1) TOP Grants
2)
CFP: East Asian Pop Culture: 30 Years of Transformation, National University of Singapore, 18-19 September 2025
Location: Singapore
DATE OF EVENT : 18-19 September 2025 VENUE : National University of Singapore WEBSITE : https://ari.nus.edu.sg/events/east-asian-pop-culture/
CALL FOR PAPERS DEADLINE: 23 MAY 2025
This workshop is organized with the Cultural Studies in Asia Programme in Department of Communications and New Media, and Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore, in collaboration with the William Lim Siew Wai Fellowship Fund.
At the time of the publication of Chua Beng Huat’s “Conceptualising an East Asian popular culture” in 2004, Japan was considered the centre of East Asian content production and export that “sets the industry quality standard”. It had immensely influenced the production of trendy dramas in South Korea that formed part of the early Korean Wave. Hong Kong and Taiwan were crucial roles in Chinese-language productions for the region with substantial diasporic ethnic Chinese population.
China’s contribution as a production centre was marginal at the time, even though its consumer market was increasingly important.
In the 30 years since, while urban dramas featuring beautiful and fashionable casts remain popular among audiences in the region, much has also changed with the transnational flows of East Asian popular culture. YouTube and social media have been instrumental in the proliferation of K-pop beyond Asia. Netflix brought South Korean and other East Asian content to a global audience, as it changes local production practices. China is no longer merely a lucrative consumer market, as iQiyi is positioned as “the OTT platform” for Chinese content in its international expansion.
While many have commented on the decline of Hong Kong cinema, two films in 2024 surpassed US$12.9 million in the Hong Kong box office, although overall box office revenue continues to drop. Taiwan is moving away from the production of “idol content” as it moves to build and attract international audiences via Netflix by developing content that discusses social issues. Meanwhile, Japan continue to have impact in animation, and it remains the region’s centre of fashion and technology, but Japanese media content struggle to globalize in a media climate where streaming platforms and social media dominate over legacy media. Genres such as Boys Love (BL) has transcended its origins in Japanese manga to live action dramas, and Thailand has emerged at the forefront of this genre. These changes have redefined East Asia’s cultural landscape as production and consumption centres shift and change.
This workshop invites papers that critically examine the evolution of East Asian pop culture over the past three decades, highlighting its intersections with political, economic, social, and cultural transformations within and beyond the region. It challenges the tendency to frame East Asian pop culture through Western-centric perspectives, emphasizing instead its dynamic transnational and inter-regional developments as a distinct site of cultural and geopolitical significance.
We invite papers examining the inter-Asian flows and development of East Asian pop culture that has impact the region in the last 30 years.
SUBMISSION OF PROPOSALS
Paper proposals should include a title, an abstract (500-800 words), and a brief personal biography (about 200 words) for submission by 23 May 2025. Please also include a statement confirming that your paper has not been published or committed elsewhere, and that you are willing to revise your paper for potential inclusion in an edited volume of essays. Please submit your proposal using the provided form to Mr Jiarong Fan at jiarong.fan@u.nus.edu.
Authors of selected proposals will be notified in end June 2025. Presenters will have to submit a draft of their papers (about 4,000-6,000 words) by 18 August 2025. These drafts will be circulated to fellow presenters and discussants in advance.
The workshop will be conducted in person. The organizers may offer overseas participants financial assistance, which could include up to three nights of accommodation. If you require funding support, please indicate this on the proposal form.
WORKSHOP CONVENORS
Prof CHUA Beng Huat
Asia Research Institute & Department of Sociology and Anthropology, National University of Singapore
Asst Prof Eunbi LEE
Department of Communications and New Media, National University of Singapore
Dr Bertha CHIN
Department of Communications and New Media, National University of Singapore
Dr SOH Kai Ruo
Department of Communications and New Media, National University of Singapore
Contact Information
Ms Minghua TAY
Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore
AS8 Level 7, 10 Kent Ridge Crescent, Singapore 119260
Email: minghua.tay@nus.edu.sg
Tel: (65) 6516 4224
Fax: (65) 6779 1428
URL: https://ari.nus.edu.sg/upcoming-events/
3) CFP: Manuscripts for Oxford Intersections – Borders: Trade, Capital and Labor
The Trade, Capital and Labor section of Oxford Intersections Borders – a new initiative by Oxford University Press – is now accepting abstracts for research articles. I have been appointed Section Editor for Borders Intersections and am now inviting abstracts for new interdisciplinary research articles on a range of topics related to Trade, Capital and Labor. Contributions can thematically relate to markets as spaces of place and flows where real economic activities—including the exchange or transactions of goods, services (specifically, labor) and capital—occur across nation-state borders. Articles that discuss borders as virtual spaces through which flows that involve purchases and sales of items—goods, services and capital—occur are also welcome. Articles may further consider sovereignty and the nation-state, and the centrality of various actors including individuals, firms, governments and government agencies in the market dynamics that relate to the border.
Oxford Intersections welcomes contributors from diverse backgrounds, across disciplines, geographies, institutions, and various stages in their careers. Authors may include academics, researchers and practitioners.
Submission Guidelines:
• Manuscripts should be original and not previously published or under consideration elsewhere.
• Articles should run between 6,000-10,000 words and will undergo a rigorously peer review.
• To be considered, submit a single document including:
• An abstract of no more than 500 words. Include “Trade, Capital and Labor” and the specific theme for the proposed article.
• A short bio (150 words).
• Submit your document to: christopher.nshimbi@up.ac.za
Important Dates:
• Abstract Submission Deadline: 1 May 2025
• Author Notification: 9 May 2025• Final Manuscript Due: 15 June 2025
More about Oxford Intersections: Borders
Oxford University Press has launched a new type of resource: Oxford Intersections. Oxford Intersections reflects the critical role that peer-reviewed interdisciplinary research plays in helping policy- and decision-makers tackle the world’s most complex and urgent environmental, cultural, political, and social challenges.
Borders are specific sites, but they are not static, being constantly enacted and reproduced. They often have a physical presence, but their significance stretches far beyond any geographical locale and into the social, political, and cultural lives of those both near and far from the border itself. This Intersection will focus not only on borders as interstitial spaces, but on the ways that a bordered world has its effects, with particular attention to systems, relationships, and practices that span borders.
Accepted manuscripts will undergo a rigorous peer-review process to ensure academic standards and relevance to the overall ethos of the Intersections project.
Contact Information
Chris C Nshimbi
Section Editor: Oxford Intersections – Borders: Trade, Capital and Labor
Contact Email
christopher.nshimbi@up.ac.za
URL
https://academic.oup.com/intersections/pages/borders
4) Workshop on Museum Charges: Curating Spiritual Presences
Location: Czechia
In recent years, museum and religious scholars have focused on residues and traces of museum collecting practices in colonial and postcolonial settings (Bodenstein, Otoiu, von Oswald and Seiderer 2024; Samuel and Sattler 2022). Religious artefacts, or spiritually charged artefacts (Buggeln, Paine and Plate 2017; Paine 2013; Stengs 2014) more than other museum things elicit the problematic aspect of colonialism and its duress (Stoler 2016).
This workshop provides a reflexive, curatorial space for scholars, curators and heritage activists who have addressed spiritually charged artefacts in colonial and postcolonial museum collections. It offers a platform for sharing ongoing curatorial projects and exchanging ideas, knowledge and doubts related to curatorial practice with religious artefacts, letting participants imagine the latter otherwise. The collective debate will result in a blog issue proposal targeting Boasblog as a venue.
The workshop consists of three sessions distributed within three days, on the 23rd, 24th and 30th of October. It is hybrid, both online and at the Department of Asian Studies, Palacký University Olomouc, and it is linked to the MSCA-CZ project Processual Decay Paradigm of Dr Valentina Gamberi. The first two sessions will be hosted by the Department’s research cluster “Anthropology Advancements”. In the first session, participants will provide the background to their research, and past and ongoing curatorial projects in line with the workshop’s focus. In the second session, participants will work in two groups, proposing a curatorial model project based on inputs developed during the debate stimulated at the end of the first session. Each curatorial proposal is further collectively discussed. Each session will take place in the afternoon, from 2 to 6 pm CET on the 23rd and 24th of October and from 2 pm to 4 pm CET on the 30th of October, to allow online presenters from Asia and elsewhere to fully contribute to the group discussion. The third session will be entirely online. The aim of this final session is to finalise the proposal for the blog debate to submit to Boasblog.
Funding—from Dr Valentina Gamberi’s research project—will cover accommodation, and transport up to 120 € in total for each in-person participant not already based in Olomouc. Meals—two coffee breaks, a collective dinner and lunch—will be offered to all participants. In-person participants will be a maximum of five people. Participants joining online can be up to five people.
We accept proposals from independent curators, anthropologists, religious and area scholars (especially Asian scholars), museum curators and heritage practitioners/activists that might preferably but not exclusively cover:
1. Reconsideration of colonial collections;
2. Missionary collections;
3. Current/upcoming exhibitions on religious communities;
4. Forms of collaborations between ritual specialists and museums
Deadlines
• Submit to valentina.gamberi@upol.cz an abstract of your intervention (100-300 words) and a bio (no more than 100 words) no later than the 26th of May;
• The selected abstracts will be announced by the 10th of June;
• Selected participants will precirculate longer abstracts/pitches/blog drafts (800-2,000 words) to ensure deeper engagement within the group no later than the 9th of October.
Please, circulate this CfP among your professional circle.
Contact Information
For inquiry, you can either contact Dr Valentina Gamberi (valentina.gamberi@upol.cz) or Professor Monika Arnez (monika.arnez@upol.cz).
Contact Email
valentina.gamberi@upol.cz
URL
https://kas.upol.cz/en/academics-research/research-clusters/#:~:text=The%20%22Anthropology%20Advancements%22%20research%20cluster,of%20developments%2C%20particularly%20in%20Asia