Archive for January 2012

Cocooned Trees, Pakistan

01/30/2012 FYI No comments

Haunting pho­tos from National Geographic. View them in larger size if you can.

Spider web cocooons pakistan 44718 990x742

December 14, 2011
Cocooned Trees, Pakistan
Photograph by Russell Watkins

An unex­pected side effect of the 2010 flood­ing in parts of Sindh, Pakistan, was that mil­lions of spi­ders climbed up into the trees to escape the ris­ing flood waters; because of the scale of the flood­ing and the fact that the water took so long to recede, many trees became cocooned in spi­der­webs. People in the area had never seen this phe­nom­e­non before, but they also reported that there were fewer mos­qui­toes than they would have expected, given the amount of stand­ing water that was left. Not being bit­ten by mos­qui­toes was one small bless­ing for peo­ple that had lost every­thing in the floods.

(This photo and cap­tion were sub­mit­ted to the 2011 National Geographic Photo Contest.)

National Geographic editor’s note: Based on our expe­ri­ence with this news gallery, it may be that the silk pic­tured here was not spun by spi­ders or at least not by only spiders.

Pakistan floods drive spiders into trees adult 34026 600x450

American University Meets the Pacific Century Conference, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

01/27/2012 Research No comments

My research col­lab­o­ra­tor, Jennifer Chun, will be attend­ing this con­fer­ence to present a paper that we co-wrote, “Language Travels: The Cosmopolitan Pursuits of Korean Temporary Residents in Vancouver.”

American University Meets the Pacific Century Conference
March 9 – 10, 2012
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Many American uni­ver­si­ties, like top-tier uni­ver­si­ties through­out the world, are increas­ingly becom­ing global insti­tu­tions, no longer held exclu­sively to national inter­ests. What is the impact of the esca­lat­ing num­bers of inter­na­tional under­grad­u­ates and how are they trans­form­ing the American uni­ver­sity? These ques­tions will be exam­ined on March 9 – 10, 2012 at the American University Meets the Pacific Century Conference at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. This con­fer­ence will fea­ture research from schol­ars in the United States, Great Britain, and South Korea.

The con­fer­ence is hosted in asso­ci­a­tion with the American University Meets the Pacific Century Project (AUPC, 2010-), an inter­dis­ci­pli­nary team of social sci­en­tist fac­ulty and stu­dents who are cur­rently research­ing the inter­na­tion­al­iza­tion of the under­grad­u­ate stu­dent body at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The project is prin­ci­pally inter­ested in the American uni­ver­sity as a con­tact zone in which record lev­els of inter­na­tional under­grad­u­ates, largely from Asia, meet American stu­dents whose futures are increas­ingly impacted by global trans­for­ma­tions, the eco­nomic and sci­en­tific rise of Asia among them.
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CFP: Working the frame: comparative approaches to Asian Canadian literature & culture, McMaster University

01/26/2012 CFP No comments

Call for papers
Working the Frame: Comparative Approaches to Asian Canadian Literature & Culture
John Douglas Taylor Conference 2012
McMaster University, Hamilton, ON, Canada
October 25 & 26, 2012

Call for Papers
The emer­gence of Asian Canadian lit­er­a­ture and cul­ture as an iden­ti­fi­able force over the last twenty years is abun­dantly clear: Asian Canadian fic­tion and poetry have won major lit­er­ary prizes, there are sev­eral active Asian Canadian the­atre groups in major cities, and film fes­ti­vals on Asian and Asian Canadian film are held annu­ally. Despite the grow­ing promi­nence of Asian Canadian arts, how­ever, the broad pub­lic per­cep­tion that we are liv­ing in a post-racial or even a post-national world makes it dif­fi­cult to estab­lish insti­tu­tional ground­ing for a field founded on explor­ing racial, eth­nic, and national iden­tity; to date, no uni­ver­sity pro­gram or depart­ment devoted to Asian Canadian Studies has emerged. Yet, as the recent Macleans arti­cle Too Asian? and the strong responses it has gen­er­ated demon­strate, racial iden­tity pol­i­tics are nei­ther obso­lete nor dead, although new pos­si­bil­i­ties for coali­tional oppor­tu­ni­ties have arisen between and among dif­fer­ent racial­ized groups in Canada, and between dif­fer­ent com­mu­ni­ties in the Asian dias­pora. While the pol­i­tics of race and iden­tity have shifted over the last two decades with the turn to dias­pora and transna­tional approaches in crit­i­cal race stud­ies, eth­nic stud­ies, post­colo­nial stud­ies, and cul­tural stud­ies, it is pre­cisely this shift that demands atten­tion to new devel­op­ments in the cir­cu­la­tion of knowl­edge about and the expe­ri­ence of race and nation­al­ity in Canada.

The pur­pose of this con­fer­ence is to explore the cur­rent for­ma­tion and future devel­op­ments of Asian Canadian lit­er­a­ture and cul­ture in a comparative/relational frame, exam­in­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ties and respon­si­bil­i­ties of coali­tional pol­i­tics and col­lab­o­ra­tive cul­tural pro­duc­tion, as well as the very def­i­n­i­tion of the term Asian Canadian. We invite pro­pos­als that engage with Asian Canadian lit­er­a­ture and cul­ture and are espe­cially inter­ested in research that inves­ti­gates cross-cultural rela­tion­ships, col­lab­o­ra­tions, and antag­o­nisms recounted in, enacted by, or in con­ver­sa­tion with Asian Canadian cul­tural prod­ucts.
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CFP: Spaces of (Dis)location, University of Glasgow

01/26/2012 CFP No comments

This CFP con­tains a novel for­mat called Pecha Kucha, which I had to look up. This for­mat wouldn’t be suit­able for every aca­d­e­mic research, obvi­ously, but it’s an inter­est­ing approach to keep­ing pre­sen­ta­tions con­cise and fast-paced.

The College of Arts, University of Glasgow, is excited to announce Spaces of (Dis)location, a two-day mul­ti­dis­ci­pli­nary post­grad­u­ate con­fer­ence tak­ing place on 24th – 25th May 2012.

As national and cul­tural bound­aries are blurred in our increas­ingly global soci­ety, the ideas of space and loca­tion — whether phys­i­cal or meta­phys­i­cal, real or imag­i­nary — are evolv­ing. This notion pro­vides the stim­u­lus for a con­fer­ence that we hope will inspire cre­ativ­ity and debate across many sub­jects in the arts and humanities.

A major aim of this con­fer­ence is to fos­ter net­works and con­nec­tions across dif­fer­ent insti­tu­tions and sub­jects. It is also our inten­tion to pub­lish an edited vol­ume with arti­cles from this con­fer­ence through the University of Glasgow’s inter­na­tional post­grad­u­ate research jour­nal eSharp.

Possible top­ics may include, but are not lim­ited to:

  • Ideas of space: phys­i­cal and imaginary
  • Spatial dichotomies (urban/rural, public/private)
  • Globalization
  • Localism
  • Cultural and nat­ural spaces
  • Adaptation (lit­er­ary, lin­guis­tic, cin­e­matic, etc.)
  • Cultural dias­pora
  • Immigration
  • Spaces of performance
  • The space of the body

We wel­come sub­mis­sions of abstracts for papers in the clas­sic 20-minute for­mat, but are also keen to accept dif­fer­ent pre­sen­ta­tion for­mats. There will be a poster ses­sion and a Pecha Kucha ses­sion on each day of the con­fer­ence and we would wel­come your sub­mis­sions in these for­mats too.

A Pecha Kucha pre­sen­ta­tion con­sists of 20 slides, each shown for exactly 20 sec­onds, so the entire pre­sen­ta­tion will there­fore last 6 min­utes and 40 sec­onds. It is an engag­ing and chal­leng­ing for­mat for researchers at every stage of their career, but pro­vides a par­tic­u­larly cre­ative for­mat for those just start­ing their research to receive feed­back on their project design and ini­tial find­ings.
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CFP: The End of War? The Korean Armistice after Sixty Years

01/25/2012 CFP No comments

The Journal of Korean Studies Announces Call for Papers for Thematic Issue

Call for Papers on “The End of War? The Korean Armistice after Sixty Years”
Thematic issue of The Journal of Korean Studies, Volume 18 No. 2 (Fall 2013)
Due July 31, 2012

The 2013 the­matic issue of The Journal of Korean Studies (JKS), under the direc­tion of guest edi­tor Charles K. Armstrong of Columbia University, will have as its theme the six­ti­eth anniver­sary of the Korean War Armistice. We invite orig­i­nal stud­ies of the armistice and its his­tor­i­cal and present-day sig­nif­i­cance by schol­ars from fields includ­ing – but not lim­ited to – diplo­matic, polit­i­cal, social and cul­tural his­tory, as well as polit­i­cal sci­ence, law, soci­ol­ogy, anthro­pol­ogy, and film and lit­er­ary studies.

We are inter­ested in man­u­scripts from a vari­ety of the­o­ret­i­cal, con­cep­tual, method­olog­i­cal and geo­graph­i­cal per­spec­tives, includ­ing those deal­ing with par­tic­i­pants on var­i­ous sides of the con­flict: North and South Korea, the US, China, the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, and United Nations coali­tion forces. For fur­ther infor­ma­tion please con­tact Charles K. Armstrong at cra1​0​@​columbia.​edu.

Articles appear­ing in the JKS are abstracted and indexed in the Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI), Sociological Abstracts, Social Services Abstracts, Worldwide Political Science Abstracts, PAIS International, Linguistics and Language Behavior Abstracts, Bibliography of Asian Studies, Historical Abstracts, and America: History and Life.

JKS is a peer-reviewed jour­nal and all papers will be vet­ted by two out­side read­ers.
Please sub­mit your man­u­script by July 31, 2012 to Tracy Stober, JKS Managing Editor, at jourks@u.washington.edu and to Charles K. Armstrong at cra1​0​@​columbia.​edu.

For detailed infor­ma­tion on the sub­mis­sion process please review the sub­mis­sion pro­ce­dures on the JKS web­site: http://​jsis​.wash​ing​ton​.edu/​k​o​r​e​a​/​j​k​s​/​s​u​b​m​i​s​s​i​o​n​g​u​i​d​e​l​i​n​e​s​.​s​h​tml

Contact:

Tracy L. Stober
Managing Editor
The Journal of Korean Studies
Center for Korean Studies Publication Series
University of Washington-Seattle
206−543−7896 FAX 206−685−0668
The JKS is now on Facebook.

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