The Asian Conference on Arts and Humanities 2017 (ACAH2017)

Dear Colleague, We invite you to participate in The Asian Conference on Arts & Humanities 2017 (ACAH2017), held Thursday, March 30 to Sunday, April 2, 2017, at Art Center Kobe in Kobe, Japan. The abstract submission deadline is rapidly approaching. Please submit by November 15, 2016 to have your abstract reviewed and join IAFOR and delegates from around the world in the beautiful city of Kobe. Registration includes admission to The Asian Conference on Literature 2017 (LibrAsia2017), which is to be held alongside ACAH2017 as part of the same event. This gathering of academics at the intersection of nation, culture and discipline promises a unique environment for conversation, information exchange and networking. Join us at ACAH2017 for interdisciplinary discussion around the shared conference theme of: "History, Story, Narrative" *Speakers: Dr Brian Daizen Victoria, Oxford Centre for Buddhist Studies, UK Dr A. Robert Lee, Nihon University, Japan (retired) Professor Myles Chilton, Nihon University, Japan We hope that the broad nature of this theme will encourage the submission of works from a variety of interesting perspectives. The ACAH2017 Organising Committee welcomes submissions to ACAH2017 from all over the world. We encourage you to join us in Kobe to share your research and knowledge in an international, intercultural and interdisciplinary setting. To submit an abstract for presentation or to participate as an audience member, please visit the website or contact us for more information. Abstract Submission Deadline: November 15, 2016 Submit your abstract: www.iafor.org/cfp Visit the conference website: www.acah.iafor.org Enquiries: acah@iafor.org In conjunction with our global partners, we look forward to extending you a warm welcome in 2017. ------------- ***Join IAFOR at ACAH2017 and: – Present to a global audience – Have your work published in the Conference Proceedings and considered for peer-reviewed, open-access journals – Benefit from IAFOR's interdisciplinary focus by hearing about the latest research in Arts & Humanities, Literature, and more – Participate in a truly international, interdisciplinary and intercultural event – Take part in interactive audience sessions – Network with international colleagues **Register now to take advantage of Early Bird Registration and save over 20%. Early Bird Registration is open until December 15, 2016. Lunch is included in all conference registrations. Please see the registration page for details: www.iafor.org/acah2017-registration *If you have attended an IAFOR conference within the past year, or belong to an affiliated university or institution, we offer additional discounts in appreciation of your support. Please contact us at acah@iafor.org for details. ------------- ***Conference Theme: "History, Story, Narrative" Historians are far from the only interested party in writing history. In a sense it is an interest we all share – whether we are talking politics, region, family birthright, or even personal experience. We are spectators to the process of history while being intimately situated within its impact and formations. How, then, best to write it? Is it always the victor's version? Have we not begun increasingly to write "history from below", that lived by those who are not at the top of the power hierarchy? Are accounts of history always gender-inflected, hitherto, at least, towards men rather than women? Who gets to tell history if the issue is colonialism or class? How does geography, the power of place, intersect with history? What is the status of the personal story or narrative within the larger frame of events? This conference addresses issues of writing history from literary and other discursive perspectives. That is to say: novels, plays, poems, autobiographies, memoirs, diaries, travel logs and a variety of styles of essay. One thinks of Shakespeare's history plays, Tolstoy's War and Peace, Shi Nai'an's The Water Margin, Balzac's La Comédie Humaine. It also addresses oral history, the spoken account or witness, the Hiroshima survivor to the modern Syrian migrant. Which also connects to the nexus of media and history. The great "historical" films continue to hold us, be it Eisenstein's October: Ten Days That Shook the World (1925) or Gone with the Wind (1940). We live in an age of documentaries, whether film or TV. There is a view that we also inhabit "instant" history, the download to laptop, the app, the all-purpose mobile. How has this technology changed our perception, our lived experience, of history? What is the role of commemoration, parade, holiday, festival or statuary in the writing of history? The different modes by which we see and understand history, flow and counter-flow, nevertheless come back to certain basics. One asks whether we deceive ourselves in always asking for some grand narrative. Can there only be one narrator or is history by necessity a colloquium, contested ground? Is national history a myth? And history-writing itself: is it actually a form of fiction, an artifice which flatters to deceive? What, exactly, is a historical fact? This conference, we hope, will address these perspectives and others that connect and arise. ***Conference Programme As well as being a great opportunity for meeting and interacting with some of the biggest names in the fields of Arts & Humanities and Literature, IAFOR's conferences create an intellectually challenging but friendly environment for the presentation and nurturing of new ideas, encouraging the research synergies that drive new developments and create new knowledge. Speakers at The Asian Conference on Arts & Humanities 2017 (ACAH2017) include: Dr Brian Daizen Victoria, Oxford Centre for Buddhist Studies, UK Dr A. Robert Lee, Nihon University, Japan (retired) Professor Myles Chilton, Nihon University, Japan ACAH2017 Plenary Panel: History, Story, Narrative – Constructing History This interdisciplinary history and literature panel will look at how histories are created and propagated and the difficulties involved in the inherently political act of writing of history. How does the "truth" act as heuristic and guide, and how is the concept abused to stifle dissent and impose order? This panel will draw on contemporary controversies and invite participation from delegates from around the world to address questions that include the following: How important is the construction of national history in the creation of personal and national identity? How does history shape our political decisions today? How do we go about building, revising and deconstructing history? This panel will feature both historians and literary scholars and will explore the relations and tensions between fictional and historical narrative that are in many ways vital to definitions of literature, raising questions as to the "truth" of the history registered in literary texts as opposed to that of historical texts. The panel will also examine literature as alternative history, whether Fredric Jameson's call to "always historicize!" is still relevant, the aliterary subversions of "official" history, the historicity of fiction, and, of course, the fiction of historicity. Further speakers for The Asian Conference on Arts & Humanities 2017 will be announced in the coming months. ------------- ***About IAFOR To learn more about IAFOR, please visit our website at www.iafor.org. For enquiries please contact acah@iafor.org.