About Us


The University of Toronto East Asian Studies Graduate Student Conference, an international student conference, has been hosted by our organization since 2000.  Each year, we have continually attracted young scholars and established professors from all over the world, such as Professor Dorothy Ko from Columbia University.  This year we are happy to have Professor Thomas LaMarre joining us. Our audience is also composed of scholars in our own university community. This year marks our 10th annual conference and we have chosen the theme and title: “Desire”. 
Every year we seek submissions from academic institutions in Canada and abroad based on a theme.  Our team at the University of Toronto then begins the selection and revision process.  While editors are reviewing the submissions, others are working towards the execution of the conference.  Whether booking spaces, contacting keynote speakers, or marketing-oriented tasks, we are proud to have independently prepared these successful conferences.

  • East Asian Studies Graduate Student Conference Committee

    Baryon Tensor Posadas
    Jennifer J. Lau
    Nicole Go
    Jing Wang
    Xi Chen

CALL FOR PAPERS

How might the understanding of “East Asia” – be it in terms of a geographical, historical, and cultural locus or as a space of fantasy and the imaginary – be illuminated by accounting for the ways in which desires are produced, structured, regulated, and mobilized through various institutions and discursive formations? Whether understood as lack or a productive force or a form of affective labor, desire is a concept that intersects with and imbricates a range of complex issues operating on the level of the libidinal as well as the material economy. Nationalism and imperialism, genders and sexualities, aesthetics and consumer culture, and the politics of alterity are but a few, yet are all significant to the study of East Asia.

The East Asian Studies Graduate Student Conference at the University of Toronto invites paper submissions for its 10th annual conference titled DESIRE, to be held on March 13, 2010. We seek papers that can critically interrogate the operations of desire, articulating how they are embedded in different modes of social organization at historically specific moments and bringing them into relation with larger issues of how East Asia is situated in the world. Submissions from graduate students around the world in all disciplines within and beyond the field of East Asian Studies, including history, sociology, anthropology, economy, art, literature, cultural studies, philosophy, and others are welcome.

Possible topics for papers include (but are not limited to):
- theories of desire and their complications in the East Asian context;
- literary and cultural representations and mediations of desire;
- the mobilization of desires and affects through cinema and other visual spectacles;
- intersections of nationalism and the construction of national identities with the constitution, regulation, and circumscription of desire;
- the interplay of capitalism, commodity culture, and desiring production in East Asia;
- gender, sexuality, and the regimes through which desire is disciplined;
- the construction of East Asia as a space of fantasy, and its consequent structuring as object of desire.

We invite all those interested in presenting papers to submit an abstract (300 words maximum) along with brief biographical information by December 21, 2009. Submissions from both individuals and panels of three (panelists should send individual abstracts and a panel abstract) are encouraged. Submitted papers are also eligible for consideration for the East Asia Forum, a journal edited and published by graduate students in the Department of East Asian Studies at the University of Toronto. Please indicate whether you wish to have your completed paper considered for publication.

Selected participants will be asked to submit completed papers by February 15, 2010. Those who wish their papers to be considered for publication should submit a publication-ready copy (about 4000 words). During the conference, participants will be given 20 minutes to present their work; actual presentation papers should be about 1500-2500 words long.

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