[Tlc] 3 calls for papers

[justinm at ucr.edu]

(1)
Call for papers for Panel on "Transnational Activism in
Southeast Asia"
EUROSEAS Conference, 12-15 September 2007, Naples, Italy

Convenors (please contact us both if you are interested in
participating):
Edward Aspinall, Australian National University
(edward.aspinall at anu.edu.au)
Michele Ford, University of Sydney (michele.ford at arts.usyd.edu.au)

This panel focuses on the new modes of transnational activism
which are transforming the landscape of social and political
engagement in Southeast Asia, as in other parts of the world.
The panel has four main aims. Firstly, we hope to encourage
broad participation from scholars looking at different forms
and sites of transnational activism, different countries,
borderlands and geographic regions, and with a variety of
disciplinary backgrounds. The goal is to allow for preliminary
mapping of the nature, extent, and pathways of transnational
activism in Southeast Asia. Second, we aim to situate the new
transnational activism within broader process of economic and
cultural globalization, elucidating the connections the new
activism has with other phenomena (such as migration flows and
the spread of new communication technologies and media).
Third, we will view transnational activism critically. Much
literature on global civil society? adopts a celebratory tone
because it examines only the emancipatory potential of the new
activism, as well as its capacity to enable and facilitate
local initiatives. In this panel, we hope also to focus on how
the new transnational activism can entrench domination and
inequality, and how it can limit and constrain choices by
local actors. Fourthly, and following from this observation,
the panel will examine efforts by activists in Southeast Asia
to resist new forms of hegemony in international activist
networks and to set or at least
negotiate their own agendas.

Dr Michele Ford
Indonesian Studies
Brennan-McCallum, A18
The University of Sydney NSW 2006
Australia
Phone: +61 2 9351 7797
Fax: +61 2 9351 2319
_______________________________________________________

(2)
Call for Papers
The Second International Conference in the History of Medicine
in Southeast Asia (HOMSEA)
Treating Diseases and Epidemics in Southeast Asia over the
Centuries

Asia-Pacific Research Unit (APRU)
School of Humanities
Universiti Sains Malaysia
Penang, Malaysia, January 2008

The Second International Conference in the History of Medicine
in Southeast Asia with the theme Treating Diseases and
Epidemics in Southeast Asia over the Centuries intends to
explore how the inhabitants of Southeast Asia faced the
ravages of innumerable diseases and epidemics over the ages.
Adopting a liberal time frame (prehistoric to modern times),
participants are encouraged to trace the development of
medical and religious responses to diseases and the
devastation of epidemics. Further lines of thought are offered
for deliberation, viz. 'How did the peoples fight off diseases
that might spell their extinction?', 'What did communities do
to prevent the spread of certain illnesses?', 'Were European
colonial administrations more successful in disease
containment than indigenous authorities?' These are just some
of the questions that deserve attention.

Deadline for Abstracts: 1 May 2007
Deadline for Working Papers: 15 November 2007

Individual Participants: Individuals are invited to present a
20-minute working paper relevant to any aspect of the
conference's theme. They are requested to submit an abstract
(150-200 words) to the Secretariat.

Specialized Panels: Scholars who wish to organize a panel (4-5
presenters; 1-hour per panel) based on a particular topic
relevant to the conference's overall theme are to submit to
the Secretariat the following materials:
Proposed Panel:            Abstract (350-400 words)
Convenor / Panelist I           Abstract (150-200 words)
Panelist II:                            Abstract (150-200 words)
Panelist III:                           Abstract (150-200 words)
Panelist IV:                            Abstract (150-200 words)
Panelist V:                             Abstract (150-200 words)

Organizer / Conference Secretariat: Asia-Pacific Research Unit
(APRU), School of Humanities, Universiti Sains Malaysia,
Penang, Malaysia
Wellcome Centre for the History of Medicine, University
College, London, UK

Venue: Penang, Malaysia
Date: 9 - 10 January 2008

For Further information and inquiries, General correspondence,
submission of abstracts, proposed panels, and working papers:
Please contact
The Conference Secretariat
The Second International Conference HMSEA
Asia-Pacific Research Unit (APRU)
School of Humanities,
Universiti Sains Malaysia
11800 Penang
Malaysia
Tel: 604 6533888 Ext. 3377
Fax: 604 6563707
E-mail: shakila at usm.my
Website: www.usm.my/APRU/index.html
<http://www.usm.my/APRU/index.html>
________________________________________________

(3)
Call for Papers
Women Warriors in Southeast Asia

Conference: ICAS 5 (International Convention of Asia
Scholars), August 2-5, 2007, Kuala Lumpur Convention Centre
(KLCC), Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Background
Female warriors in Southeast Asia come from a historical and
legendary tradition of women leaders in their respective
societies. Women who fought in the Vietnamese struggles
against the French and the Americans looked to the Trung
sisters (d. 41 C.E.), Lady Trieu An (d. 248 CE) and Thi Xuan
when they heeded Ho Chi Minh’s call for all Vietnamese—men and
women—to work together. In the Philippines, female
revolutionaries are frequently seduced by the idea of
following in the footsteps of Gabriela Silang (1731-1763), who
became a female "general" after taking over the revolutionary
army led by her slain husband against the Spanish. Mainland
Southeast Asian states such as Cambodia, Laos and Thailand
have their own legends of warrior queens riding on elephants
during battles. In more contemporary times, women have been
active participants in independence struggles, civil wars,
and/or communist insurgencies in the Philippines, Malaysia and
Indonesia.

And yet, despite such common histories, no systematic or
comparative study has been undertaken that examines these
warrior women across the region. This is all the more
surprising since Southeast Asia has the reputation of having
relatively egalitarian male-female relations (Andaya 2006),
with female training in the martial arts and participation in
war ­ as leaders, combat troops, palatial body guards, or in
supporting roles ­ appears well supported by recent
scholarship. Comparisons across time and space (see also
Andaya 2004) would be a good test for the relative male-female
equality thesis.

Most recent publications ­ most of them on Vietnam ­ have
focused on a single country (e.g. Gottschang Turner and Phanh
Thanh Hao 1998; Taylor 1999), army (e.g. Khoo 2004) or
particular female leaders (Quinn-Judge 2000). With a few
exceptions (Andaya 2004; Hong 2006), the focus has been on the
20th rather than earlier centuries. The predominance of
close-up studies contrasts with several ambitious comparative
attempts of a truly global study of the phenomenon from the
perspectives of history (Fraser 1994), ethnology (Jones 1997)
or international relations (Goldstein 2001), accounting for
the recurrence of women in combat and/or their participation
in war in a wide range of different social, cultural,
regional, or historical settings. These truly global studies,
however, often suffer from a lack of knowledge of the most
up-to-date secondary literature and are sometimes factually
inaccurate.

Aims and Scope of the Conference Panel
The conference panel (and related book project) on ‘Women
Warriors in Southeast Asia, Past and Present’, aims to fill
the perceived gap, the lack of a broader regional perspective,
in the literature. It aims to break down barriers between
country-specific studies, different eras, and academic
disciplines to provide the first multidisciplinary,
comparative, and longitudinal study of women warriors in SEA.
The assembled contributions would therefore bring together
studies from a wide range of societies/polities and eras
(pre-modern, early modern, modern), and a wide range of
disciplinary approaches (e.g. archaeology, philology, history,
ethnology, psychology, gender studies).

In addition to encouraging a better understanding of women
warriors across time and space, the goal of the conference
panel is to publish selected papers in an edited volume. The
ultimate aim would be for different Southeast Asian scholars
to learn from each other, and to raise academic and public
awareness of this 'amazing amazon' phenomenon in Southeast Asia.

Some Definitions
‘Female Warriors’: We are adopting two working definitions of
a female warrior. Broadly defined, a ‘female warrior’ is
someone who has directly and indirectly participated in social
and revolutionary struggles. Such female roles include
military commanders and party intellectuals, as well as roles
played as part of support networks such as organizers,
educators, couriers, spies, propagandists in the headquarters
and in village bases. A more narrow definition of ‘warrior’ as
someone who is involved in warfare and even combat, including
a leader or ruler in a time of war, the four-star general
(whether from the safety of headquarters or in the field), an
elite commando or spy operating behind enemy lines, the
rank-and-file corporal ensuring logistics, or the part-time
guerilla fighter who is a peasant at day and a guerilla at night.

‘Southeast Asia’: Our definition of Southeast Asia extends
beyond the current ASEAN region (incl. East Timor) and would
extend into the ‘wider Southeast Asia’, such as the southern
parts of China.

Possible Themes
In line with the above scope and definitions of the panel,
papers might deal with the following, from a more particular
focus on certain kinds of warriors to more thematic concerns
[though this list is far from exhaustive]:
•       legendary warrior queens such as the Trung sisters in
Vietnam or Lady Sinn (512-602 C.E.) in southern Guangdong:
e.g. the extent to which they are real; whether they were
(mis-)appropriated by nationalists; and their present-day worship;
•       Women and War/Women and Revolution: An exploration on
how the participation of women in revolutionary
movements/military organizations shaped the internal dynamics
and nature of the movement/organization;
•       Limits of Revolutionary Theory and Practice on the
lives of revolutionary women: A discussion of how official
dogma/rules of revolutionary organizations ­ particularly
communist movements ­ limit women's roles and control their
personal lives;
•       Love and Sex in a Time of revolution: An exploration
of how women's intimate lives such as courtships, marriages,
affairs, and pregnancies shape their involvement in
revolutionary movements, and arguably expose the false
dichotomy of the ‘public’ and ‘private’;
•       female spiritual warfare in early modern Southeast
Asia and in headhunting societies,
•       female soldiers, guerillas, fighter pilots, generals
and leaders in war in recorded history: nationalism,
nation-building, and women at arms;
•       the mobilization of women in independence struggles,
civil war, etc.; their motivations, their training and
performance as warriors; their transformation;
•       women warriors in historical TV dramas, martial arts
movies, literature, and popular fiction;
•       Gender, group violence, and war: theories in a
Southeast Asian and possibly global perspective;
•       Relationship between societal and other structures
(religion, economics, political system) and the kind of female
warriors they generally ‘(re)produce’;
•       Factors pushing and pulling women into the war system
and in revolutionary movements.

Abstracts of the proposed conference paper should be no longer
than one-page (Times New Roman, Size 12, double lined) and be
submitted by email as a MS Word document by Friday December 8,
2006 to the two organizers. All presentations will be
considered for publication in an edited volume of essays.

Contacts
Please email your abstracts to Vina Lanzona and Tobias Rettig at:

Vina A. Lanzona, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor History
University of Hawai’i-Manoa
2530 Dole Street
Honolulu, HI
USA
Tel: 808.956.6769
email: vlanzona at hawaii.edu

Tobias Rettig, Ph.D.
Practice Assistant Professor
School of Economics and Social Sciences
Singapore Management University
90 Stamford Road
Singapore 178903
Republic of Singapore
Tel: +65-68.28-08.66
e-mail: tobiasrettig at smu.edu.sg

For more information on ICAS 5, please view the conference
website at http://www.icas5kl.com/
____________________________________________________


______________
Dr. Justin McDaniel
Dept. of Religious Studies
2617 Humanities Building
University of California, Riverside
Riverside, CA 92521
951-827-4530
justinm at ucr.edu