Archive for February 2012

CFP — Foodways: Diasporic diners, transnational tables and culinary connections

02/16/2012 CFP No comments

I got hun­gry just think­ing about this CFP.

CALL FOR PAPERS

FOODWAYS: DIASPORIC DINERS, TRANSNATIONAL TABLES AND CULINARY CONNECTIONS

Centre for Diaspora and Transnational Studies, University of Toronto

Please join us for the 2012 Annual Conference of the Centre for Diaspora and Transnational Studies, University of Toronto

Thursday October 4 – Sunday, October 7, 2012
Abstracts due: March 16, 2012

More infor­ma­tion on the con­fer­ence can be found on the Diasporic Foodways blog

Click here for online sub­mis­sion of abstracts and reg­is­tra­tion. (see below for instructions)

On Facebook or Follow us on Twitter

Description:
This con­fer­ence seeks to address ques­tions sur­round­ing the dynam­ics of the food ‘we’ eat, the ways in which ‘we’ eat, the mean­ing ‘we’ give to eat­ing, and the effect of eat­ing in a transna­tional world. Recognizing that culi­nary cul­ture is cen­tral to dias­poric iden­ti­fi­ca­tions, the focus is on the place of food in the endur­ing habits, rit­u­als, and every­day prac­tices that are col­lec­tively used to pro­duce and sus­tain shared senses of cul­tural iden­tity. Yet even as it does this work, food and the prac­tices of pro­duc­tion, prepa­ra­tion and con­sump­tion that revolve around it, can­not help but be drawn into wider cul­tures and cul­tural pol­i­tics of con­sump­tion increas­ingly grounded in the pur­suit of qual­i­ties of dif­fer­ence, acts of dis­tinc­tion and ques­tions of jus­tice. This focus on food, cook­ing, and eat­ing in dias­pora and its role in con­nect­ing and chang­ing peo­ples, places, tastes, and sen­si­bil­i­ties around the world yields insight not only to sub­stances that peo­ple con­sider essen­tial to the main­te­nance of iden­tity, but to the pro­duc­tion of new cul­tural polit­i­cal for­ma­tions in a transna­tional world and to the role of cul­tural (re)production in the expan­sion of con­sump­tion under con­tem­po­rary cap­i­tal­ism. A focus on food also reveals the dynamic role of his­tor­i­cal path­ways in under­stand­ing cul­tural for­ma­tions as they have existed through time, and in posi­tion­ing the present as a moment in a con­tin­u­ing process of struc­tured mobil­ity that directs the move­ment of peo­ple, what they eat, and how they under­stand them­selves and the world around them. It also yields insight into the mul­ti­ple places and ways in which food assumes value and how that value is often reliant upon the con­tin­ued repro­duc­tion of ties that bind peo­ple, place, and prac­tice across space and time. A great deal of aca­d­e­mic work explores this inter­play of food, prac­tice, iden­tity and sub­ject for­ma­tion, much of it bound together by a com­mit­ment that through a fuller under­stand­ing of those rela­tions, we bet­ter under­stand our­selves, our pasts, and the com­plex­i­ties of the spaces and lives we inhabit and enact in a transna­tional world. This con­fer­ence seeks to enhance that under­stand­ing.
Read more

The Third Flying University of Transnational Humanities, Seoul, Korea

02/14/2012 CFP No comments

Borders of Knowledge — The Third Flying University of Transnational Humanities

Venue: Hanyang University, Seoul, Korea
Date: July 15 – 18, 2012
Application Deadline: March 16, 2012
Extended Application Deadline: March 30, 2012

Eligibility: Graduate stu­dents and recent PhDs inter­ested in the transna­tional par­a­digm of human­is­tic inquiry and con­duct­ing research on top­ics related to the theme of the mak­ing and unmak­ing of bor­ders of knowledge

The Flying University of Transnational Humanities (FUTH) is an annual sum­mer school for grad­u­ate stu­dents and young schol­ars inter­ested in the transna­tional par­a­digm of human­is­tic inquiry. FUTH takes its name and imme­di­ate inspi­ra­tion from Polands Flying University, an under­ground insti­tu­tion that offered an alter­na­tive edu­ca­tion out­side the con­fines of state con­trol and gov­ern­ment cen­sor­ship. The pro­gram is par­tic­u­larly con­cerned with devel­op­ing crit­i­cal under­stand­ings that resist the ide­o­log­i­cal and con­cep­tual hege­mony of the nation-state and the epis­te­mo­log­i­cal and hermeneu­tic con­ven­tions that sup­port it. This does not mean that FUTH seeks to dis­pense with the national and con­struct a rei­fied transna­tional with which to replace it, or to fos­ter transna­tion­al­ism as an ide­o­log­i­cal alter­na­tive to nation­al­ism. Rather, FUTH aims to free our imag­i­na­tions from essen­tial­ist approaches to the nation or the state and to offer new ways of think­ing about the polit­i­cal, social and cul­tural order of the world, both past and present.

Started in 2010, the Flying University of Transnational Humanities is orga­nized annu­ally usu­ally in the sum­mer by the Research Institute of Comparative History and Culture (RICH), Hanyang University, Seoul, Korea. FUTH con­sists of a series of advanced lec­tures, stu­dent pre­sen­ta­tions and feed­back ses­sions where renowned schol­ars from RICHs part­ner and other insti­tu­tions are invited to share their knowl­edge, insights and per­spec­tives. Student par­tic­i­pants are required to study the rec­om­mended read­ings in advance. They are also expected to present their own schol­arly work related to the theme of each year. The offi­cial lan­guage of FUTH is English, although the pos­si­bil­ity of trans-lingual prac­tices is being con­sid­ered. Graduate stu­dents and recent PhDs inter­ested in the transna­tional turn in the human­i­ties and social sci­ences are wel­come to apply with a pre­sen­ta­tion proposal.

The third FUTH will take place at Hanyang University, July 15 – 18, 2012, under the title of Borders of Knowledge. As numer­ous empir­i­cal stud­ies in intel­lec­tual his­tory, soci­ol­ogy of knowl­edge, and history/sociology/anthropology of the social, human, and nat­ural sci­ences have con­vinc­ingly demon­strated for sev­eral decades, the pro­duc­tion, dis­sem­i­na­tion and use of knowl­edge, though seem­ingly uni­ver­sal, are always embed­ded in spe­cific social, cul­tural, and his­tor­i­cal con­texts. Often, the sub­ject, the object and the modus operandi of knowl­edge are defined, con­strued, and con­strained by (national) bor­ders. Knowledge and its asso­ci­ated prac­tices thus shaped may in turn rein­force, repro­duce or rede­fine those very bor­ders. How then, does knowl­edge travel across bor­ders? Rather than fol­low­ing the nave mod­ernist assump­tion that knowl­edge is spread because it is true and/or is chan­neled through uni­ver­sally trans­fer­able method­i­cal prac­tices, one should approach the trav­els of knowl­edge as them­selves explananda rather than merely explanans for other phe­nom­ena. For instance, one may ask, what are the ways in which locally-produced knowl­edge is trans­lated, adapted, appro­pri­ated, or con­tested in dif­fer­ent local con­texts? By the same token, one may also ask, how does knowl­edge, despite its local ori­gins, come to acquire a pro­claimed uni­ver­sal­ity or glob­al­ity? With such ques­tions as a basis, the third FUTH in 2012 aims to pro­vide grad­u­ate stu­dents and young schol­ars with a unique oppor­tu­nity to crit­i­cally exam­ine the mak­ing and unmak­ing of the bor­ders of knowl­edge includ­ing the social sci­ences, human­i­ties, nat­ural sci­ences, and other forms of knowl­edge. Read more

NUS workshop in June 2012 : “The urban ecology of religion: growth and redevelopment in Seoul”

02/13/2012 Research No comments

I’ve been invited to attend a work­shop on “Doing Asian Cities: The MPI-ARI-TISS-AKS-Shanghai Urban Aspirations Project” (5−6 June 2012, Singapore) as part of the MPI/AKS project on urban aspi­ra­tions. It’s a chance to meet with other researchers work­ing on the Asian megac­i­ties project in Mumbai, Shangai, Singapore, and Seoul. Just sub­mit­ted the fol­low­ing abstract:

The urban ecol­ogy of reli­gion: growth and rede­vel­op­ment in Seoul

With some of the largest and most spec­tac­u­lar megachurches in the world located in the City of Seoul, it is easy to find impres­sive the mate­r­ial pros­per­ity and polit­i­cal power asso­ci­ated with con­tem­po­rary Protestantism in South Korea. It is also easy to over­look the fact that in con­trast, nearly eighty per­cent of churches in Korea are quite small, with only fifty to two hun­dred mem­bers in their con­gre­ga­tion. There is much the­o­log­i­cal reflec­tion and polit­i­cal cri­tiques con­cern­ing the grow­ing gap between the rich and poor, cor­po­rate megachurches and vul­ner­a­ble microchurches. This paper addresses the pol­i­tics of scale and urban reli­gion as they relate to aspi­ra­tions for — and against — growth and (re)development in Seoul. In par­tic­u­lar, I will dis­cuss crit­i­cal ethno­graphic meth­ods includ­ing some new ideas for research­ing reli­gion (e.g. “cir­cle the church”) in the city.

Photo

CRC position in Race, Inequalities and Global Change, UBC

02/06/2012 Job No comments

See online ver­sion here

The Faculty of Education at the University of British Columbia invites appli­ca­tions for a Tier 2 Canada Research Chair in Race, Inequalities and Global Change that will be located in the Department of Educational Studies. The Canadian Research Chairs Program (http://​www​.chairs​.gc​.ca) has been estab­lished by the Canadian Federal Government with the pur­pose of attract­ing out­stand­ing researchers to the Canadian uni­ver­sity sys­tem. The suc­cess­ful can­di­date will be expected to have a strong record of schol­ar­ship and a com­mit­ment to research lead­er­ship. Candidates for Tier 2 Chairs are described by the Canadian Research Chairs Program as ‘excep­tional emerg­ing researchers, acknowl­edged by their peers as hav­ing the poten­tial to lead in their field’. This is a full-time tenure track posi­tion at the rank of Assistant or Associate Professor.

We are seek­ing can­di­dates who can con­tribute to mul­ti­ple pro­gram­matic areas and who come with a broadly crit­i­cal ori­en­ta­tion. Specifically, can­di­dates should be able to con­tribute to con­tem­po­rary debates on the new social, polit­i­cal, cul­tural and eco­nomic con­fig­u­ra­tions of racial inequal­ity and the cul­tural and eco­nomic pol­i­tics of racism in the con­text of glob­al­iza­tion. We encour­age appli­ca­tions from schol­ars rep­re­sent­ing a wide range of ide­o­log­i­cal, the­o­ret­i­cal, method­olog­i­cal, and inter­dis­ci­pli­nary approaches, whose exper­tise spans the fol­low­ing areas:

  1. The study of racial inequal­i­ties and for­ma­tions as insep­a­ra­ble from other social for­ma­tions (e.g. class, gen­der, dis/ability, age, and sexuality);
  2. Cultural stud­ies of edu­ca­tional poli­cies, prac­tices and/or pedagogies;
  3. Critical pol­icy stud­ies illu­mi­nat­ing the cul­tural and ide­o­log­i­cal strug­gle in which edu­ca­tion is located.

Read more

Free download: Infographic Vector Kit

02/06/2012 FYI No comments

Free down­load avail­able on MightyDeals.

Released first and exclu­sively on Mighty Deals and our sis­ter site, Webdesigner Depot, it’s an info­graphic vec­tor kit, with the most used ele­ments that you may need for your info­graphic designs.

Included in this set is a world map, gen­der ele­ments, as well as mul­ti­ple pie and bar charts. You can eas­ily com­bine and mod­ify all the ele­ments to cre­ate a dis­tinc­tive infographic.

« Older Entries