Submission Deadline: March 1, 2024.
Penn State University and the Global Asias Initiative invites applicants for its annual Global Asias Summer Institute, to be held July 15-19, 2024. SI2024, co-directed by Annie Isabel Fukushima (University of Utah), Kristin Roebuck (Cornell), and Tina Chen (Penn State), will focus on the topic of “Involuntary Migration.”
Institute participants spend a week reading and thinking about the annual theme, as well as significant time workshopping their work in progress. Particularly strong work will be considered for publication in an upcoming special issue on “Trade in Humans” (12.1) of the award-winning journal, Verge: Studies in Global Asias (https://www.upress.umn.edu/journal-division/journals/verge-studies-in-global-asias).
Penn State will cover housing and meals, and offer an honorarium to help defray travel costs (USD 450 from the East Coast, 650 from the Midwest, 850 from the West Coast; USD 1050 from Europe; USD 1400 from Asia). Applicants must have completed their PhDs no earlier than June 2019, or be advanced graduate students who are completing their dissertations.
On the theme:
In 2020, 281 million people were migrating world-wide. Global conditions surrounding shifting economies, environmental instability, state violence, conflict, and persecution, have been among some of the many reasons why people are on the move. Discussions about involuntary migration cut across disciplines from social scientific and humanistic inquiry.
While the movement of people from one place to another has been happening since the beginning of human history, people move for many different reasons and movement does not always signal the freedom of mobility. For example, the conditions of “Asian” and Asian diasporic migration are deeply shaped by a history of coerced and forced labor in regions in the Asia-Pacific that is itself the outcome of racial and global capitalism, colonization, and empire-making. Since the sixteenth century, from Asia to the Américas, Africa, and Europe, involuntary migration has had many names, including indentured servitude, abduction, (transnational) adoption, human trafficking, slavery, “coolitude,” denial of citizenship, and contracted labor.
Understanding forced movement compels us to have complex conversations about militarisms, settler colonialisms, Indigeneity, racial capitalism, gendered oppression, and violence. In conceptualizing involuntary migration, we recognize that Asians are not passive victims. Indeed, focusing on involuntary migration creates opportunities for us to recognize that Asians are both agents and objects of involuntary migration—and in their movement they form the core of Asian diasporas and hybridized cultures worldwide. This institute, then, invites participants to look at involuntary migration and its role in the making of Global Asias. We welcome a diverse group of scholars using a spectrum of temporal approaches, including working with historical perspectives, engaging these issues from the vantage point of the present, and exploring Asian futurities where the work invites us to look backwards to look forward. SI2024 is envisioned as a place where we will focus on the social, political, legal, and environmental conditions of forced movement in/from Asia and Asian diasporas through a variety of disciplines and fields of inquiry.
Application Process:
To apply, please send the following documents to gai@psu.edu by March 1, 2024. Items #1-3 must be sent as a single PDF file; the recommendation letter for applications from advanced graduate students may be sent separately.
- An abstract of 1500 words outlining research project and clarifying its connection to the Institute theme.
- A sample of current work.
- A current c.v. (no longer than 2 pp).
- A letter from a principal advisor about the advanced status of work (in the case of graduate students).
Decisions will be made by early April 2024. Inquiries regarding the Summer Institute may be directed to GAI director Tina Chen (tina.chen@psu.edu).