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ACAH2017

Photographs of The Asian Conference on Arts & Humanities (ACAH2017) in Kobe, Japan

Photographs of The Asian Conference on Arts & Humanities 2017 (ACAH2017) in Kobe, Japan

“History, Story, Narrative”

March 30 – April 2, 2017 | Art Center Kobe, Kobe, Japan

Historians are far from the only interested party in writing history. In a sense it is an interest we all share – whether we are talking politics, region, family birthright, or even personal experience. We are spectators to the process of history while being intimately situated within its impact and formations.

How, then, best to write it? Is it always the victor’s version? Have we not begun increasingly to write “history from below”, that lived by those who are not at the top of the power hierarchy? Are accounts of history always gender-inflected, hitherto, at least, towards men rather than women? Who gets to tell history if the issue is colonialism or class? How does geography, the power of place, intersect with history? What is the status of the personal story or narrative within the larger frame of events?

This conference addresses issues of writing history from literary and other discursive perspectives. That is to say: novels, plays, poems, autobiographies, memoirs, diaries, travel logs and a variety of styles of essay. One thinks of Shakespeare’s history plays, Tolstoy’s War and Peace, Shi Nai’an’s The Water Margin, Balzac’s La Comédie Humaine. It also addresses oral history, the spoken account or witness, the Hiroshima survivor to the modern Syrian migrant.

Which also connects to the nexus of media and history. The great “historical” films continue to hold us, be it Eisenstein’s October: Ten Days That Shook the World (1928) or Gone with the Wind (1939). We live in an age of documentaries, whether film or TV. There is a view that we also inhabit “instant” history, the download to laptop, the app, the all-purpose mobile. How has this technology changed our perception, our lived experience, of history? What is the role of commemoration, parade, holiday, festival or statuary in the writing of history?

The different modes by which we see and understand history, flow and counter-flow, nevertheless come back to certain basics.

One asks whether we deceive ourselves in always asking for some grand narrative. Can there only be one narrator or is history by necessity a colloquium, contested ground? Is national history a myth? And history-writing itself: is it actually a form of fiction, an artifice which flatters to deceive? What, exactly, is a historical fact?

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Programme

  • Art and Narrative in the Public Sphere
    Art and Narrative in the Public Sphere
    Featured Panel Presentation: Yutaka Mino & Tan Tarn How
  • D.T. Suzuki: How Did Scholars Get It So Wrong?
    D.T. Suzuki: How Did Scholars Get It So Wrong?
    Featured Presentation: Brian Victoria
  • Ambiguous Japan: A Study on Four Lectures of Nobel Prize Winner Kenzaburō Ōe
    Ambiguous Japan: A Study on Four Lectures of Nobel Prize Winner Kenzaburō Ōe
    Spotlight Presentation: Michele Eduarda Brasil de Sá
  • History, Story, Narrative – Constructing History
    History, Story, Narrative – Constructing History
    Featured Panel Presentation: Brian Victoria, Georges Depeyrot & Myles Chilton
  • Utilising Technology to Unlock the Past
    Utilising Technology to Unlock the Past
    Featured Workshop: Ruth Farrar & Barney Heywood
  • Stories Surpass History to Influence Individual and Social Identities
    Stories Surpass History to Influence Individual and Social Identities
    IAAB Presentation: Monty P. Satiadarma
  • The IAFOR Vladimir Devidé Haiku Award Ceremony
    The IAFOR Vladimir Devidé Haiku Award Ceremony
    Featured Event
  • Haiku Workshop
    Haiku Workshop
    Featured Workshop: Emiko Miyashita & Hana Fujimoto

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Speakers

  • Myles Chilton
    Myles Chilton
    Nihon University, Japan
  • Georges Depeyrot
    Georges Depeyrot
    French National Center for Scientific Research, France
  • Ruth Farrar
    Ruth Farrar
    Bath Spa University, UK
  • Barney Heywood
    Barney Heywood
    Stand + Stare
  • Tan Tarn How
    Tan Tarn How
    National University of Singapore, Singapore
  • Yutaka Mino
    Yutaka Mino
    Hyogo Prefectural Museum of Art, Japan
  • Marusya Nainggolan
    Marusya Nainggolan
    University of Indonesia, Indonesia
  • Michele Eduarda Brasil de Sá
    Michele Eduarda Brasil de Sá
    Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
  • Monty P. Satiadarma
    Monty P. Satiadarma
    Tarumanagara University, Indonesia
  • Brian Victoria
    Brian Victoria
    Oxford Centre for Buddhist Studies, UK

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Organising Committee

The Conference Programme Committee is composed of distinguished academics who are experts in their fields. Conference Programme Committee members may also be members of IAFOR's International Academic Board. The Organising Committee is responsible for nominating and vetting Keynote and Featured Speakers; developing the conference programme, including special workshops, panels, targeted sessions, and so forth; event outreach and promotion; recommending and attracting future Conference Programme Committee members; working with IAFOR to select PhD students and early career academics for IAFOR-funded grants and scholarships; and overseeing the reviewing of abstracts submitted to the conference.

  • Myles Chilton
    Myles Chilton
    Nihon University, Japan
  • Richard Donovan
    Richard Donovan
    Kansai University, Japan
  • Joseph Haldane
    Joseph Haldane
    The International Academic Forum (IAFOR), Japan
  • Tan Tarn How
    Tan Tarn How
    National University of Singapore, Singapore
  • A. Robert Lee
    A. Robert Lee
    Nihon University, Japan (retd.)
  • Brian Victoria
    Brian Victoria
    Oxford Centre for Buddhist Studies, UK

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Review Committee

  • Dr Anton Sutandio, Maranatha Christian University, Indonesia
  • Dr Changsong Wang, Universiti Sains Malaysia, Malaysia
  • Professor Gülsüm Baydar, Yaşar University, Turkey
  • Professor Joseph Sorensen, University of California at Davis, United States
  • Dr Kirstin Ellsworth, California State University Dominguez Hills, United States
  • Dr Kristian Pérez Zurutuza, EHU-UPV & UNED, Spain
  • Dr Lateef Onireti Ibraheem, University of Ilorin, Nigeria
  • Dr Raad Abd-Aun, College of Education, University of Babylon, Iraq
  • Dr Reena Mittal, Dak Degree College, India
  • Dr Trisnowati Tanto, Maranatha Christian University, Indonesia
  • Dr Tuğba Elmacı, Canakkale Onsekiz Mart University, Turkey
  • Dr Yi-Chin Shih, Tamkang University, Taiwan
  • Dr Zahra Al-Zadjali, Sultan Qaboos University, Oman
  • Dr Zeynep Gunay, Istanbul Technical University, Turkey
  • Professor Zohreh Mirhosseini, Islamic Azad University-Tehran North Branch, Iran

IAFOR's peer review process, which involves both reciprocal review and the use of Review Committees, is overseen by conference Organising Committee members under the guidance of the Academic Governing Board. Review Committee members are established academics who hold PhDs or other terminal degrees in their fields and who have previous peer review experience.

If you would like to apply to serve on the ACAH2019 Review Committee, please visit our application page.

Apply to Join the Review Committee

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IAFOR Grant & Scholarship Recipients

We are delighted to announce the first recipients of financial support as part of the IAFOR grants and scholarships programme, newly launched for 2017. Our warmest congratulations go to Ismahan Wayah, recipient of the Stuart D. B. Picken Grant & Scholarship, and James Kin-Pong Au, Isabelle Coy-Dibley and Ashley Harbers, recipients of IAFOR Scholarships, who have been selected by the conference Organising Committees to receive financial support to present their research at The Asian Conference on Arts & Humanities 2017 and The Asian Conference on Literature 2017.

IAFOR's grants and scholarships programme provides financial support to PhD students and early career academics, with the aim of helping them pursue research excellence and achieve their academic goals through interdisciplinary study and interaction. Awards are based on the appropriateness of the educational opportunity in relation to the applicant's field of study, financial need, and contributions to their community and to IAFOR's mission of interdisciplinarity. Scholarships are awarded based on availability of funds from IAFOR and vary with each conference.

The Organising Committee of the relevant IAFOR conference awards scholarships to eligible applicants who have submitted exceptional abstracts that have passed the blind peer review process and have been accepted for presentation at the conference.

Ismahan Wayah, University of Münster, Germany

Stuart D. B. Picken Scholarship Recipient

Ismahan Wayah graduated with a master’s degree in English, history and philosophy from the University of Mainz, Germany, and the University of Leeds, UK. She is currently doing her PhD with the Graduate School Practices of Literature and the Department of English, Postcolonial and Media Studies in Münster, Germany. In her doctoral thesis, "Muslim Narratives in Diaspora: Unity, Difference, and Dissidence", she analyses contemporary diasporic American and British Muslim fiction by drawing on postcolonial, postsecular and intersectional approaches. In 2016 she has been a visiting scholar in the Ethnic Studies department of the University of California, Berkeley, USA. In 2015, she served as a PhD student representative at the Graduate School Practices of Literature. Furthermore, she has been actively engaged in social justice projects in black and/or Muslim communities.

Abstract

“We Are All Moors”: A Black Muslim Slave Narrative

Laila Lalami’s Pulitzer prize-winning novel, The Moor’s Account (2015), is a dense historical novel that provides a counter-narrative to Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca’s La Relación (1542), a historical first-person account of the doomed 1527 Narvaez expedition, which only three Spaniards and “Estevanico, an Arab Negro” survived. In The Moor’s Account, the Moroccan-American author Laila Lalami gives voice to the story of Estevanico/Mustafa, who has been enslaved, omitted and forgotten from dominant history.

This paper illustrates that writing “history from below” is an intricate and complicated endeavour, in particular when analysing the narrative of a Black Muslim enslaved by Spanish colonisers and captured by Native Americans. Adopting an Afropessimist, postcolonial and postsecular reading, I argue that the main protagonist, Estevanico/Mustafa, renders the colonisation of the Americas from the perspective of the Moor as Europe’s religious, racial and civilisational ultimate Other. Such an approach discloses that the figure of the Moor blurs the lines between victor/victim, freedom/captivity, guilt/innocence on the level of the narrative and the lines between the colonial captivity narrative and slave narrative on the level of form. The Moor’s Account not only offers an alternative reading to the mapping of New Spain on the Americas, but also emphasises the grey areas of history/(ies). In turning to the Early American period, Layla Lalami reminds us of the longstanding presence of Black Muslim subjects in the Americas.

James Kin-Pong Au, University of Tokyo, Japan

IAFOR Scholarship Recipient

James Au is a postgraduate student at the University of Tokyo, Japan. Prior to that he studied Japanese literature at SOAS, University of London, UK. He completed his MA degree in comparative and literary studies in Hong Kong Baptist University in May 2014. Before that he obtained a bachelor’s degree in translation at The Chinese University of Hong Kong. He also spent four years learning foreign languages including Japanese, French and German, and developing his strong interest in comparative literature between East and West. His current research is to study how nihilism incorporated in the works of both Chinese and Japanese writers from the 1910s to the mid 1920s. His professional career outside academia includes compiling English teaching materials and teaching English courses in various local colleges, high schools and tutorial centres. Aside from professional interests, he travels widely, reads, writes and watches movies with his family and friends.

Abstract

Reception of Arthur Rimbaud on Dai Wang Shu and Nakahara Cyûya’s Poetry and the Construction of Their Poetic Decadent World

This article argues that both Dai Wang-shu (戴望舒) (1905–1950) and Nakahara Cyûya (中原中也) (1907–1937), as translators of the poetry of French symbolist Arthur Rimbaud (1854–1891), adopted similar decadent elements as three of them were trapped in the times of turbulence – Rimbaud experienced the decline of the Second Empire and its collapse after Franco-Prussian War in 1870, while Nakahara was situated in a revolutionary age at which politics and cultural rapid change were putting most Japanese people in a crisis of identity. Likewise, Dai’s literary life flourished during the period of world wars in which China was being invaded by Japanese armies. While western scholars such as Gregory Lee and Donald Keene have hitherto respectively considered the biographical accounts of Dai’s poetry and hastened to label him as “Japanese Rimbaud”, and Asian scholars claimed the uniqueness of the two poets in unison, few have addressed the issue of how one’s poetry will be influenced through translation of others’ works. Through close readings of some of their poetry, mainly Dai’s “Written on a Prison Wall” (獄中題壁) and “With My Injured Hand” (我用殘缺的手掌) (1941), written during the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong, and Nakahara’s Collection of Goat Songs (山羊の歌), written in the 1920s. I further argue that the reason they had to narrate and confess their sentiment in such a French symbolic way is closely related to the crisis – including crisis of humanity, culture, war and identity.

Ashley Harbers, Yonsei University, South Korea

IAFOR Scholarship Recipient

Ashley Harbers is currently a doctoral student in the department of English Literature at Yonsei University, Seoul, South Korea. She graduated with a Master of Arts in English from the University of Dallas and a Bachelor of Arts in English and Classical Studies from the University of Texas at Arlington, USA. She has taught high-school and college literature and composition as well as English as a Second Language, and her research interests include industrial and social problem novels of nineteenth-century England, the historical novel, and protest literatures.

Abstract

Bending Time: History, Narrative, and Anachronism in Chang-Rae Lee’s The Surrendered

What is perhaps most remarkable about Chang-Rae Lee’s fourth novel is the manner in which he anchors the bodily and the divine in the presence of two other texts in the novel, intertexts around which Lee “bends” a linear, historical sense of time. This paper aims to assess the effect of the confluence of the visceral and the spiritual and the historical and the mythical in a novel that through its very narrative structure argues for the continued relevance of the Lukácsian historical novel. The Surrendered articulates the relationship between trauma and memory-as-history through a memory-spliced narrative. The violence inflicted on bodies in the novel, which both causes and results from different traumas, is intricately connected with its treatment of history. Historical time in a linear sense collapses around the three main characters as the story slides back and forth along a spectrum of thirty years, lending a literal sense of anachronism, a going backward through time, to the novel. This movement through history is both a natural function of memory as well as another means by which to subvert notions of historical objectivity, especially for an audience either unaware of the history or, worse, reading under a certain state-sponsored narrative. The power of the historical novel, especially with regard to silenced historical events, like the Korean War, is the creation of a multiplicity of voices, voices that can challenge the dominant, or especially, the state-sponsored narrative voice.

Isabelle Coy-Dibley, University of Westminster, United Kingdom

IAFOR Scholarship Recipient

Isabelle Coy-Dibley is currently a PhD student at the University of Westminster, UK. In 2012, she gained a first class honours in her BA English Literature degree from the University of Westminster, UK. Following this, she completed an MA in English: 1850–Present at King's College London, UK, in 2013 and an MA in Gender, Sexuality and Culture at Birkbeck, University of London, UK, in 2014. Her predominant research interests are within contemporary women’s experimental literature with an interdisciplinary theoretical approach, presently exploring concepts of female corporeal memory, bodily semantics and methods of inscription upon the female body. She has presented at multiple conferences both in the UK and internationally.

Abstract

Anaïs Nin’s Diaries: Revising Identity and Sexual Histories in Literary Narratives

Anaïs Nin meticulously documented her life in diary entries from the age of 11. However, this narrative of self was not only a private undertaking, but a form of writing she chose to make public when these diaries were edited and published later in her life as well as posthumously. Subsequently, this paper intends to question how authors revise and edit their personal narratives, the effect of an intended audience upon this process, and how Nin’s sexual identity and forms of embodiment within her diaries were affected by censorship, defamation and invasion of privacy laws that become problematic for non-fiction narratives.

I examine how language is altered through the editing process and restrictions placed on literary narratives, particularly narratives of a sexual nature, which in turn moulds identity in differing ways – depending on how one decides to revise one’s narrative and whether this narrative is being altered for personal reasons or to meet specific criteria for society or publishing policies. Ultimately, this paper questions how identity becomes censored in non-fiction narratives when these narratives do not conform to acceptable modes of behaviour or forms of sexual embodiment, and how this sequentially impacts the way in which the female body, sexual identities and forms of sexual expression may be narrated.

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Art and Narrative in the Public Sphere
Featured Panel Presentation: Yutaka Mino & Tan Tarn How

Drawing on the conference theme of “History, Story, Narrative”, this panel will examine art as a medium for telling stories and creating narrative, and how curation can be used to contextualise and situate works of art.

In a comparative analysis encompassing divergent cultural perspectives, the panellists will discuss the politics and role of art, drawing on examples from both Singapore and Japan, and comparing and contrasting with other countries.

The panel will focus on the importance and continued relevance of art in the public sphere, addressing questions of how public art and public spaces can create stories and narratives, and how these narratives can assist in the construction and structuring of a national identity, including the following: How can art create a public dialogue? How can this dialogue be harnessed for the good of the community? And what is the role played by curation in contributing to the development of a local, regional and national community and economy?

Image | The Tower of the Sun (located in Osaka Prefecture) by Japanese artist Tarō Okamoto

Read presenter biographies.

D.T. Suzuki: How Did Scholars Get It So Wrong?
Featured Presentation: Brian Victoria

D.T. Suzuki is best known for having introduced the Zen school of Buddhism to the West. His long life (1870-1966) has been praised by many scholarly and non-scholarly admirers alike as exemplifying the ideal “Zen life,” a life dedicated to peace and compassion. Yet, as early as his first book in 1896, Suzuki called on young Japanese soldiers to “regard their own lives as being as light as goose feathers.” During the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-5, Suzuki exhorted Japanese Buddhists to “carry the banner of Dharma over the dead and dying until they gain final victory.” And as late as June 1941 Suzuki informed Imperial Army officers: “It isn’t easy to acquire the mental state in which one is prepared to die. I think the best shortcut to acquire this frame of mind is none other than Zen.” This presentation asks how was it possible for Suzuki to garner such admiration in the West ever as he encouraged the Japanese people to die in wars of conquest. More importantly, it seeks to identify “lessons to be learned” for scholars, especially historians, as they research both individuals and the events surrounding them.

Read presenter biographies.

Ambiguous Japan: A Study on Four Lectures of Nobel Prize Winner Kenzaburō Ōe
Spotlight Presentation: Michele Eduarda Brasil de Sá

In 1994, Kenzaburō Ōe, the second Japanese writer to receive the Nobel Prize in Literature, entitled his Nobel Lecture “Japan, the Ambiguous, and Myself”, dialoguing with his predecessor, Yasunari Kawabata, whose Nobel Lecture was entitled “Japan, the Beautiful, and Myself”. Confessing his quest for “ways to be of some use in the cure and reconciliation of mankind”, Ōe proposes a reflection on Japan’s role in the world by that time, having ascended by its technology, but not by its literature or philosophy. His Nobel Lecture aligns with three other lectures in different places and contexts: “Speaking on Japanese Culture Before a Scandinavian Audience” (1992), “On Modern and Contemporary Japanese Literature” (San Francisco, 1990) and “Japan’s Dual Identity: A Writer’s Dilemma” (1986). This paper attempts to reflect on the writer’s perspectives expressed in his lectures, focusing on the following subjects: Japanese culture and identity, Japan between past and future, and the contributions of literature in the achievement of peace.

Image | Kenzaburō Ōe (Wikipedia)

Read presenter biographies.

History, Story, Narrative – Constructing History
Featured Panel Presentation: Brian Victoria, Georges Depeyrot & Myles Chilton

This interdisciplinary history and literature panel will look at how histories are created and propagated and the difficulties involved in the inherently political act of writing of history. How does the “truth” act as heuristic and guide, and how is the concept abused to stifle dissent and impose order? This panel will draw on contemporary controversies and invite participation from delegates from around the world to address questions that include the following: How important is the construction of national history in the creation of personal and national identity? How does history shape our political decisions today? How do we go about building, revising and deconstructing history?

This panel will feature both historians and literary scholars and will explore the relations and tensions between fictional and historical narrative that are in many ways vital to definitions of literature, raising questions as to the “truth” of the history registered in literary texts as opposed to that of historical texts. The panel will also examine literature as alternative history, whether Fredric Jameson’s call to “always historicize!” is still relevant, the aliterary subversions of “official” history, the historicity of fiction, and, of course, the fiction of historicity.

Read presenter biographies.

Utilising Technology to Unlock the Past
Featured Workshop: Ruth Farrar & Barney Heywood

The aim of the workshop is to explore how digital technologies can be shaped to change our perceptions of the past. Radio frequency identification (RFID) technology and image recognition technology will be discussed to demonstrate innovative new platforms available to storytellers, historians and media makers.

The workshop is led by collaborative partners Dr Ruth Farrar, Creative Media and Enterprise Senior Lecturer at Bath Spa University, and Barney Heywood and Lucy Telling from Stand + Stare, who specialise in immersive theatre and interactive design. They will collectively draw upon their portfolios illustrating successful international case studies, which fuse academic research with industry demands to help share stories from the past with new audiences.

Case studies covered in the workshop include: sharing immigrant stories for a sound art commission for the Austrian Cultural Forum in New York; an interactive storytelling app to commemorate Carnegie Hall’s 125th anniversary in New York; and an exhibition at the Barbican for the Royal Shakespeare Company bringing theatrical props to life in London. During a practical exercise, workshop participants will also get an opportunity to interact with image recognition technology by attaching a story to an object to create a unique oral history experience. Ultimately, workshop participants will learn how to innovatively mediate digital technologies to create new modes of understanding history.

Read presenter biographies.

Stories Surpass History to Influence Individual and Social Identities
IAAB Presentation: Monty P. Satiadarma

Storytelling is a way of transforming knowledge from one generation to another. While histories are based on facts and historical data, stories may not be based. Mythologies and folktales are not history, they are stories, yet people believe in them; often they believe more in stories than in histories.

People care more about stories than histories, for stories tend to give an immediate answer to curiosity without extending to research and exploration. Symbolism and metaphor tend to satisfyingly give answers to people’s curiosity, for, as Cassirer says, man is an animal symbolicum.

While facts and data are based on rational findings, symbols and metaphors may be based on emotional attachment, and some tend to be irrational; for example, the figure of angels as humans with wings. These symbols influence the identity of persons and even nations. There are countries that use the symbols of eagles or lions, although these are either rare or nonexistent in their land. However, the stories of the brave and powerful eagles and lions are introjected within the people over centuries; they are not thought of within the course of history. This presentation discusses how stories surpass history in influencing people to carry on their belief system, thus influencing then, from the individual to national identity.

Read presenter biographies.

The IAFOR Vladimir Devidé Haiku Award Ceremony
Featured Event

ACAH/LibrAsia2017 is the proud host of the IAFOR Vladimir Devidé Haiku Award Ceremony, which will be held during the Plenary Session. Now in its seventh year, the Award was founded and is judged by distinguished poet and Croatian Ambassador to Brazil, His Excellency Dr Drago Štambuk. It prides itself on its indiscriminate acceptance of all forms of haiku, regardless of whether in the traditional or modern style. This international, broad and unrestricted approach attracted a record number of 680 submissions from 60 countries in 2016 and this year is set to be its most prolific yet. The Award is currently open for entries. Only unpublished haiku and one entry per person will be considered.

Find haiku inspiration in our listings of previous winners and learn more about Dr Drago Štambuk’s conception of the award here.

Haiku Workshop
Featured Workshop: Emiko Miyashita & Hana Fujimoto

This annual workshop gives a background and history to haiku, the Japanese form of poetry that has become popular the world over. It will include readings of some of the most famous examples, and will invite participants to write their own poems, under the guidance of one of Japan’s most prominent haiku poets.

The workshop is run by Councillors of the Haiku International Association, Emiko Miyashita, a prominent and widely published haiku poet, award-winning translator and secretary of the Haiku Poets Association International Department in Tokyo, and Hana Fujimoto, a member of the Japan Traditional Haiku Association and writer for the haiku magazine Tamamo.

Read presenter biographies.

Myles Chilton
Nihon University, Japan

Biography

Myles Chilton (BA University of Toronto; MA and PhD University of Chicago) is a Professor in the Department of English Language and Literature at Nihon University. Originally from Toronto, Canada, Chilton has been in Japan for over twenty years, writing about relationships between contemporary world literature and global cities in Literary Cartographies: Spatiality, Representation, and Narrative (Palgrave Macmillan 2014), and in journal articles such as Comparative Critical Studies, The Journal of Narrative Theory, and Studies in the Literary Imagination. He also focuses on global English and literary studies in such books as the monograph English Studies Beyond the ‘Center’: Teaching Literature and the Future of Global English (Routledge 2016); and in chapters in the books The Future of English in Asia: Perspectives on Language and Literature (Routledge 2015), Deterritorializing Practices in Literary Studies (Contornos 2014), and World Literature and the Politics of the Minority (Rawat 2013). Chilton has also presented papers on these and other topics at universities around the world. He is also on the editorial board of the IAFOR Journal of Literature and Librarianship.

Featured Panel Presentation (2018) | Global English’s Centers of Consecration

Previous Presentations

Featured Panel Presentation (2017) | History, Story, Narrative – Constructing History
Georges Depeyrot
French National Center for Scientific Research, France

Biography

Georges Depeyrot is a monetary historian at the French National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) in Paris. He began his scientific career in the 1970s studying coin finds and joined the CNRS in 1982. After some years he joined the Center for Historical Research in the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences (EHESS) and is now a professor at the École Normale Supérieure. After his habilitation (1992), he specialised in international cooperative programs that aim to reconsider monetary history in a global approach. He has directed many cooperative programs linking several European countries, including those situated at the continent’s outer borders (Georgia, Armenia, Russia, and Morocco). Professor Depeyrot is the author or co-author of more than one hundred volumes, and is the founding director of the Moneta publishing house, the most important collection of books on the topic of money. Professor Depeyrot is a member of the board of trustees of the Centre National de Recherche Scientifique.

Featured Presentation (2018) | From DAMIN to the IAFOR Silk Road Initiative

Previous Presentations

Featured Panel Presentation (2017) | History, Story, Narrative – Constructing History
Ruth Farrar
Bath Spa University, UK

Biography

Dr Ruth Farrar is a Senior Lecturer in Creative Media and Enterprise and Director of Artswork Media at Bath Spa University, UK. A graduate of Trinity College Dublin (BA Film Studies & English Literature) and University of Bristol (MA Film & Television Production), Dr Ruth Farrar is an active filmmaker, sound artist and researcher. She recently completed an AHRC-funded PhD by practice at the University of Exeter on the theoretical, creative and technological applications of binaural technology usage. Her binaural research has resulted in interactive sound art exhibitions, commissions such as apps like “Dear Carnegie Hall” for Carnegie Hall, New York, and award-winning sound design screened at film festivals in Dublin, Cannes and New York. Her current public engagement research has led to the creation of the world's first film festival for women in extreme sports and adventure: Shextreme Film Festival.

Previous Presentations

Featured Workshop (2017) | Utilising Technology to Unlock the Past
Barney Heywood
Stand + Stare

Biography

Barney Heywood is Co-Director of Stand + Stare, a design studio creating interactive installations, exhibitions and apps. Their automated experiences are often based on historical material and memory, which has led them to work with museums, libraries, universities and a variety of organisations seeking innovative ways in which to open up their archives and to tell stories in new and exciting ways. Their work is characterised by a sense of warmth and nostalgia, with tech elements largely hidden, to allow people to focus on tangible objects and physical experiences.

Previous Presentations

Featured Workshop (2017) | Utilising Technology to Unlock the Past
Tan Tarn How
National University of Singapore, Singapore

Tan Tarn How is Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Policy Studies in the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore. He graduated from Peterhouse College, University of Cambridge, in 1982 with Bachelor of Arts Honours, Natural Sciences Tripos. He then obtained a Diploma in Education from the Institute of Education, Singapore, in 1984, and later was also a recipient of a three-month Fulbright Scholarship to Boston University in 1993. In the earlier part of his career Tan worked as a teacher, then as a journalist for The Straits Times, Singapore’s main local newspaper, including postings as a foreign correspondent and senior political correspondent based in Beijing and Hong Kong. Later Tan became the Head Scriptwriter for Drama Production at the Singapore Television Corporation and Associate Artistic Director of the drama company TheatreWorks, where led workshops for budding playwrights.

An arts activist and playwright, Tan Tarn How has written on the development of the arts in Singapore, in particular fostering partnerships between the people, private and public sectors; the creative industries in Singapore, China and Korea; cultural policy in Singapore; and arts censorship. His research interests also include arts education and the role of education in cultural and human development. He has also carried out research on the management and regulation of media in Singapore; the impact of the Internet and social media on society; the role of new and old media in the 2008 Malaysian election and the 2006 and 2011 Singapore elections; and the way in which the Internet and social media has influenced the development of civil society and democratic development.

Previous Presentations

Featured Presentation (2017) | Art and Narrative in the Public Sphere
Yutaka Mino
Hyogo Prefectural Museum of Art, Japan

Biography

Dr Yutaka Mino was born in Kanazawa, Japan, in 1941, and received his PhD in Art History from Harvard University, in 1977. He was appointed associate curator in charge of the Asiatic Department at Montreal Museum of Fine Arts, in 1976, the curator of the Oriental Art Department at the Indianapolis Museum of Art, in 1977, and the curator of the Asian Department at the Art Institute of Chicago, in 1985. After Returning to Japan, he was named as the director of the Osaka Municipal Museum of Art, in 1996, and as the founding director of the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, in 2004. In 2007, he became the Vice Chairman, Sotheby’s North America, the Chief Executive Director of the 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art, Kanazawa, and the Honorary Director, Osaka Municipal Museum of Art. In April 2010, he was appointed as the director of the Hyogo Prefectural Museum of Art, and in 2012, the director of Yokoo Tadanori Museum of Contemporary Art. In 2013, he was named Honorary Director, Abeno Harukas Museum of Art. Yutaka Mino has organized many exhibitions, and also published individual books and catalogs such as Freedom of Clay and Brush Through Seven Centuries in Northern China: Tz’u-chou Type Wares, 960-1600 A.D. in 1980, and Hakuji (White Ware), vol.5 in the Chugoku Togi (Chinese Ceramics) series in 1998.

Keynote Presentation (2019) | Museum Cultivates Aesthetic Sensibility

Previous Presentations

Featured Presentation (2018) | The Ceramic Road
Featured Presentation (2017) | Art and Narrative in the Public Sphere
Marusya Nainggolan
University of Indonesia, Indonesia

Biography

Marusya Nainggolan learned to play the piano from her father, Sutan Kalimuda Nainggolan, and continued her music education at the Music Education Foundation under the supervision of Rudi Laban. She graduated in 1980 from the Jakarta Institute of Arts, Indonesia, and obtained scholarships from the Australian Foreign Affairs to study at the Sydney Conservatory, New South Wales, Australia (1980-1984) to obtain a Bachelor of Music under the supervision of Mme Sonya Hanke (piano) and Dr Graham Heir (composition). From 1987 to 1989 she obtained Fulbright scholarships and completed her Master of Music Art in Boston University, USA, under the supervision of Professor Theodore Antonious, Dr M. Marryman and Professor Bernard Rands. She was the General Secretary for the Indonesian Copyright Society (1995-2002), Chair of the Indonesian Composer Society, Secretary of the Jakarta Art Council and Head of the Jakarta Art Institute (2004-2010). She is now teaching European studies at the University of Indonesia, and performs music nationally and internationally, besides participating as a music counsellor for studies on music and health in the National Health Department.

Previous Presentations

Featured Presentation (2017) | Piano Workshop
Michele Eduarda Brasil de Sá
Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Biography

Dr Michele Eduarda Brasil de Sá is currently a professor at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, temporarily working for University of Brasília, Brazil (since 2013). Born in Rio de Janeiro, Dr Brasil de Sá graduated with a Bachelor's degree in Portuguese, Latin and Japanese languages and literature. She finished her Master’s and doctoral research in the Latin language at Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. She temporarily worked at the Federal University of Amazonas (2007-2013), where she was the first coordinator and professor for the recently created (2011) undergraduate course of Japanese Language and Literature. Dr Brasil de Sá's research (since 2008) has embraced Japanese immigration to the State of Amazonas in documents but she is currently researching Japanese language learning and translation.

Previous Presentations

Featured Presentation (2017) | Ambiguous Japan: A Study on Four Lectures of Nobel Prize Winner Kenzaburō Ōe
Monty P. Satiadarma
Tarumanagara University, Indonesia

Biography

Dr Monty P. Satiadarma is a clinical psychologist who has been teaching psychology at Tarumanagara University since 1994. He was one of the founders of the Department of Psychology at Tarumanagara, as well as the Dean of Psychology, Vice Rector and Rector of the university. He graduated with a degree in psychology from the University of Indonesia, art therapy from Emporia State, Kansas, family counselling from Notre Dame de Namur, California, and clinical hypnotherapy from Irvine, California. He has nationally published a number of books with a particular interest in educational psychology, and in music and art therapy – methods with which he treated survivors of the Indonesian tsunami on behalf of the International Red Cross and the United Nations. He is a board member and area chair of the International Council of Psychology, and a founder and board member of the Asian Psychology Association.

Previous Presentations

Featured Presentation (2017) | Stories Surpass History to Influence Individual and Social Identities
Brian Victoria
Oxford Centre for Buddhist Studies, UK

Biography

Brian Victoria is a native of Omaha, Nebraska and a 1961 graduate of Nebraska Wesleyan University in Lincoln, Nebraska. He holds a MA in Buddhist Studies from Sōtō Zen sect-affiliated Komazawa University in Tokyo, and a PhD from the Department of Religious Studies at Temple University.

In addition to a second, enlarged edition of Zen At War (Rowman & Littlefield, 2006), Brian's major writings include Zen War Stories (RoutledgeCurzon, 2003); an autobiographical work in Japanese entitled Gaijin de ari, Zen bozu de ari (As a Foreigner, As a Zen Priest), published by San-ichi Shobo in 1971; Zen Master Dōgen, coauthored with Prof. Yokoi Yūhō of Aichi-gakuin University (Weatherhill, 1976); and a translation of The Zen Life by Sato Koji (Weatherhill, 1972). In addition, Brian has published numerous journal articles, focusing on the relationship of not only Buddhism but religion in general, to violence and warfare.

From 2005 to 2013 Brian was a Professor of Japanese Studies and director of the AEA “Japan and Its Buddhist Traditions Program” at Antioch University in Yellow Springs, OH, USA. From 2013-2015 he was a Visiting Research Fellow at the International Research Center for Japanese Studies in Kyoto, Japan where he is writing a book tentatively entitled: Zen Terror in 1930s Japan. Brian currently continues his research as a Fellow of the Oxford Center for Buddhist Studies and is a fully ordained Buddhist priest in the Sōtō Zen sect.

Previous Presentations

Featured Presentation (2017) | D.T. Suzuki: How Did Scholars Get It So Wrong?
Featured Panel Presentation (2017) | History, Story, Narrative – Constructing History
Myles Chilton
Nihon University, Japan

Biography

Myles Chilton (BA University of Toronto; MA and PhD University of Chicago) is a Professor in the Department of English Language and Literature at Nihon University. Originally from Toronto, Canada, Chilton has been in Japan for over twenty years, writing about relationships between contemporary world literature and global cities in Literary Cartographies: Spatiality, Representation, and Narrative (Palgrave Macmillan 2014), and in journal articles such as Comparative Critical Studies, The Journal of Narrative Theory, and Studies in the Literary Imagination. He also focuses on global English and literary studies in such books as the monograph English Studies Beyond the ‘Center’: Teaching Literature and the Future of Global English (Routledge 2016); and in chapters in the books The Future of English in Asia: Perspectives on Language and Literature (Routledge 2015), Deterritorializing Practices in Literary Studies (Contornos 2014), and World Literature and the Politics of the Minority (Rawat 2013). Chilton has also presented papers on these and other topics at universities around the world. He is also on the editorial board of the IAFOR Journal of Literature and Librarianship.

Featured Panel Presentation (2018) | Global English’s Centers of Consecration

Previous Presentations

Featured Panel Presentation (2017) | History, Story, Narrative – Constructing History
Richard Donovan
Kansai University, Japan

Biography

Richard Donovan lectures in comparative literature and translation studies in the Faculty of Letters at Kansai University. He has also worked as a translator at the Kyoto City International Relations Office. He obtained a PhD in literary translation studies at Victoria University of Wellington in 2012. The title of his thesis was Dances with Words: Issues in the Translation of Japanese Literature into English. His other areas of interest include Japanese media subculture and environmental technology.

**Dr Richard Donovan is the editor of the IAFOR Journal of Literature & Librarianship. He is Chair of the IAFOR Publications Committee.

Joseph Haldane
The International Academic Forum (IAFOR), Japan

Biography

Joseph Haldane is the Chairman and CEO of IAFOR. He is responsible for devising strategy, setting policies, forging institutional partnerships, implementing projects, and overseeing the organisation’s business and academic operations, including research, publications and events.

Dr Haldane holds a PhD from the University of London in 19th-century French Studies, and has had full-time faculty positions at the University of Paris XII Paris-Est Créteil (France), Sciences Po Paris (France), and Nagoya University of Commerce and Business (Japan), as well as visiting positions at the French Press Institute in the University of Paris II Panthéon-Assas (France), The School of Journalism at Sciences Po Paris (France), and the School of Journalism at Moscow State University (Russia).

Dr Haldane’s current research concentrates on post-war and contemporary politics and international affairs, and since 2015 he has been a Guest Professor at The Osaka School of International Public Policy (OSIPP) at Osaka University, where he teaches on the postgraduate Global Governance Course, and a Co-Director of the OSIPP-IAFOR Research Centre, an interdisciplinary think tank situated within the university.

He is also a Member of the International Advisory Council of the Department of Educational Foundations at the College of Education of the University of Hawaii at Manoa.

From 2012 to 2014, Dr Haldane served as Treasurer of the American Chamber of Commerce in Japan (Chubu Region) and he is currently a Trustee of the HOPE International Development Agency (Japan). He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Asiatic Society in 2012, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts in 2015.

A black belt in judo, he is married with two children, and lives in Japan.

Tan Tarn How
National University of Singapore, Singapore

Tan Tarn How is Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Policy Studies in the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore. He graduated from Peterhouse College, University of Cambridge, in 1982 with Bachelor of Arts Honours, Natural Sciences Tripos. He then obtained a Diploma in Education from the Institute of Education, Singapore, in 1984, and later was also a recipient of a three-month Fulbright Scholarship to Boston University in 1993. In the earlier part of his career Tan worked as a teacher, then as a journalist for The Straits Times, Singapore’s main local newspaper, including postings as a foreign correspondent and senior political correspondent based in Beijing and Hong Kong. Later Tan became the Head Scriptwriter for Drama Production at the Singapore Television Corporation and Associate Artistic Director of the drama company TheatreWorks, where led workshops for budding playwrights.

An arts activist and playwright, Tan Tarn How has written on the development of the arts in Singapore, in particular fostering partnerships between the people, private and public sectors; the creative industries in Singapore, China and Korea; cultural policy in Singapore; and arts censorship. His research interests also include arts education and the role of education in cultural and human development. He has also carried out research on the management and regulation of media in Singapore; the impact of the Internet and social media on society; the role of new and old media in the 2008 Malaysian election and the 2006 and 2011 Singapore elections; and the way in which the Internet and social media has influenced the development of civil society and democratic development.

Previous Presentations

Featured Presentation (2017) | Art and Narrative in the Public Sphere
A. Robert Lee
Nihon University, Japan (retd.)

Biography

A. Robert Lee, a Britisher who helped establish American Studies in the UK, was Professor in the English department at Nihon University, Tokyo from 1997 to 2011, having previously taught for almost three decades at the University of Kent at Canterbury, UK. He now lives in Murcia, Spain. He has held visiting professorial positions in the US at the University of Virginia, Bryn Mawr College, Northwestern University, the University of Colorado, the University of California Berkeley, and the University of New Mexico.

His academic books include Designs of Blackness: Mappings in the Literature and Culture of Afro-America (1998); Postindian Conversations (1999), with Gerald Vizenor; Multicultural American Literature: Comparative Black, Native, Latino/a and Asian American Fictions (2003), which won the American Book Award in 2004; Gothic to Multicultural: Idioms of Imagining in American Literary Fiction (2009) and Modern American Counter Writing: Beats, Outriders, Ethnics (2010). Has also been responsible for collections like Other Britain, Other British (1995); Beat Generation Writers (1996); China Fictions/English Language: Literary Essays in Diaspora, Memory, Story (2008); The Salt Companion to Jim Barnes (2010); with Deborah L. Madsen, Gerald Vizenor: Texts and Contexts (2010); Native American Writing, 4 Vols (2011), African American Writing, 5 Vols (2013), US Latino/a Writing (2014); and, with Alan R. Velie, The Native American Renaissance: Literary Imagination and Achievement (2013).

His creative work is reflected in Japan Textures: Sight and Word (2007), with Mark Gresham; Tokyo Commute: Japanese Customs and Way of Life Viewed from the Odakyu Line (2011); and the poetry collections Ars Geographica: Maps and Compasses (2012); Portrait and Landscape: Further Geographies (2013); Imaginarium: Sightings, Galleries, Sightlines (2013); Americas: Selected Verse and Vignette (2015); Password: A Book of Locks and Keys (2016); and Aurora: A Spanish Gallery of Image and Text (IAFOR Publications on-line, 2016).

Brian Victoria
Oxford Centre for Buddhist Studies, UK

Biography

Brian Victoria is a native of Omaha, Nebraska and a 1961 graduate of Nebraska Wesleyan University in Lincoln, Nebraska. He holds a MA in Buddhist Studies from Sōtō Zen sect-affiliated Komazawa University in Tokyo, and a PhD from the Department of Religious Studies at Temple University.

In addition to a second, enlarged edition of Zen At War (Rowman & Littlefield, 2006), Brian's major writings include Zen War Stories (RoutledgeCurzon, 2003); an autobiographical work in Japanese entitled Gaijin de ari, Zen bozu de ari (As a Foreigner, As a Zen Priest), published by San-ichi Shobo in 1971; Zen Master Dōgen, coauthored with Prof. Yokoi Yūhō of Aichi-gakuin University (Weatherhill, 1976); and a translation of The Zen Life by Sato Koji (Weatherhill, 1972). In addition, Brian has published numerous journal articles, focusing on the relationship of not only Buddhism but religion in general, to violence and warfare.

From 2005 to 2013 Brian was a Professor of Japanese Studies and director of the AEA “Japan and Its Buddhist Traditions Program” at Antioch University in Yellow Springs, OH, USA. From 2013-2015 he was a Visiting Research Fellow at the International Research Center for Japanese Studies in Kyoto, Japan where he is writing a book tentatively entitled: Zen Terror in 1930s Japan. Brian currently continues his research as a Fellow of the Oxford Center for Buddhist Studies and is a fully ordained Buddhist priest in the Sōtō Zen sect.

Previous Presentations

Featured Presentation (2017) | D.T. Suzuki: How Did Scholars Get It So Wrong?
Featured Panel Presentation (2017) | History, Story, Narrative – Constructing History