CfP: International Symposium "East Asian Perspectives on Aging and the Seasons of Life "
The Timothy Light Center for Chinese Studies at Western Michigan University invites paper proposals for the 2026 Asian Forum on “East Asian Perspectives on Aging and the Seasons of Life” (May 1-3, 2026). We welcome submissions from all disciplines in the humanities and social sciences, focusing on pre-modern, modern, or contemporary periods. Papers addressing the following themes are especially encouraged:
• Ideas, concepts, and discourses surrounding the meaning of aging
• Art and material culture associated with aging
• Practices, rites, and rituals related to aging and elder care
• Political and economic dimensions of aging
• Portrayal of aging in contemporary film and literature
• Comparative perspectives on aging across East Asia
Advanced graduate students and post-doctoral scholars are particularly encouraged to submit proposals. Full panel proposals will also be considered. The conference will be conducted in English, and we anticipate the publication of selected papers following the event.
The symposium will begin on the evening of Friday, May 1st, 2026, with a keynote address, followed by panels on Saturday, and an invited speech and an invited panel on contemporary issues on Sunday morning. Hotels and meals will be covered by the Light Center. Limited travel support will be available for advanced graduate students and post-doctoral scholars.
Please submit a 180-200 word abstract describing your proposed presentation along with your paper title, and a one to two page c.v. to hige-asia@wmich.edu by August 31, 2025.
Call for Chapters | Asian Temporalities: Chronologies, Seasons, Tenses
Publication series: Olomouc Asian Studies (OLAS), Vol. 5
Publisher: Palacký University Olomouc
Type of publication: Open Access (with DOI given to each chapter), Print on Demand
Language of publication: English
Fields: Humanities, Social Sciences, Asian Studies
Expected publication date: Summer 2026 (no publication fees)
Time and its perceptions shape our lives in profound ways. In this volume, we encourage contributors to engage with time from diverse perspectives. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, periodization and epochal divisions, generational shifts, and the politics of temporality. We also invite discussions on narrative time, conceptions of progress and regress, and the interplay between linear and cyclical understandings of time, as well as similar topics related to the main theme.
We invite contributions from various fields of the humanities and social sciences, including interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary investigations. The aim of this volume is to bring together chapters that explore the multifaceted concept of time as it relates to the cultures, societies, languages, and histories of Asia, including their diasporic expressions. The provisional title of the volume is an intentionally broad one to encourage a broad range of approaches and topics.
The volume follows up on the 18th Annual Conference on Asian Studies (http://acas.upol.cz) organized by the Department of Asian Studies at Palacký University Olomouc, but is open to any thematically relevant submission. We are interested in any original work of research that has not been previously published elsewhere.
In order to collect chapters for this volume, we first invite extended abstracts in English. The abstracts should be emailed to olas@upol.cz as a PDF file. The file should include the title of the paper, full name, affiliation, e-mail address, five keywords, and an extended abstract, which must be 700–1,000 words long. The abstract submission deadline is May 31, 2025. Decisions on the abstracts will be sent by July 15, 2025.
The submission deadline for full papers based on the accepted abstracts is September 20, 2025. The required length of the full papers is approximately 10–11,000 words (including references, tables, etc. in the word count). The papers will subsequently undergo a rigorous double-blind peer-review process by at least two reviewers. We estimate to be able to send out the decisions on all papers in late fall 2025. The expected publication date is summer 2026.
Any questions can be addressed to olas@upol.cz.
We are looking forward to your submissions!
Call for Papers Anniversary Conference on Japanese Studies Japan: A Story of Continuity and Change
Organizer: The Department of Japanese Language and Literature, Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures, University of Bucharest, in partnership with the Center for Japanese Studies, University of Bucharest
Date: Friday, November 7, 2025 – Saturday, November 8, 2025
Venue: The University of Bucharest, Casa Universitarilor, str. Dionisie Lupu, nr. 46, Bucharest
We are pleased to invite submissions for the upcoming conference Japan: A Story of Continuity and Change, which celebrates the 50th anniversary of the Department of Japanese Language and Literature – the department with the longest standing tradition in Japanese studies in Romania.
The Department of Japanese Language and Literature was founded in 1975. The first courses were taught by instructors affiliated with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Dalles People’s University.
Currently, the Department has seven faculty members and approximately 40 students enroll each year. The Japanese specialization is one of the most sought-after within the Faculty of Foreign Languages and Literatures.
In 2005, in collaboration with the Departments of Chinese and Korean Languages and Literatures, the Department of Japanese Language and Literature contributed to the establishment of the Master’s Programme in East Asian Studies.
To celebrate this milestone, we welcome scholarly contributions across a wide range of research areas, including linguistics, literary studies, translation studies, cultural and media studies, anthropology, sociology, philosophy, political science, history, archaeology, religion, architecture, the visual and performing arts, and economics.
The working languages of the conference are English and Japanese. Each presenter will have 20 minutes to deliver their paper, followed by 10 minutes for discussion.
The conference will be held entirely on-site.
Abstracts should not exceed 300 words (approximately 500 characters for submissions in Japanese). Proposals should include the participant’s full name, professional title, institutional affiliation, and academic field. Please submit your abstract to bucharestsympo2025@proton.me
The deadline for proposal submissions is July 27, 2025.
Applicants will be notified of the selection results by September 1st 2025.
For further information or questions, please contact: bucharestsympo2025@proton.me
We look forward to your participation.
Call for presentations: international conference "Resilient Memories in East Asia: Remembrance, Acknowledgment, Reconciliation"
Scholars of various academic fields of humanities and social sciences are invited to submit presentation proposals to an international academic conference “Resilient Memories in East Asia: Remembrance, Acknowledgment, Reconciliation” which will be held at Vytautas Magnus University (VMU, Kaunas, Lithuania) on October 10–11, 2025.
The organisers of the conference invite participants from various academic fields to present their original research that is focused on the conference’s theme and include cases from East Asia (Taiwan, Korea, Japan, China, Hong Kong, etc.). The conference is not limited to one approach and encourages submission of proposals that can be classified under different fields of humanities and social sciences: anthropology, ethnology, history, sociology, economics, political science, etc. The working language of the conference is English.
Panel or individual proposals can be submitted by filling a form and sending it by email to conference.asc@vdu.lt by July 15, 2025. More information is provided in the application form which also be found at https://asc.vdu.lt/2025/06/call-for-papers-academic-conference-resilient-memories-in-east-asia-remembrance-acknowledgment-reconciliation/
As East Asia navigates its histories of war, colonization, and ideological conflict, the resilience of collective memory plays a crucial role in shaping both domestic and international relations. This conference considers memory as a living process that resists simple narratives, focusing on how communities remember the past, how societies acknowledge historical injustices, and how reconciliation can be pursued in a complex landscape of competing memories and political tensions.
With all this in mind, the conference “Resilient Memories in East Asia: Remembrance, Acknowledgment, Reconciliation” will encourage scholars, practitioners, and students from a range of disciplines to examine the complex dynamics of memory in East Asia and explore how memory shapes and is shaped by historical trauma, collective narratives, and contemporary identities in the region.
The conference is organized by VMU Centre for Asian Studies and supported by Spotlight Taiwan.
