalized world, new questions arise concerning area studies, as borders blur and regions overlap. Caught between questions of the geo-political and epistemological totalities of global capitalism and neoliberal colonialism on the one hand, and burgeoning right-wing politics and an increase in nationalist rhetoric on the other, the notion of the “area”–whether defined in geographic, cultural, social, or political terms–ceases to hold as a structural marker of the field. Meanwhile, Asian and Middle Eastern humanities have delineated transient experiences, discursive scaffolds, and affective infrastructures that situate us in an increasingly porous world. Porosity is “a hinge through which we are of and in the world.”[1]

Looking at the porosity of matter, media, texts, bodies, borders and time, this conference participates in the ongoing reconceptualization of Asian and Middle Eastern studies as a trans-disciplinary and intra-regional field concerning languages, literature, film and media, history, philosophy, gender and sexuality studies, digital humanities, and environmental humanities. How does porosity help to navigate the conceptual constraints in area studies and redefine our understanding of Asian and Middle Eastern Studies as a field? What social, cultural, political, and ecological formations are set in motion when we think through the paradigm of porous futurities? How do these new formations renegotiate the past and the present?

Porosity highlights not only the enmeshment of material and theoretical entities and bodies, but also allows for the negotiation of very real boundaries. We invite you to reflect on the viability of porosity to think through and about Asia and the Middle East in tandem with

• (im)permeability 
• (in)affectability 
• inter- and intra-disciplinarity
• inter- and intra-speciety
• intersectionality
• (im)mobility
• scale and totality  
• transparency/opacity 
• inter- and intra-nationality
• inter- and trans-mediality
• trans-linguality
• worlding
• (post-)coloniality
• ecologies
• liminality
• viscosity
• temporality

We welcome submissions from independent scholars and graduate students worldwide. Applicants must provide the following information to porosityumn@gmail.com by June 1, 2024: 

• name & pronouns
• level of study and name of institution (if applicable)
• bio
• title of the paper
• abstract (300-500 words) 
• 3-5 item bibliography

Decisions regarding your submissions will be sent out by July 1, 2024. A portion of graduate students’ travel and lodging will be covered by the conference.

[1] Nancy Tuana, quoted in Mel Chen, Animacies.