MAIN IACSS CONFERENCE 2021
Our next conference will take place on 26-30 July 2021 online and at the National University of Singapore, Kent Ridge Campus
Main theme: Culture in the Age of the Pandemic
Date: 26-30 July 2021
The C-19 pandemic has upended all aspects of everyday work, life and play. From emergency lockdowns that required everyone to shelter at home to the gradual lifting of restrictions where working from home and remote learning continue to remain the norm, no one and no mode of human interaction have been left untouched by the virus. It is a cascading disaster involving health, economic and social challenges. Its measures designed to mitigate the virus have changed patterns of consumption and production. Its viral war metaphors have unleashed hostility between people, groups and nation-states. As a catastrophic event, it has precipitated ecological changes to unsettle and defamiliarize our traditional sensemaking of the world. While exacerbating structural inequalities and racial injustices, it has also reminded us there are things we should value, such as care and community. In such times of crisis, we ask: what are the new conditions and conjunctions of culture (cf. Hall, Grossberg)? What are the alternative strategies to think and act critically in ways that do not merely reproduce conventional and confrontational modes of resistance—how can we negotiate the pandemic and its contradictions so we are not just passive conduits of the virus? How can we refuse to be its vector of transmission (cf. Hage)? With the theme of “Culture in the Pandemic Age,” this Conference calls for critical investigation of the various responses to the C-19 with a focus on the specificities of local cultural contexts and practices. We welcome all submissions relating to Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, especially those from the following sub-themes:
- Genealogies, Theories and Practices: pandemic, crisis, contagion, borders and border closures, transmissions and virality, lockdowns and reshoring, etc.;
- Art, Culture & Work: pandemic activism and social movements; heritage, memory and learning histories; creative work as essential and non-essential; working from home—spatial adaptations and design, etc.;
- Digital Technologies and Screens: digital learning and e-pedagogies; new screen ontologies and fatigue, etc.;
- Media & Environment: public health and smart city technologies; infodemics and misinformation; social media, platform societies and infrastructures, etc.;
- Sustainability & Adaptability: anthropocene and climate change; disaster, racial and surveillance capitalisms; social distancing, urban structure, community and density; conditioning the new normal; catastrophe, emergency and resilience, etc.;
- People, Space & Embodiments: pandemic (im)mobilities; labour and migration; precarity, mutual assistance, solidarity and care; prejudice and xenophobia; rural-urban reaction to the pandemic; masking, contact tracing, hand sanitising, etc.;
- Governance & Politics: democracy and biopolitics; surveillance and securitization; inter-Asia relations, etc.;
- New Cold-War, New Territories & Futurism: political economy and industrialization in pandemic; Asia futurism; territoriality and the politics of distance, etc.