The Association for Asian Studies and the Social Science Research Council have announced plans for the first jointly orga­nized AAS/SSRC Dissertation Workshop, which will be held in con­junc­tion with the AAS annual con­fer­ence in Toronto in March 2012. The work­shop will be orga­nized and led by David Szanton and will fol­low the same basic model used in pre­vi­ous AAS workshops.

The work­shop title is “Rewriting History: Nationalism, Identity, and the Politics of the Past.” Radical and con­ser­v­a­tive schol­ars, nov­el­ists and biog­ra­phers, gov­ern­ments, edu­ca­tion min­istries, and tourist agen­cies are all writ­ing and rewrit­ing national his­to­ries and nar­ra­tives. Attempts to strengthen or legit­i­mate spe­cific inter­ests have entailed the redis­cov­ery, rein­ter­pre­ta­tion and even the rein­ven­tion of val­ues and iden­ti­ties, past social forms, vic­to­ries and defeats, as well as nat­ural and human trauma. Rewriting the past and cre­at­ing her­itage are ancient and seem­ingly uni­ver­sal phe­nom­ena, rais­ing dif­fi­cult ques­tions about what we can know and the pol­i­tics of his­tor­i­cal writ­ing. Issues of rewrit­ing his­tory are not lim­ited to the con­cerns of his­to­ri­ans; they are as salient to anthro­pol­o­gists, polit­i­cal sci­en­tists, spe­cial­ists on reli­gion, cul­tural stud­ies, and oth­ers across the human­i­ties and social sci­ences.This work­shop is intended to bring together doc­toral stu­dents in the human­i­ties and social sci­ences who are devel­op­ing dis­ser­ta­tion pro­pos­als or are in early phases of research or dis­ser­ta­tion writ­ing and who are also deal­ing with the kinds of issues men­tioned above in the con­text of con­tem­po­rary or his­toric Asian states and societies.

The work­shop will be lim­ited to twelve stu­dents, ide­ally from a broad array of dis­ci­plines and work­ing on a wide vari­ety of mate­ri­als in a vari­ety of time peri­ods and in var­i­ous regions of Asia. It also will include a small mul­ti­dis­ci­pli­nary and multi-area fac­ulty with sim­i­lar concerns.

The work­shop will be sched­uled for the days imme­di­ately pre­ced­ing the 2012 AAS annual con­fer­ence in Toronto. It will cover two and one-half days of intense dis­cus­sion begin­ning the evening of Monday, March 12, and run­ning through noon of Thursday, March 15.

Pending receipt of out­side foun­da­tion fund­ing, par­tic­i­pants also will be invited back for a post-fieldwork work­shop. The sec­ond work­shop will be held 24 months later, after many or most par­tic­i­pants have com­pleted a sig­nif­i­cant amount of field­work or archival research and are at vary­ing stages in the writ­ing process. This follow-up work­shop is intended to help par­tic­i­pants shape and artic­u­late the key focus of their dis­ser­ta­tions as they begin writing.

The orga­niz­ers will be able to pro­vide at least lim­ited finan­cial sup­port for par­tic­i­pants, includ­ing three nights’ accom­mo­da­tions, meals, and par­tial “need-based” travel funds. Students are encour­aged to approach their home insti­tu­tions for addi­tional sup­port. Additional sup­port may become avail­able pend­ing out­side fund­ing. It is hoped that par­tic­i­pants also will attend the AAS annual meet­ing imme­di­ately fol­low­ing the workshop.

Applicants need not have advanced to can­di­dacy but must have at least drafted a dis­ser­ta­tion research pro­posal. Applications are also wel­come from doc­toral stu­dents in the early phases of writ­ing their dis­ser­ta­tions. Application instruc­tions and forms will be avail­able on the SSRC Web site (www​.ssrc​.org) by December 1, 2011, and must be sub­mit­ted by January 3, 2012.

Workshop par­tic­i­pants will be selected on the basis of the sub­mit­ted projects, the poten­tial for use­ful exchanges among them, and a con­cern to include a wide range of dis­ci­pli­nary per­spec­tives, intel­lec­tual tra­di­tions, and regions of Asia. Applicants will be informed whether or not they have been selected for the work­shop by late January.

For fur­ther infor­ma­tion about the work­shop struc­ture and eli­gi­bil­ity,
con­tact David Szanton (Szanton@​berkeley.​edu). Questions con­cern­ing admin­is­tra­tive mat­ters or the appli­ca­tion process should be directed to Nicole Restrick (Restrick@​ssrc.​org).