Final CFP: Authenticities East and West

[Jonathan Abel]

  The Society for Intercultural Comparative Studies

318 East Pyne
Princeton University
Princeton, NJ 08544


C A L L   F O R   P A P E R S

Authenticities East and West
March 30 - April 1, 2001

ABSTRACT SUBMISSION DEADLINE: January 31, 2001


The Society for Intercultural Comparative Studies is a newly formed
organization that seeks to foster the growing community of scholars in
the field of cultural criticism by providing an on-going and open forum
for discussion. One of the Society’s first projectsis the graduate
symposium “Authencities East and West,” to take place March 30 ? April
1, 2001, at Princeton University. At this conference, Rey Chow, Karatani
Kôjin, and Robert Wardy will conduct workshops in their areas of
expertise. Brown’s Rey Chow, a cultural theorist on modern China, the
author most recently of Ethics After Idealism, will be giving a workshop
titled  “Asymmetry, Appropriation, Authenticity: Persistent Problematics
in East-West Comparative Studies.” The complementary event,
“Inauthenticity: Some Examples,” will be conducted by Robert Wardy, a
Cambridge Hellenist who recently published Aristotle in China: Language,
Categories and Translation. Finally, Karatani Kôjin, arguably the most
influential literary critic in Japan in the past twenty years whose
latest work in English is Architecture as Metaphor, will lead a workshop
on “Transcritique: Kant and Marx.”

Common to much critical practice, notions of authenticity underlie
various units of study such as events, texts, and identities. To compare
cultures with no benefit of historical influence, the scholar must
examine assumptions of what is authentic from various angles: from its
root meaning of authority to representations of origins and authorship
through metaphysical ideas of truth. What constitutes an authentic text,
event, genre, subject, or author in disparate traditions? To whom is
this authenticity important? Are authenticities important at all? What
do authenticities mean in relation to accounts of historical moments
across cultures? How do authenticities relate to the material and
ideological implications of “different” cultural products? What
practical and theoretical difficulties for the comparatist arise in
writing and reading authenticities? These important issues are at the
heart of our conference.

We invite papers from both graduate students and recent post-doctoral
scholars from all fields of humanities, ancient or modern. Papers may
engage with literary, cultural, political, and historical topics and
issues. The first restriction, however, is that they must address one
Western culture (of European tradition) and one East Asian culture (of
Chinese, Japanese, or Korean traditions). Second, we will exclude
problems of reception or influence (that is, direct connections between
two cultures).

Papers submitted should deal EITHER (1) with theoretical issues of
comparison, OR (2) with a comparative study of specific works that will
provide insight to such theoretical issues.

Some examples of potential areas of inquiry include, but are not limited
to:

* What constitutes authenticity in differing traditions at different
moments? What constitutes authenticity for the comparatist?
* What, if any, are viable units of comparison? Genre, period, media,
socio-political events, technology? Can one apply the problematics of
one literary tradition or one culture to analyze another?
* Why is such comparison necessary?  What does comparison achieve, with
respect to, for instance, the politics of comparison, or the relation of
subject to object?
* Does the nature of historically and culturally unconnected comparison
differ from other kinds of comparison?  If so, how and what are the
implications? What is the role of the comparatist in creating this
comparison?
* How will East-West comparison not based on historical connections be
useful to other comparative and  non-comparative studies?

Each paper will be allocated 20 minutes for delivery with generous time
for discussion, which designated respondents will initiate. We will
offer a travel fellowship to encourage international papers or papers
from distant institutions from the West Coast or Hawaii.

Abstracts of 500 words or two pages may be submitted by January 31,
online at:

 http://web.princeton.edu/sites/sics/application.htm

or  by mail to:

 Society for Intercultural Comparative Studies
Attn: Authenticities East and West
318 East Pyne
Princeton University
Princeton, NJ  08544
sics at princeton.edu

All comparison-minded scholars and students are invited to join the
Society for Intercultural Comparative Studies. Please consult the
website in progress for more information:

http://web.princeton.edu/sites/sics/

All questions and comments to the organizers of the Society, Jonathan
Abel, Shion Kono, and Kevin Tsai, at (sics at princeton.edu).