CfP: "On the Natural History of Destruction: Technology, Politics and Material Transformation in Asia's World War II," Columbia University, October 5, 2018
This
one-day workshop aims to illuminate the complicated relationship
between political possibilities and material transformation in Asia
during the catastrophe of World War II. The workshop will bridge the
artificial divide between East and Southeast Asia by bringing together
scholars from across the field of Asian studies to discuss the ways that
the experience of war altered the complex relationships between
politics, culture and technology, not least as a consequence of the
violent alteration of physical landscapes and social relations by
fighting, colonialism, mobilization, industrialization, resource
extraction and disaster. In doing so, the workshop will add towards an
understanding of the war as a global and regional event rather than one
contained within limited geographical boundaries of the nation-state. At
the same time, it will create opportunities for discussion across
disciplines, including history, literature, cultural studies, human
geography and anthropology, around the common rubric of the wartime
history of technology, broadly defined.
Specific themes and approaches include but are not limited to:
The Transformation of City and Country:
Remaking urban landscapes in response to bombing, siege, occupation and
retrocession; expansion, reduction and adaptation of agriculture;
changes to environments, waterways and biomes from planning, conflict,
disaster and resource extraction; building “home fronts.”
The Transformation of the State:
Reinvention of state competencies such as intelligence, demography and
political economy; reorganization of technical knowledge within the
state; construction of material infrastructure networks; changes in
colonial regimes and evolution of state institutions under different
governments.
The Transformation of Industry and Labor:
New labor practices and modes of production; industrial organization
and maintenance of supply chains; adaptation of vernacular technologies
and rehabilitation of old labor techniques; organizing production and
consumption for “total war”; conceptual transformations of commodities,
“natural” resources and the “economic.”
The Transformation of Politics:
production of new subjectivities and subject-positions; formation of
new modes of insurgent anti-colonial governance such as “People's War”
as a practice of military and political strategy; cultural responses to
technological warfare such as the fetishization of technology through
new aesthetic practices.
Discussants
Maggie Clinton, Middlebury College
Sheldon Garon, Princeton University
Christopher Goscha, Université du Québec à Montréal
Rudolph Mrázek, University of Michigan
Workshop Organization
The
workshop is intended to improve advanced work in progress. The workshop
will take the form of four transnational panels, each organized around a
common theme, with a faculty discussant for each panel. Papers will be
pre-circulated among panelists and available to all presenters and
discussants.
Submission
Early-career scholars and advanced PhD students are invited to submit 300-word abstracts online at www.columbiawartimeasia.com by April 6, 2018.
Email submissions should include the applicant’s name, email address,
institutional affiliation, paper title and abstract, together with a
short academic biography (no more than 100 words).
Further information
Travel
reimbursements (up to $200) are available to graduate student
presenters. Breakfast (Continental), lunch and dinner will be provided
for all discussants and presenters.
For more information, please write to columbiawartimeasia@gmail.com or visit www.columbiawartimeasia.com
Organizers: Sau-yi Fong, Benjamin Kindler, Tristan Revells, John B. Thompson
Contact Info:
Sau-yi Fong, Benjamin Kindler, Tristan Revells, John B. Thompson - Columbia University
Contact Email: