Home | List of Participants | Schedule

Imagining Asia in the Era of Trump

Date: May 22-23, 2017
Venue: Room 4.36, Run Run Shaw Tower, Centennial Campus, The University of Hong Kong.

Living in the “Asian Century,” when different nationalisms and racial paradigms collide with discourses about rising Asia, the idea of Asia looms large in the U.S. cultural and political imagination. In this current moment of international uncertainty, retrenchment of rights, and growing anti-globalist sentiments, how can transnational, postcolonial, and Asian American critique on matters of citizenship, immigration, capitalism, empire, and migration help situate our understandings of the present? How might we look to artists and writers, activists and cultural producers for new possibilities, politics, and resistance? What temporal and spatial mappings of Asia, U.S.-China relations, diaspora, and transpacific connection are produced in everyday practices? And what are the geopolitical and cultural implications of these new imaginings?

This conference will bring together scholars from the U.S. and Asia to reflect on the changing meanings of Asia and Asianness in the era of Trump. Participants will be asked to explore how discourses of the rise of Asia is rendered in the U.S. imagination, the circulation of ideas about Chineseness or Asianness within changing global relationships, and/or the positioning of Asian Americans within transnational flows and markets.

Small, intimate, and with the goal of producing an edited volume or special journal issue, the conference will function more as a colloquium. Papers will be pre-circulated, with presenters briefly summarizing their work at the conference, and each paper will be the subject of an individual session. The sessions will be held over two days, with opportunities to socialize and experience the cultural richness and vibrancy of Hong Kong.

This conference is generously supported by: