Distant Worlds: The Reception of Ancient Cultures in Eastern Eurasia and the West Pacific is the title of a conference to be held online at Peking University, School of Arts in November 2022.
The reception of ancient cultures, especially that of ancient Egypt, is a mainstay in cultural studies and related fields. Often conducted from the vantage point of the reception of ancient cultures in the West, this interdisciplinary conference aims to shift the perspective to eastern Eurasia and the West Pacific to decentre the hitherto mainly Eurocentric scholarship and put a neglected part of the world at the centre. Switching to this new subject, the focus will be on the cultural production of eastern Eurasian and West Pacific players and how their cultural production (e.g., architecture, representative and performative arts, literature, popular culture) has incorporated and dealt with ancient cultures not indigenous to the region (e.g., Egypt, Greece, Mesoamerica, Mesopotamia, Rome). The conference thus revolves around intercultural communication and transformation of knowledges given form through time and space whilst highlighting the role of colonialisms in the transmission of knowledges about distant worlds and attached colonial imaginations as well as the agency of cultural actors in these processes.
The organizers extend a call for papers for the conference scheduled to be held online from 4–6 November 2022. Suggested areas for papers to address include but
are certainly not limited to:
– Influence in regional pop culture of e.g., Andean, ancient Egyptian, Greek, Mesoamerican, Mesopotamian,
Roman aesthetics, thought, etc.
– Architecture (representational and mundane)
– Fine arts
– Various genres of literature, cinema, board/video gaming
– Memorial cultures of Eastern Eurasia (including eastern Russia and the Indian subcontinent) and the West Pacific
(including the islands)
– The role of colonialism(s) in related cultural transmission
– Cosmopolitanism(s) of art
Abstracts should be a maximum of 400 words, suitable for a 20-minute presentation. The deadline for abstracts is 15 May 2022. Please send your abstract as a Word or PDF e-mail attachment to ‘[email protected]’ with ‘Distant Worlds abstract’ as the subject heading. The language of the conference is English.
Contact: [email protected]
DEADLINE: 15 May 2022
