뉴스레터

March 2023 in Boston, MA, US

  The 2023 Association for Asian Studies (AAS) Annual Conference was held from Mar. 16 to 19 in Boston, Massachusetts, US. Attendants of this year’s annual conference were provided with AAS 2020 conference bags as the 2020 annual conference in Boston was canceled unexpectedly due to COVID-19. The annual conference in Boston, held after the COVID-19 pandemic, had 3,475 attendants registered and research outcomes in Asian studies were shared over the four days at panels and meetings.

Timeliness of 2023 AAS panels

  The AAS Annual Conference does not have a common theme and researchers take the initiative to propose to organize a panel. The AAS selects proposals submitted by applicants and participants in each panel present and discuss the selected topic. The atmosphere of the annual conference could be seen in the keynote address and the AAS president’s address. In the keynote under the theme of “Asian in a Fragile World,” Professor Pasuk Phongpaichit spoke about geopolitical conflicts, human welfare, and demands on research. AAS President Kamran Ali gave an address on “Partition Violence and National Unity: Pakistan’s Cinema of the 1960s.” Both of these addresses discussed the issues of conflict and violence.

  The three “late-breaking sessions” selected by the AAS were “Ethnographers in the Field: Trauma, Community-Building, and Resilience,” “How Far will the United States’ Tech War on China Go?: The Implications of Biden’s Emerging China Technology Policy,” and “Civic Engagement: Public Health Responses, Material and Digital Spaces, and Politics During the COVID-19 Pandemic in China” which were about the US-China conflict and COVID-19. These features indicate both the AAS and participants were attentive to timely topics.

Composition and proportions of sessions at the 2023 Annual Conference

  There were 414 sessions available at the 2023 annual conference. The first session of the 10 sessions in Digital Technology was “The Digital Silk Road and the Globalization of the Chinese Tech Industry,” a highly timely topic. East and Inner Asia had 130 sessions, the highest number of sessions, and Inter-Area/Border Crossing had 122 sessions, Northeast Asia had 80 sessions, Southeast Asia had 50 sessions, and South Asia had the lowest number of sessions at 22 sessions. Looking at the number of sessions, the presence of China was overwhelmingly high and India was relatively low. China is included in the fields of East and Inner Asia, Inter-Area/Border Crossing, and Northeast Asia. There were 38 sessions about Japan and 19 sessions about Korea in Northeast Asia.

  There were also 73 meetings and events by department or association along with the panel presentations and discussions during the AAS Annual Conference. Two meetings related to Korea were annual meetings of the Korea Foundation and the Committee for Korean Studies. On the other hand, there were 12 meetings each for Japan and China. There were a small number of booths related to Korea amongst the 64 booths at the AAS Booth. University presses in the US and publishers from Taiwan and Japan actively conducted their promotional events.

  Examining the keywords of the topics of each panel, culture, nation, global, war, changes(about border/borderland), and world order are overwhelmingly high. The panel I was part of also included the keyword “change.” Art, gender, COVID19,  pandemic, queer, environment, healthcare, and colonial were also frequently seen. There were overall many topics on culture as well as the issue of war but its proportion has decreased and does not outnumber culture, global, or colonial. The AAS Editorial Board also submitted a proposal in one of the sessions on COVID19. Panels with topics related to China were proportionately high just as it was the highest in the East and Inner Asia sector. Even in Inter-Area/Border Crossing sector, topics in culture and China were the most frequent. Some of the examples of the topics for “Intra-Asian Cultural Flows” and “Global Maoism for the Global South” sessions.

Implications of global academic platforms

  This year’s AAS Annual Conference held in the midst of the cold winds of Boston featured by beautiful giant oak trees, was special for researchers in Asian studies as we have just reached the end of the tunnel of the COVID-19 pandemic. But what is more meaningful is that issues faced in East Asia were discussed from a variety of perspectives. The AAS requires researchers to have competencies to find new topics as well as global perspectives and regional comparison competencies. It is ideal to share our academic achievements by actively exchanging research at a platform like the AAS Annual Conference. However, what our academic circles and related organizations should be interested in is: cultivating platforms for Asian studies in Korea in addition to the World Congress of Korean Studies to enable global scholars to join the discussion.